September 9, 2009
CALLING ALL EMPLOYEES!
To those working on Presidents Circle, at University Hospital, in Fort Douglas, Research Park, or the Annex—and everywhere in between: Listen up! It’s time once again to celebrate you—the employees who give your time each day on behalf of the University of Utah. The sixth annual Employee Appreciation Day is Thursday, Sept. 24, 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at Olympic Cauldron Park at the south end of Rice-Eccles Stadium. Come for the football field goal kick, soccer kick, hooked on books, and bingo. The first 100 employees to show up will receive a pair of tickets to a Utah football game. Remaining tickets will be distributed randomly throughout the day. Flu vaccines will be available to the first 1,500 employees. In an effort to “go green,” admission this year is by showing your UCard—the word “faculty” or “staff” must be indicated on the card. (Student employees will be contacted by e-mail with admittance information.) This year, due to budget constraints, the event is funded through generous donations (http://web.utah.edu/employeeday/2009_sponsors.html). Employee Appreciation Day is limited to U of U employees only. Please, no families. Enter through Gate D on the west side of the stadium. Additional information is online (http://web.utah.edu/employeeday/). Plan to come and celebrate!
FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH
Dear Faculty Colleagues,
We will be using FYI News to send you important updates on research resources at the U. In this issue, we have included an update on Research Portal (to begin to make your job easier when submitting and managing your e-proposals). Upcoming information will include announcements of new grant solicitations, how to make (free) conference calls at the U, and resources to help with grant writing and submission. Please take the time to glance through these updates in this FYI and those to come.
Thank you,
Thomas N. Parks
Vice President for Research
U RESEARCHERS—MORE ACTIVE THAN EVER
An incredibly productive year for U faculty and staff engaged in sponsored activity has made an eventful year for the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP). In FY 2009, OSP facilitated requests for external funds totaling more than $1.5 billion and received over $354 million in new awards, both of which are new records. The last several months of the fiscal year have been especially active, as faculty have responded with enthusiasm to several new funding programs available under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Tracking and access to your proposals
Research Portal is being developed as the one-stop-shop activity management tool for U researchers submitting grant proposals. Key features of the current Research Portal include:
• Queries for generating proposal and award activity reports
• Access to real-time status of proposals and awards
• Various filters for sorting data by college, department, principal investigator (PI), and sponsor
• Facilitation of collaboration opportunities
• Online submission of limited competition pre-proposals (the only way pre-proposals are now accepted)
The latest upgrade provides information on awards by PI, department, or college. The amounts, dates, updates, and status of every proposal can be viewed quickly and easily.
Research Portal is accessed through the Campus Information System (https://gate.acs.utah.edu/psp/plpr/EMPLOYEE/EMPL/h/?tab=PAPP_GUEST). Once you have logged in, scroll down to the “Research Administration” section on the left sidebar and select the link titled “Research Portal” to launch the application.
OSP will continue to enhance Research Portal and its current features. Coming soon are executive summary reports for administrators of large data collections, and new proposal development and collaboration assistance tools. Over the next few years, upgrades are planned to provide progressively more help for researchers including electronic signature collection and help with budgeting post-award accounting.
OSP will host demonstrations of Research Portal across campus as needed. Times, locations, and registration information is online (https://education.research.utah.edu/special_events.jsp). The demonstration is titled “Research Portal Demonstration.” For more information, contact OSP (osp-research@umail.utah.edu).
Brent Brown
Director, Office of Sponsored Projects
ALL A-TWITTER OVER SOCIAL MEDIA
Youtube. Facebook. Twitter. The RedThread blog. The U has jumped into the sea of social media, so we recently sat down with Josh Paulsen, manager for new media at the U, to find out more about the U’s presence in this new scene.
FYI News: Why did the U decide to pursue social media?
Josh Paulsen: Social media, blogging, and microblogging have been adopted by the mainstream, so we’re aggressively pursuing this communications channel. I’ve always been an advocate of online communications and advertising because of its measurability, low cost, and ability to grow virally. Social media seems to connect most strongly with our student and alumni audiences and offers the most value.
FYI: Which social media platforms does the U currently employ?
Paulsen: A couple of years ago we created a pseudo-profile for Swoop on MySpace and that grew into a MySpace page for the U. Since each platform requires effort, we’re consolidating our work on the most widely used services—Facebook (http://www.facebook.utah.edu), Twitter (http://www.twitter.utah.edu), and YouTube (http://www.youtube.utah.edu). In addition, we have RedThread (http://www.redthread.utah.edu), the U’s blog. Fortunately, the industry trend is to develop open platforms so that the content and effort that we put into one can easily be “ported” into another. We follow all new services and trends and check out a service when it begins to receive industry recognition, but we like to wait until we’re confident that it has staying power.
FYI: What kind of results are you getting in terms of traffic?
Paulsen: The RedThread blog has roughly 2,000 page views per month. That’s small potatoes compared with the U’s homepage (close to 1 million per month), but we’re happy that our visit duration is several minutes. We’re approaching 17,000 Facebook fans and the U’s Twitter feed has approximately 1,000 followers. Last May our YouTube channel was listed as one of the top 25 for universities (although we no longer hold that position). We want to coordinate with campus departments to produce and deliver exciting and engaging video content. One surprise is that our most popular content has clearly been performance recordings by the University Singers (http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=university+of+utah+singers&search_type=&aq=f).
FYI: What are you hoping to provide/gain for the U and its students by investing time and energy into social media?
Paulsen: We want to do the following:
- Position the U as one of the few places in the country where you can receive an extraordinary education in a breathtaking setting
- Recognize our faculty and their accomplishments and share this message throughout the social graph
- Engage current students and alumni so they have a stronger affinity for the U and will continue to participate in the future by supporting student scholarships, university initiatives, and athletic/art/recreational events
- Use these services to generate specific leads for student recruitment and fundraising
- Increase our level of customer service by providing forums to answer questions, address concerns, and provide pertinent information about the U
- Unify the internal University community by increasing the velocity and availability of information
FYI: How is the U managing other entities on campus who are “doing their own thing” with social media under the U’s name?
Paulsen: Being successful in this medium requires greater campus coordination. To that end, we have established a social media list serve and an information section on our Web site (http://www.ucomm.utah.edu/newmedia/index.html). We encourage people to subscribe to this list serve (for subscription information contact Paulsen josh.paulsen@ucomm.utah.edu) or our RSS feed (http://ucomm.utah.edu/umcftp/index.php/feeds/show/rss/umc) and to register their third-party services on the site. We want to provide leadership, and assist in building the tools and resources necessary for colleges and departments to effectively use social media. We encourage them to manage their own pages, but also to keep us informed about what they are doing. If they have a good idea or are doing something better than we are, we want to hear about it. We also want their strong support for official University pages, as these are clearly gateways into the University. They can do this by providing us with potential content and including our URLs on their Web sites and brochures. They can participate in the RedThread blog by becoming a regular contributor (we’ve set up the blog so visitors can follow the college, department, or topic that most interests them). We want to direct our fans and followers to the other micro-networks that exist (the Facebook pages and Twitter feeds for the colleges and departments).
For more information about the U’s involvement in social media, contact Josh Paulsen (josh.paulsen@ucomm.utah.edu) or call (801) 585-0739.
LEARNING TO LIVE AGAIN
Last November, retired English professor Brooke Hopkins had a serious bicycle accident in City Creek Canyon that left him fighting for his life. During the past nine-plus months, he and his wife, U professor and internationally noted medical ethicist Peggy Battin, have lived through the dramatic ups and downs of his recovery together, buoyed by loving support from family, friends, strangers, and the medical community.
Last Sunday, The Salt Lake Tribune published an article about Brooke’s inspiring struggle, by Peggy Fletcher Stack. We invite readers to link to it here (http://www.sltrib.com/News/ci_13270592). All of us at the University wish both Brooke and Peggy continued healing, confidence, stamina, and peace.
IN THE NEWS…
- PARENTS VOTE U YOUTH PROGRAM AS THE BEST
The Salt Lake Tribune, on Monday, Aug. 31, 2009, reported that the U’s Youth Education (http://continue.utah.edu/youth/) was recently awarded Best Day Camp in Salt Lake City in Nickelodeon’s annual Parents’ Picks Awards, besting six other nominees in a nationwide online poll. The Parents’ Picks Awards recognized winners in 30 categories from 52 major U.S. cities. Winners were determined by an open poll at parentsconnect.com that ran throughout the summer. The 2009 winners will be featured on ParentsConnect (http://www.parentsconnect.com) throughout the year. Youth Education offers experiential education in classes and camps to students in art, science, languages, music, technology, and recreation for kids ages 2 to 18. A complete list of classes is online (http://www.youth.utah.edu) or call (801) 581-6984.
- U OF U TO TAKE OVER MANAGEMENT OF RANGE CREEK CANYON
State authorities are transferring control of remote Range Creek Canyon to the University of Utah for a permanent research installation. The U will give up some of its trust lands in another part of the state to gain control from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. The land trade, set to occur this month, will make University archaeologists permanent stewards of the canyon, which stunned the scientific world when it was revealed in 2004. The canyon, 125 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, was kept secret by a family of ranchers for the better part of a century before it ended up in state hands in 2004.
It features the remains of ancient Fremont settlements, with the eroded remains of pit and cob houses, still-standing grain caches, and colorful trapezoidal figures painted with spiky hair styles on canyon walls. Carbon dating of artifacts has revealed that about a dozen miles of Range Creek Canyon was intensively occupied by hundreds or possibly thousands of people for two or three centuries until around 1,200 A.D. Artifacts from baskets to tobacco bundles suggest human life showed up in Range Creek hundreds of years earlier and lingered longer, but significantly, the large population seemed to virtually vanish by 1,200 A.D., for reasons not fully understood.
~From an article in IndianCountryNews.com (http://indiancountrynews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7317&Itemid=116), by Paul Foy.
Read more about Range Creek in the Winter 2005-06 issue of Continuum magazine (http://www.alumni.utah.edu/continuum/winter05/range_creek.htm).
DRIVER TRAINING COURSE CHANGES
The U’s auto liability insurer, State Risk Management, has changed its driver training requirements. A new training video and test are now online. All employees, students or volunteers who operate any vehicle on University business, both as an essential part of their job function or on an occasional basis, must watch a 14-minute video and take a short test at the time they are hired, every two years thereafter and following any preventable accident.
If it has been more than two years since you have watched the previous video, Defensive Driving: Prepared for the Worst, check online http://www.utah.edu/risk_management/vehicle/auto_insurance_provisions/driver_training/driver_training.htm and complete this online program. The test is open book and consists primarily of questions from information contained in the Utah Drivers Handbook (http://publicsafety.utah.gov/dld/docs/handbook_2009.pdf) and State Risk Management’s Utah Defensive Driving Guide (http://risk.utah.gov/loss/documents/DriverSafetyGuide.pdf).
Be sure to print your certificate of completion and provide a copy to your supervisor. Each department is responsible to maintain records of their drivers who complete this requirement and to notify those drivers when its time to retake the test. Please destroy copies of previous workbooks and return previous videos to 408 Park immediately. If you don’t have internet access, a DVD, written test and completion certificate form is available from University Risk and Insurance Management. For more information, call Nola at (801) 581-5590.
BOOKMARK AT THE U—SEPTEMBER SELECTION
Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch
Cesar, the teen gang-banger from Los Angeles, watched his older brother, Wicho, go to prison for his gang activities. Cesar's mother, determined to keep him from the same fate, moves herself and Cesar back to her native village in western Alaska. The only thing that the pessimistically-minded Cesar wants is to get back to L.A., but Go-boy, his older, overly optimistic cousin bets that Cesar won't go back. How these two cousins affect each other, and how their surroundings affect both of them is the basis of this story of life in a small village where everyone knows who you are and what you do. Sometimes We're Always Real Same-Same shows how we are often more alike in our wants, needs, and feelings than we really want to admit.
—Drew Goodman, Bookmark at the U, University Campus Store
Check out more about this book on the blog (http://bookmarkattheu.blogspot.com/), YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/bookmarkattheu) and Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/bookmarkattheu).
For more information, contact Drew Goodman (dgoodman@bookstore.utah.edu).
PAYROLL OFFERS GREEN INITIATIVES
Do you want to view your pay advice 24/7? See your complete pay history at the U? Now you can. Effective November 2009 pay advices will no longer be printed. In addition, all payroll earnings, benefits, and tax reports will be available only through the Human Resources Library (HRIL). Training will be provided for users not familiar with HRIL to ensure that they are ready for the online conversion. These green payroll initiatives will not only help the environment but also save money, especially important during this difficult budget period. For more information, contact the Payroll Department at (801) 581-7873.
COMMUNITY SERVICE VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
The kick-off event for Homecoming 2009 is the Legacy of Lowell Service Day on Saturday, Sept. 19 from 8 a.m. to noon. Volunteers will meet at Parkview Elementary, 970 S. Emery (1170 West). Volunteers are needed to assist in one of eight service sites throughout the community where they will help with literacy tutoring, home repair projects for seniors, environmental restoration, food delivery, refugee site visits, and assembling dental kits. A lunch follows at Parkview Elementary. To participate, contact Christy (ctobolski@sa.utah.edu) or call (801) 581-8436. More information about this event is online (http://www.sa.utah.edu/bennion/LegacyofLowell.htm). Check here (http://www.alumni.utah.edu/homecoming) for a complete listing of Homecoming events.
FYI NEWS SURVEY
Will you help us? Please take this short, 10-question survey(http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=oKj1ZJDDMU6D2qJMhfshjA_3d_3d)and help us improve FYI News. The survey closes Friday, Sept. 25. Thanks for your time and support.
—The FYI News Team
UPCOMING ON CAMPUS
All campus events are listed in the U’s online events calendar (http://www.events.utah.edu)—are yours? If not, contact Lisa Westlind (calendar@utah.edu)or call (801) 581-5819.
• BABCOCK PERFORMING READERS
Thursday, Sept. 10, 7:30 p.m., free
Olpin Union Theatre
Acclaimed local actor Margaret Crowell directs a trio of short plays: “There Will Come Soft Rains,” by Ray Bradbury; “A Gift for Mr. Lincoln,” by Trease Thomas; and “The Courtship of Arthur and Al,” by James Thurber. Parking is free after 6:00 p.m. in the visitor “A” lots located north and northeast of the Olpin Union. The east Union lot charges $3. For more information, contact Dan Christensen (danstephenchristensen@gmail.com) or call (801) 604-8990.
• BE WELL UTAH HEALTH FAIR
Saturday, Sept. 12, 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Lawn immediately north of the Jon M. Huntsman Center
Plan to attend the state’s largest free health fair, offering hundreds of healthy activities including complimentary health screenings, informative lectures with health care experts, and activities to encourage people to make healthy choices. Events will take place at various U of U Health Care locations, culminating with a fair on Saturday, Sept. 12 on the lawn just north of the Huntsman Center. All activities are free. A complete list of events is online (http://www.healthcare.utah.edu/bewellutah) or call (801) 587-6485.
• PRIMARY ELECTION DAY
Tuesday, Sept. 15
Be sure to vote in the municipal elections in your area. To find out who is running for Salt Lake City Council, click here (http://www.slcgov.com/recorder/elections.htm).
• CROSSING BORDERS: LECTURE BY PHOTOJOURNALIST ZORIAH
Tuesday, Sept. 22, 5:15 p.m.
Tanner Irish Humanities Building
Using photography to document the human crises in developing countries, Zoriah’s images have appeared in The New York Times, BBC News, and The Wall Street Journal. An exhibit of his images will be sold at a silent auction to benefit the Department of Languages & Literature. For additional information, check online (http://languages.utah.edu), contact Adelaide Ryder (adelaide.ryder@utah.edu) or call (801) 581-7570.
• A CHORUS LINE
Sept. 25 through Oct. 10
Pioneer Theatre Company
Anonymous hopefuls don their legwarmers and perfect the combinations, only to learn the audition will take a more personal turn. This award-winning musical reveals the dancers’ individual stories—ranging from the heart-wrenching to the heart-warming. The final cut is made and the gold-clad chorus line appears—this time anything but anonymous. The play contains strong language and mature themes. Additional information is online (http://www.PioneerTheatre.org) or call (801) 581-6961.
FYI Mystery Photo Contest
FYI Mystery Photo
Where is this on campus? Send your answer (be specific) to FYI@ucomm.utah.edu by 12 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 11 for a chance to win four tickets to the football game vs. Louisville in Rice-Eccles Stadium on Sept. 26, at 5:30 p.m., courtesy of Utah Athletics. The winner will be randomly selected from the pool of those submitting the correct answer and will be listed in the Sept. 23 FYI News.
Thanks to Utah Athletics for providing the prize!
Note: This contest is open to U of U faculty and staff only.
Last issue’s FYI Mystery Photo Contest answer
The Aug. 26 FYI Mystery Photo shows the the chairs at Rice-Eccles Stadium. Congratulations to Clark Newell, winner of the Aug. 26 FYI Mystery Photo Contest! Clark was randomly selected from the pool of 90 contestants who sent in the correct answer. “Wow, I have entered this contest and answered correctly every time FYI has been published since I started working here in December 2007! Persistence really does pay off!” he says. Clark works as project coordinator for the newly-developed Nano Institute of Utah (http://www.nanoinstitute.utah.edu) while also attending classes at the U. He assists with the submission of multidisciplinary research grant proposals and outreach events centered around the burgeoning field of nanotechnology. Clark received four tickets to the football kickoff between Utah and USU at Rice Eccles Stadium on Sept. 3. A big thanks to Utah Athletics for providing the prize. And thanks to everyone who participated in the contest. We invite you to try your luck again with the Sept. 23 FYI News.
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