UVM NOTEBOOK
Robot, heal thyself
Adaptable machine draws wide attention
Smooth, it isn’t. The star-shaped robot lurches, wheezes, and flops through its ponderous perambulation, clacking laboriously but steadily across the table. But for this machine, developed by Joshua Bongard, assistant professor of computer science, the breakthrough is the journey, not the destination.
The machine, which Bongard worked on at Cornell University with then-colleagues Victor Zykov and Hod Lipson, is the first robot capable of detecting its own shape and using this knowledge to efficiently adapt to damage. The work was reported by the group in the November 17 issue of Science.
In November, Bongard also published a co-authored MIT Press book, How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence, with lead author Rolf Pfeifer, and, in ways perhaps evocative of the text’s title, the robot’s breakthrough is its physical self-awareness and adaptability. The advancement has been widely reported in the national media.
The robot, Bongard explains, starts out having no sense of how its parts are assembled. It measures the results of a limited number of small movements to develop plausible models of its shape and construction. The robot evaluates and refines these competing models through more movements and observation, eventually arriving at an accurate, internal model of its shape. The robot can then use this continuously updated self-model to detect damage and develop new ways to move even after sustaining damage. The effort is a proof-of-concept for developing more resilient robots for dangerous applications like planetary exploration. Bongard continues his work in the field at UVM, where he is introducing robotics work into upper-level computer science courses. Next step: exploring the possibilities and issues when large groups of robots interact.
VQ recently caught up with Bongard for a brief talk about his research.
What was significant about this project?
The most important thing here for us is this is the first robot that can build up a description of its own body. So the robot can build a sense of self; that hasn’t been done before in robotics. The second interesting thing about this is that it then uses that self-model, that sense of self, to actually try out different ways of moving. We commanded this robot to learn how to move; we didn’t tell the robot how to move. It tries internally using this self-model, “What would happen if I tried hopping? What would happen if I crawled?” And so on. And eventually it comes up with a behavior that it thinks will actually work and then tries it out in reality; more often than not the robot starts moving.
How does that approach contrast with more traditional ideas about how to control a robot?
There are two existing approaches. In the first, the idea is to allow the robot to attempt hundreds or thousands of trials in the real world, and eventually it hits on a way of moving. In our case, we’re dealing with a robot that is damaged. Potentially, for example, this could be a robot probe on a remote planet, and we don’t want it thrashing around wildly because it might damage itself further or fall off a cliff. We want it to be very careful about what it does, and perform as few exploratory trials as possible. The second existing approach is to create by hand a model for the robot. The roboticist would tell the robot, you’re made up of four legs, and you’re put together in this way, and you can do this and you can’t do that. That approach severely limits the intelligence or the adaptability of the robot. The robot in that situation can’t very easily adapt and overcome unanticipated situations.
As you and your colleagues pursued this work at Cornell, was there a big, breakthrough moment where you guys hovered over the table and suddenly…
There was; it was actually near the end of the project where we had figured out how to get the robot to learn about itself. We could see the robot had created a model of itself and had come up with a particular way of moving that it thought would work but it hadn’t quite yet tried out in the real world. It came down to that moment, and we sort of crowded around the robot and watched as it actually tried out that behavior, and sure enough the robot actually started to crawl across the table. All three of us were there, and we all kind of went nuts when it happened.
What time of day did this happen?
We were using a basement lab back at Cornell, and there were no windows, so you have no idea whether it’s day or night. I can’t even remember now what time it was… at that point in the research, we were so into it we weren’t really conscious of what time it was.
Where does this go from here?
We basically developed this as a proof-of-concept for ideas for the next generation of planetary rovers. NASA is very interested in having a robot like this… We can’t assume that the robot can easily communicate back with mission control on Earth and communicate what it’s sensing and what it should do next. We want the robot to figure out on its own how it should go about exploring the surface of the planet. The other application would be for deploying these robots in a disaster site. A disaster site, like the surface of a remote planet, is a very unpredictable environment and there’s a high likelihood that the robot may become damaged, so again we want the robot to quickly adapt and carry on with its mission.
How does your work on this fit into your larger intellectual interests?
There’s a practical interest here, but for myself in particular, what’s more interesting is the conceptual side of things. This robot starts to suggest something about the nature of curiosity, in the sense that the robot, when it’s learning about itself, doesn’t simply thrash around randomly. It actually tries out each time a new action to try to learn something new about its own body and its local environment. In a sense, at a very rudimentary level, this robot is curious.
It also suggests something about the nature of self-awareness. This robot starts by having little awareness of its own body, and through interaction with the physical world it gains experience and builds up a sense of itself, a simulation of its own body, and it can then come to understand what that body is capable of and what it isn’t capable of. Taking that a step forward then, perhaps we can start someday to use robots as tools to start to ask questions about the nature of human self-awareness and curiosity. Is there something going on in our brains similar to what’s going on in the brain of this robot?
—Interview by Kevin FoleyGetting Centered
When this issue of Vermont Quarterly went in the mail on April 1, it was 152 days and counting until the anticipated September 1 opening of the Dudley H. Davis Student Center. Other key dates ahead as Davis enters the final stretch: April/May when the UVM Bookstore will become the first Davis tenant, and the building’s dedication on Homecoming & Family Weekend, October 5–7. Check uvm.edu/~davis, for updates, webcams, and cool time-lapse videos of construction.
Good corporate citizenship equals good business
When the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation approached David Jones about conducting a study on Green Mountain Coffee’s paid employee volunteerism program, CAFÉ, he assumed the foundation was hoping for results that would justify the cost and value of the program to company shareholders. As it turned out, he was (almost) completely wrong.
“When I sent them the research proposal, they were very quick to turn around and say ‘No, no, you got this all wrong,’” says Jones, assistant professor of business administration and an expert on workplace fairness and revenge. “I was focusing on what the results could do for them, but they wanted me to focus on what the results could do for others. Their primary motive was to show other companies why they should adopt a similar program."
CAFÉ, which stands for Community Action For Employees, allows the company’s workers to take up to fifty-two paid hours a year to volunteer in the nonprofit or community-based organizations of their choice. During the 2005 financial year, GMCR employees provided 2,072 hours of community service worth approximately $58,000 of paid time.
Jones’s analysis suggested that the pride generated from the CAFÉ program strengthens organizational identity; a term used to describe employees’ feelings of “oneness” with their employer, which results in higher levels of job satisfaction and a greater desire to help the company succeed.
Perhaps the most impressive results were those showing that employees who felt they received benefits from the volunteerism program tended to engage in higher levels of cooperative workplace behavior, which was measured six months later through supervisory ratings of employee behavior. Importantly, these same cooperative behaviors, called organizational citizenship, have been shown to relate to companies’ financial performance.
CAFÉ has played a role in GMCR’s rise to the number one position on Business Ethics magazine’s list of America’s “100 Best Corporate Citizens” and in being named one of Forbes magazine’s “200 Best Small Companies” and “Best Medium Companies to Work for in America” by the Society of Human Resource Management.
“Innovative businesses can be powerful partners in building and testing theories that offer new insight to the determinants of business success,” says Rocki Lee DeWitt, dean of UVM’s School of Business Administration. “Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Foundation’s willingness to support David Jones’s research not only helps GMCR validate their commitment to volunteerism, it will play a significant role in providing evidence to a wide array of organizations that business investment in volunteerism initiatives can be beneficial to the company and the community alike.”
—Jon Reidel G’06
Photo by Sabin Gratz '98
Talking the talk, Walking the walk, Pedaling the bike
Ross Nizlek ’09 traces his environmentalism to a third grade field trip to the Garbage Museum in his home state of Connecticut. In eighth grade, he bought two blue bins and brought them to school to collect paper, which he took home every day and recycled. In high school, he lobbied the administration with a twenty-two-page report on use reduction and recycling, but he found administrators mostly apathetic to his proposals. “They didn’t seem to want to make the effort,” he says. Most of his fellow students spurned the bottle recycling he began. Discouraged, but never defeated, Nizlek says, “I view it as a challenge.”
The sophomore has found less apathy and more kindred souls at UVM, a university he was initially drawn toward when a college recruiting envelope emblazoned “Green is Good” arrived in his mailbox. In addition to classes, work, and a dizzying array of activities, Nizlek sets one “project” for himself each semester. That meant living “off-the-grid” for twenty days in his Living/Learning suite, powering his electricity needs through a solar panel rigged outside his window. More recently, Nizlek has focused on transportation issues and is committed to getting around under his own power or via public transport. When the semester ends in May, he’s contemplating a 290-mile bike ride home to Connecticut.
An economics major with a minor in business administration, Nizlek envisions a career melding his environmental concerns with public policy work. “What I’m interested in is consumption, how much do we need to consume,” he says.
“I want to pursue something in the environmental area, but I want to look at it from an economic perspective.” Politics likely will be part of that future, he adds. Whatever the path, he’ll continue “trying to live what I advocate and trying to raise awareness.”
—Lee GriffinCampus pulse
To me, J.T. is:
Justin Timberlake
James Taylor
The above question and more than 150 others have been posed through a running on-line poll on UVM’s student-focused web pages (uvm.edu/students). Serious to quirky (“If I were a house pet, I’d be a…”), the questions and responses offer an unusual glimpse of today’s students and campus life.
For the record, with 790 votes in, James held his own, but fifty-five percent of the youngsters see Justin as the true J.T. And on the pet question, a significant majority of the Catamounts would actually favor life as a dog.'Conscience of the Congress'
John R. Lewis to deliver 2007 graduation address
John R. Lewis, a Georgia congressman since 1986 and a longtime advocate for civil rights, will deliver the commencement address and receive an honorary degree in May. The nine-term congressman is held in high esteem by politicians on both sides of the aisle for his ethical standards and moral principles. Senator John McCain has lauded Lewis for his courage and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called him “the conscience of the U.S. Congress.” Lewis has been a strong voice for civil rights throughout his life and helped to lead many of the seminal protests of the movement in the 1960s. At the age of 23, Lewis was an architect of and a keynote speaker at the historic March on Washington in 1963.
Graduates will gather on the University Green on Sunday, May 20, for UVM’s 203rd commencement ceremony. For more details on the 2007 graduation, check uvm.edu/~cmncmntEngendering dialogue
The annual Translating Identity Conference, a student-run event hosted by UVM, has grown swiftly from humble beginnings four years ago. “The first conference was organized in a matter or weeks,” Dorothea Brauer, director of Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Questioning and Ally (LGTBQA) Services, recalls. “The students made the decision in February, and the conference was held in early April.” Caitlin Daniel-McCarter ’04, one of the students responsible for that first conference and a presenter this year, remembers the inaugural event— two workshops, 120 attendees, and one room in Old Mill.
This year, TIC offered twenty-eight workshops spread out over four sessions with more than five hundred people from across the United States and Canada in attendance. The conference’s growth mirrors a growth in awareness of gender and gender identity issues at the University and on campuses nationwide.
“It’s a different UVM,” Daniel-McCarter says. She cites policies that allow trans students to change their student ID names before they are sanctioned legally and to find trans-friendly housing options on campus. She notes that trans people are now protected by UVM's non-discrimination policy, an accomplishment due in large part to co-coordinator of the first TIC, Ethan Fechter-Legget ’05.
This year’s conference covered an impressive range of topics, from workplace transitioning to trans youth experiences to the treatment of trans people in the criminal justice system to a documentary on gender activism. “We don’t have any specific quotas or regulations on content,” conference coordinator and senior Rhian Waters says. “It’s a matter of the pool we get and what fits best. We try to create the most variety we can in one day.”
Among the challenging issues taken on, Kai Kohlsdorf, a graduate student at the University of Cincinnati and workshop presenter, confronted the issue of terminology in his sessions on “genderqueer,” a term that applies to members of the community who resist the gender binary altogether, identifying as neither male nor female or, in some cases, as both.
While conversing with fellow members of the trans community can at times prove challenging given the lack of an agreed-upon glossary of terms (a reality many trans people celebrate for its diverse and defiant nature), Kohlsdorf says such challenges get at the whole point of the conference—“to have that messy conversation and hopefully come out of it with something that we didn’t know before.”
Emma Kennedy, UVM sophomore and a member of the conference committee, agrees: “We want the dialogue to happen.”
—Amanda Waite ’02 G’04Modern themes meet traditional methods
Exploring contemporary issues through the tradition of Persian and Indian miniature painting, artist Ambreen Butt presents a unique experience for the viewer in the Fleming Museum’s exhibition, Ambreen Butt: I Need a Hero, on display through June 3.
Born in Pakistan and currently living in the United States, Butt’s bicultural background is reflected in her work, where the elaborate decoration and idealized settings characteristic of miniature painting are occupied by decidedly modern figures in western dress, accompanied by mystical animals and attributes.
“Butt’s use of traditional miniature painting technique with contemporary materials and imagery to explore cultural, political, and social issues is a powerful combination,” Fleming Museum Director Janie Cohen says. “The result is an exquisite and moving body of work.”
This site-specific installation presents delicate works on paper against a large-scale painting executed by the artist directly on one of the gallery’s walls. On other walls, Butt’s paintings hang on specially painted panels that serve as framing devices, referring to the often intricately painted frames in the miniature tradition. Her unconventional mix of mediums and presentation includes watercolor and gouache on handmade wasli paper, sewn Mylar images, gold leaf, and collage.
The title of the exhibition, I Need a Hero, refers to a series by Butt inspired by Mukhtaran Bibi, a young Pakistani woman who was sentenced by a local tribal council to gang rape as retribution for accusations against her adolescent brother. Bibi gained international acclaim for breaking the strict cultural mores and contesting the sentence, resulting in the conviction of her attackers and a monetary reward she later used to build a girl’s school.
This story is not directly referred to in Butt’s work, but instead, the images in the series reflect the transcendent strength shown by Mukhtaran Bibi. In one piece, a spotted, winged horse rears aside a faceless female figure whose aqueous forms are inhabited with schools of emerald green fish. In another work from the same series, the female holds a globe containing the spotted horse while the once-contained fish swim free from her watery form. The women in Ambreen Butt’s work are not the passive, romantic heroines commonly portrayed in traditional Indian and Persian art, but rather vigorous and transformative central characters bridging both time and culture.
For more information, visit the museum’s website at flemingmuseum.org or call 802-656-2090.
—Chris Dissinger
Also new at the Fleming
Burlington and Winooski 1920-2020: The Evolution of Our Built Environment
The exhibit brings together historical and contemporary photographs, architectural and engineering drawings, models, and film and video clips that tell the recent story of how the neighboring cities have become the places we know today.
Tourism: Curious Conquests and Unlikely Trophies
Curated by students from UVM’s Museum Anthropology class, the installation of objects from the Fleming’s collection provides a passport into the history of tourism. Collected as emblems of prestige or simply as mantelpiece adornments, the souvenirs in the show reflect the global nature of tourism and its continuous and evolving appeal.
Make lessons, not war
It would be easy to forgive Abraham Awolich ’05 if he chose not to look back. For Awolich and his fellow “Lost Boys,” memories of home are rooted in genocide, war, displacement, a youth and young manhood spent on the run and in refugee camps. But the Sudanese native/American citizen says turning his back on his past is not in him, nor in his culture.
“The structure of our society makes it very hard for someone to do that—for someone to say, ‘I just have to forget.’ We are very tied to the families,” Awolich says. “An individual does not see himself as just an individual, he sees himself as part of the larger group.”
The strength of that ethic has motivated a circle of Sudanese now living in the United States to join with friends in creating the New Sudan Education Initiative. The fledgling effort is dedicated to building twenty schools for secondary education by 2015 as southern Sudan re-emerges following the comprehensive peace agreement of 2005.
In addition to Awolich (the initiative’s co-director), the UVM connections to NESEI are many. Atem Arok Deng, a UVM junior, took a key role in the conception of NESEI after he traveled to Uganda to visit his family with Robert Lair, an adjunct professor of religion at St. Michael’s College. The need for education, particularly secondary education, was among the many pressing needs they saw on their trip back to Africa. As Deng, Lair (now NESEI co-director), Awolich, and others in Burlington looked for ways to help in Sudan, it became apparent that secondary education was a clear void.
Putting ideas into action, NESEI is advancing rapidly on many fronts. In February, while Awolich and Lair were raising scholarship funds at a conference of Methodist clergy, their colleague Lauren Servin ’06 was at work in Sudan, filming video to promote NESEI and working on the myriad details that will need to be in place before a school is built.
This network of friends that began at UVM and in Burlington, continues to reach outward as NESEI grows. Awolich says they’ve connected with other Sudanese and started groups in sixteen different states as the effort to raise funds and awareness continues.
NESEI leaders anticipate construction of their first school could begin as soon as this summer. Yei, a town of 25,000 people, is the likely location. It boasts the advantage of a road to Uganda, a clear route to roofing, cement, nails, the essentials of building a school and a brighter future for one of the world’s most troubled regions.
“Our mission is to create peace through education,” Awolich says. “If we give more people more skills, they can find jobs and they will not have time to take arms and be violent.”
More information: nesei.org
—Thomas WeaverFinding the right price
Trustees grapple with tuition hikes
Maybe not as heartening as a flock of Canada geese winging north or a crocus popping through the snow, but the UVM Board of Trustees discussing the next academic year’s tuition is a sure sign of spring in Burlington. Though the board annually makes that decision in May, tuition questions were front and center at the mid-winter trustees meetings in February.
That early discussion is one measure of the importance of tuition at UVM, which is heavily dependent on this source of revenue. Though the question of tuition boils down to a simple number, there’s nothing simple about determining what that number should be. Trustees work with the UVM administration to find the figure that will bring in revenue not only to balance the books but also provide the enhancements necessary to keep pace with competitors. On the other side of the equation, trustees balance affordability and the advantages of continuing a trend that has seen the University move into a more competitive position on price.
For years UVM headed up a list that no one really wants to top—being the most expensive public university in the country for both resident and out-of-state tuition. At the February meetings, Trustee Robert Cioffi ’90 noted that is a lingering image, though no longer true. Penn State and Miami University-Ohio were more expensive for in-state tuition in 2006-07; the University of Michigan has surpassed UVM in out-of-state tuition and fee charges, while a number of other universities such as Virginia, UConn, William & Mary, UNH, and Colorado have steadily drawn closer to UVM. Compared to private competitors, UVM remains a bargain, particularly for in-state students.
Considering the fact that UVM offers students more financial aid than many of its public competitors, that picture brightens even more. Factoring in aid, Kiplinger’s Personal Finance included UVM in its 2007 rankings of the one hundred best values in public colleges and universities. It’s an evaluation, based on both high-quality academics and affordable costs, that hearkens back to the “Public Ivy” era of the 1980s, a cachet that many feel has returned to UVM in recent years.
At the February meetings, Trustee Deborah McAneny ’81 expressed concern that UVM may have “under-invested” with a relatively low rise in tuition in recent years. The good news is that strategy has made UVM more competitive in cost; the bad news, some of UVM’s competitors now have greater funds to invest in enhancing their campuses and programs.
Because UVM puts major funding directly into student financial aid, the six percent increase in tuition trustees are considering for next year will not necessarily be felt as a six percent increase in costs to all students, Provost John Hughes noted in February. Since thirty percent of those funds will go into financial aid that is returned directly to students in grants, it in essence amounts to a 4.2 percent increase in tuition for many. Hughes also noted that the current Higher Education Price Index, a more relevant measure for universities than the familiar Consumer Price Index, stands at five percent.
—Thomas WeaverGrilling in Billings
It would be tough to find a more potent combination of thrift and social conscience, gustatory pleasure and sound nutrition than the four dollar grilled cheese sandwiches served up by the student volunteers of UVM’s Feel Good organization. Working with bread from Klinger’s Bakery and twenty-five pounds of Shelburne Farms cheese donated every week, UVM Feel Good gives all of its profit—$10,000 last semester alone—to The Hunger Project. UVM Feel Good typically sells in the neighborhood of one hundred sandwiches a day during the two afternoons a week they’re open for business in the Billings basement. Their effort has made them the leader in the eleven-school Feel Good effort. Yellow bracelets to thin mints, there’s no shortage of fundraising incentives these days. When UVM Feel Good VP Leah Grossman, a junior from Arlington Heights, Illinois, is asked why this particular method for fighting hunger, her eyes widen a little at the slow-pitch softball question. “Everyone loves grilled cheese,” she says. “It’s simple, delicious, students love it.”
UVM SHELFLIFE
Mixed messages
Professor explores ethnic identity among third-plus-generation Mexican Americans
Mestizo in America, assistant professor of sociology Thomas Macias’s first book, investigates the lives and sense of ethnicity among well-established Mexican Americans. It fills a void of academic information about Macias’s peers, third-generation and beyond Mexican Americans with stories that could inform current debates about who the “old” and “new” Mexican immigrants are and what they might become. Will large groups of non-white immigrants assimilate—or alter—American society?
“There’s a long history of people coming from that part of the world,” says Macias, “and that’s what I’m trying to show with this book. Mexican immigration is nothing new. It’s been going on for 150 years. In fact, many will tell you in the Southwest that we didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us back in 1848.”
What Macias portrays, through both quantitative data and fifty first-person interviews with Mexican Americans living in Phoenix and San Jose, is a hybrid of integration and deep, lingering ethnic pride as well as social and professional experiences that are dictated as much by class, education, and geography as they are by race.
Macias demonstrates that, among those third-generation and higher Mexican Americans who remain in the Southwest at least, there are numerous factors that account for the increased likelihood of maintaining true ethnic ties. Social inequality and racial stereotyping, for one, can take much of the choice out of “experiencing” your ethnicity.
But there are other major factors, such as sharing a contiguous border with the home country, continued immigration, and cultural saturation (including language, food, religion, and media). Even by the third generation, Mexican Americans living in the Southwest are more likely to marry other Mexican Americans than any other group, though increased education raises the likelihood of intermarriage.
The terms mestizo and mestizaje, used in Mexico to refer to a person of mixed racial ancestry or the mixing of races, Macias argues, are equally relevant in describing what’s happened here, particularly as the fight over illegal immigration and border protection has heated up.
“The argument that’s being made right now is, if we let current migrants in they’re going to change American society…,” Macias continues. “One way to interpret this is, I’m just looking back not too long ago, to earlier waves of migration from Mexico and, you know, it turns out we’re pretty good people, part of American society. There are seven million third and fourth generation Mexican Americans. We’re part of the American landscape so you have to get used to it, or just admit it; don’t deny that this is really part of America.”
—Lee Ann CoxHow Do You Work This Life Thing?
by Lizzie Post ’05 Harper Collins Publications
While Emily Post may not have written about etiquette of couch crashing or games of beer pong, her great-granddaughter Lizzie Post ’05 tackles these topics and more in How Do You Work This Life Thing, an updated rule book for the newly independent. From issues slightly less refined than how to correctly address an invitation (read dirty dishes and roommates’ significant others) to how to interact with professors, landlords, and potential employers, Post, the first of the fourth generation of her family to write about etiquette, shows that manners still matter.
The Savvy Part-Time Professional
by Lynn Berger ’80, Capital Books, Inc.
Lynn Berger ’80 shares the techniques she’s learned as a career counselor, consultant, and personal coach in her new book The Savvy Part-Time Professional, a guide to finding, creating or negotiating the perfect part-time job. A resource for those wanting to spend more time with their kids or make the transition into retirement, the book explores how part-time work, including job sharing and telecommuting, is a viable option for those looking to cut back their hours at the office. Questionnaires and worksheets help readers explore their goals while stories from people who have succeeded provide real life examples of employment possibilities.
Future Inc.: How Businesses Can Anticipate and Profit from What’s Next
By Eric Garland ’96
Wish you could see into the future? Eric Garland ’96 may help you do just that in Future, Inc., a how-to for businesses looking to predict, analyze, and act on future trends in their industry. Written in an accessible style with examples ranging from the music industry to health care, Garland, a professional futurist who has consulted for General Motors, Coca-Cola, and Nestle, among other corporations and government agencies, offers the chance for smaller companies to implement the tools futurists provide to their larger clients.
(for UVM staff)