Students produce weather forecasts for AOT Maintenance Districts

Lyndonville, Vt. – The Vermont Agency of Transportation (AOT) and Northern Vermont University (NVU) are celebrating 15 years of working together to manage Vermont’s winter road conditions with public safety in mind.

Students in NVU’s Atmospheric Sciences program provide daily weather forecasts for AOT maintenance districts from November through April. AOT uses this tailored weather forecast information to help with workforce management and strategies to tackle winter weather.

“All of our districts rely on the students’ weather forecasts to plan their winter highway maintenance activities every time there are conditions that potentially require us to plow or treat the roads,” said Maintenance Bureau Director Todd Law. “The forecasts from the NVU meteorology students are reliable, professional, and a vital source of information for our maintenance planning throughout the winter.”

Each district receives a forecast that is specific to its area of the state, enabling maintenance staff to plan for impending weather.

“AOT reached out to NVU [Lyndon State College at the time] because of our expertise in weather forecasting. They wanted better information to make better decisions to make roads safe and manage their workforce,” said Jay Shafer, NVU professor of Atmospheric Sciences who created the project with AOT. Jay has managed more than 130 students in these forecaster roles. “The value of this program for the students is learning how to work together as a team. Learning to collaborate and communicate is more of an art than a science, and the only way to learn this is to jump in and do it.”

The NVU-Lyndon student meteorologists apply for the jobs each year during their junior and senior years. The students are paid for their work, which helps to make college more affordable. The students forecast weather conditions every day, including weekends and holidays when inclement weather is anticipated.

Working in teams of three, each student is assigned to three districts to forecast during their shift and will rotate through all nine districts during the season. Students work from one to three days each week, creating their forecasts with information gleaned from a variety of information sources between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.; all forecasts are due to AOT at 1 p.m.

Rosemary Webb, who will graduate in May with a degree in Atmospheric Science, is one of the lead forecasters, a perfect role for a student looking to land a position as a weather forecaster. “It’s real-life experience actually forecasting for a client who uses it to make decisions,” she said. Webb leads her group of three and is responsible for writing a summary of statewide weather based on the group’s discussion. “In my first year it was a little stressful figuring out how to forecast in a short amount of time, but then you get into a routine.”

Bobby Saba, who is working to complete a bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Sciences and an associate’s degree in Broadcast and Digital Journalism in May 2022, joined the program this year. “I got involved as soon as I could!” he said. As a weather broadcaster, Saba will have to do his own forecasting. “Being able to do this for a state that has some pretty wild weather will help set me apart from others applying for the same jobs.”

“It’s close to what a real field job feels like, and the students see the application of what they are learning,” Shafer said. “This experiential learning helps to make our atmospheric science program strong and greatly benefits the State of Vermont.”

AOT looks forward to continuing the partnership with NVU next winter.

“The program has been a great success, and we are grateful to the students and their professors for their ongoing work to support Vermont winter highway maintenance and safety,” said AOT Chief Engineer and Highway Division Director Ann Gammell.

The Sixth Annual Vermont Animation Festival, hosted by Northern Vermont University in partnership with Catamount Arts and the Vermont Curators Group, will be held virtually March 26 and 27. 

A full slate of activities is planned for beginner and experienced animators, including workshops, a film screening, and an artist talk by keynote speaker Alan Jennings, an experimental animator raised in Berlin, Vermont and now based in Boston. Submissions of animated films of all lengths will be accepted through March 16 for festival viewing and judging; films from students and emerging animators are especially welcome. Complete festival information, including submission details, is available at VTAnimationFestival.org.

“Animation is often described as magical,” said Kate Renner, NVU-Lyndon visiting assistant professor and director of the Vermont Animation Festival. “Part of this magic is the potential for animation to bring people of all ages and backgrounds together during a year when community connections can be harder to come by. The festival will bring new animated shorts by New England artists to residence halls and households all over the country.”

This year’s festival includes a more involved partnership with Catamount Arts, Renner said, offering the opportunity to present more community-based workshops along with a venue to highlight Jennings’s work.

“We are thrilled to continue this longstanding partnership with NVU and are excited, not only for the workshops and student films, but for the keynote address given by guest artist Alan Jennings,” said Catamount Artistic Director Molly Stone. “In addition, Catamount Arts will host some of Alan’s experiential animation pieces in the first virtual Fried Family Gallery exhibit of work at CatamountArts.org with support from the Vermont Curators Group.”

The Vermont Animation Festival was created in 2015 by former NVU faculty Robby Gilbert to showcase the unique voices of artists in New England working in animation and moving images. The festival provides a forum for regional artists, including NVU Animation and Illustration students, to showcase their work and workshops to engage the community. 

“The Vermont Animation Festival also teaches emerging animators that you don’t need a fancy computer set-up to create compelling work,” Renner said. “Students in NVU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Animation and Illustration program are taught how to use the industry standards for Animation software, and at the same time they are encouraged to create animated work using pencil, paper, and commonly found materials such as sand.”

To learn more about NVU’s program at its Lyndon campus, see NorthernVermont.edu/AnimationIllustration.

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CONTACT: Sylvia Plumb, Director of Marketing and Communications, 802.626.6459
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Northern Vermont University’s Student-Run Record Label Produces Fifth EP

Students in Music Business Degree Program Learn in Real Music World

Lyndonville, Vermont — Eneekay Records, Northern Vermont University’s student-run record label based on the NVU-Lyndon campus, celebrates its fifth anniversary with the launch of a three-song EP for the NVU Lyndon-based rock band Mad Mesa.

The record label, which grew from NVU student desire to support Vermont talent, is run by the students who take the Record Label Practicum courses in the Music Business and Industry (MBI) degree program. The fall course is Music Production and the spring course is Music Marketing. Through these courses, students learn the entire music production and distribution process hands-on, from artist selection through recording, mixing and marketing.

During the fall, “students do their own talent scouting and each class is like a board meeting,” said MBI Assistant Professor Brian Warwick, and instructor for the Production course. “It’s one of the most challenging courses I teach as there’s no set curriculum. The class knows they have to find talent and by the end of the course they have to have three songs recorded. But how to get from point A to point B changes each year,” Warwick said.

Max Heck, ’22, one of the MBI students in the fall course, volunteered to serve as the record label VP for this phase — which put him in charge of making sure that everyone gets a role in the production. Those roles include a producer for each song, audio engineers, a mastering committee, social media, songwriters and an A&R (artists and repertoire) representative – who is responsible for making sure the artist is communicating well with the label through the manager, Heck said.

The first step, of course, is to choose the band, and the entire class votes on this piece. Students pitched artists to the class, the group voted, and Mad Mesa — made up of three MBI students plus a singer from the NVU Visual Arts Department — was chosen, Heck said.

Once the talent is chosen, preproduction begins with reviewing all of the music the artist has produced to find the three best songs. “Since the artist wants to sell to the age group of the students in the class, the process serves as a focus group, too,” Warwick said.

Next, each song is assigned a producer who works with the record label and band to modify it as needed. “The producers know they have to work closely with the artist and get feedback from the label — every week,” Warwick said. “It’s like a job, and students gain real-world experience,” he said.

Demos are created in the NVU-Lyndon studio and revised until the class is satisfied with the performance. “The artist comes up with the ideas for the music, but the producer touches it all up and adds to it to give it that little sparkle,” Heck said.

Then the engineers head to Old Mill Recording Studio in East Arlington, Vermont, where they record the band. “It’s a larger facility and produces a higher quality drum recording with the Solid State Logic board,” said MBI student Nathan Wright. “Brian likes the class to learn about multiple facilities and use all the information we’ve been taught,” he added. Then it’s back to the Lyndon studio to finish it up.

“We had a setback this year,” Wright said. “We got the guitar sound that the band thought they liked; but when we listened as a class, we didn’t like it. So, we had to rework it. In the end, we ended up getting some really cool sounds,” he said.

Wright found the experience to be “a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. It takes so much communication, and I realized how important the littlest details were. We have a really good product; we’ll see what will come of it,” he said.

Student involvement in the product extends beyond the MBI program, too; we “tapped into the other majors at NVU” in producing the work, including photography and video support from the Visual Arts department,” Warwick said.

“It’s large-scale project management. Sixteen students got together with the band to create something from nothing that people will hopefully connect with and enjoy for years,” Warwick said.

During the spring semester, Eneekay Records will promote the album and the band through the Record Label Practicum: Marketing course; this work is underway now.

For more information on NVU’s Music Business and Industry program, see NorthernVermont.edu/MusicBusiness.

Lyndonville, Vt. ~ The music and entertainment industry has taken some steps toward inclusivity in the past few years. But when a pro audio forum website still goes by the name Gearslutz, a Northern Vermont University alum knew there were still great strides to make.

NVU-Lyndon Music Business and Industry alum Cameran Davis stepped in to encourage that company to pick up the pace toward change — an effort that produced a big win for women in an industry that has long been male-dominated.

Davis is currently a production assistant for two guitar pedal companies — Klon and Electronic Audio Experiments — in the Boston area. She was on the Gearslutz.com website in early January and wrote on Instagram, “I really hate this website’s name.” Her post received a lot of response, including encouragement to create a petition to get the name changed. On January 6, Davis posted a petition to Change.org. It didn’t take long to go viral in the audio production community, receiving nearly 5,000 responses in a few short days.

Davis’s petition read: “This petition was created with the hopes of encouraging Gearslutz to change their name to something that more appropriately represents the gear community. Gearslutz is widely regarded and refers to themselves as ‘The No.1 Website for Pro Audio.’ Every engineer I know has used/uses it, and most of the engineers I know feel uncomfortable with the name. I have been one of two women sitting in an engineering class and a professor has uncomfortably mentioned the website, apologizing for the name, but bringing it up because it has been an important resource to use when learning about gear.”

There was considerable push-back on social media and on the Gearslutz site itself, with many slamming the petition and any effort to change the name. The company even posted a response in an attempt to justify the name.

But the ballooning support for Davis’s petition changed all that. And on January 19, Gearslutz CEO Jules Standen committed to changing the name, with site and technical revisions complete by summer 2021.

“I do think the word matters,” Davis said. “And all of the backlash shows how much the word matters. If someone gets upset or feels threatened by this, it says a lot about them. It’s a business in an industry that hasn’t always been accepting of women.”

“That site is the pro audio industry’s biggest resource for technical information and trouble-shooting equipment. It has 1.6 million daily visitors from 218 countries. This is a huge victory for inclusivity in the audio industry.” said Music Business and Industry Assistant Professor Brian Warwick. “This is exactly what we look for in our students. It goes hand-in-hand with NVU’s mission — ‘Northern Vermont University fosters the intellectual, creative, and personal growth of every student in a community committed to diversity and inclusion. We provide innovative professional and liberal arts educational experiences that prepare students to be critical thinkers and engaged global citizens.’”

The NVU Music Business and Industry degree program prepares students for all aspects of the music business industry, from writing songs, recording music, and marketing music products to managing artists, promoting concerts, and booking tours. NVU’s state-of-the-art recording studio, new DAW-music lab, and record label prepare students for work in the real world, complete with business and technical problem-solving skills.

The Vermont Symphony Orchestra (VSO) has always taken part in in-school ensemble residencies. That is, until this unusual school year. 

Due to Covid-19, the VSO switched to online introductions to the musical families for students through its VT Symphony Kids program. As these are for kids, Elise Brunelle, Executive Director of the VSO, “believes very strongly that including kid-friendly elements into the online format is so important.” To do so, the programs were sited and recorded at kid-friendly places, like the Shelburne Museum and Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, for example. 

Brunelle also wanted to incorporate a short piece of animation to kick off the classes. And she decided to reach out to the Vermont State Colleges with an animation program to connect with a current student or recent alumni to do so.

“Since we’re talking to young people in the classes, let’s work with a young adult who does animation,” she said.

Brunelle reached out to Professor Barclay Tucker, who teaches in Northern Vermont University Lyndon’s Animation and Illustration program. Tucker connected her with 2019 graduate Kaio Scott, and the VSO hired Scott to create a short introductory animation for the program.

Scott’s animation incorporates Vermont-based animals — a beaver, a moose, a turtle, a bear, and a mouse — playing instruments. The design also allows each animal to be used individually in another way in the future, something Brunelle is interested in exploring.

Scott, who worked in video editing shortly after graduation and has been involved in character commissions and small animatics most recently, said “it was extremely fun to get back into animation.”

Brunelle is committed to working alongside other arts organizations, and says it’s important “to give opportunities to young emerging artists.” Doing so means more legwork, of course, but “it’s important to connect outside of our easy scope” she said. 

Northern Vermont University Professor of History Alexandre Strokanov presented virtually at two prestigious international conferences this fall, one held in Poland and the second in China.

The first — The Second World War in the Collective Memory and Politic of the Former Eastern Bloc Countries — held October 22-23 in Warsaw, Poland, was organized by the Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences, and The Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding.

Strokanov’s presentation — The New Face of the Museum: How the Victory Museum of the Great Patriotic War 1941-45 in Moscow has changed for the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Allies Victory — was part of the Narratives and Images of War in Public Space panel. During his lecture, he walked participants through an examination of how to pass the memories, experiences, and emotions of war generations to new generations. 

“We have always had veterans to learn from,” Strokanov said, but there aren’t many WWII veterans still living today. This requires museums, always key to the transfer of knowledge, to play an even greater role now, he said. 

Which raises the issue of how to attract a digitalized generation to museums, yet incorporate technology in a way that makes it accessible to all, he said. Strokanov’s discussion of the Victory Museum in Moscow, which opened several new expositions Summer 2020, explored the interactive nature of the experience at this museum and how the approach addressed the dual issue of accessibility and digital appeal. For instance, the displays encourage, rather than discourage, touch, and the museum guides move beyond the usual role of directing patrons through the space to take on the roles of characters from the time period to bring the past literally to life, he said.

Strokanov’s presentation will be published in the Journal of the Polish Institute of Political Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences.

Alexandre Strokanov also took part in the conference commemorating the 130th Anniversary of the Nobel Prize Winner in Literature Boris Pasternak. Held by the Institute of Foreign Languages at Zhejiang University in China November 6-9, Strokanov delivered a virtual keynote address titled: “Pasternak’s city of Yuryatin: where is it and why is it such?”

As Strokanov shares, “This imaginary city first appeared in Pasternak’s unfinished novel ‘Notes of Patrick,’ but became the center of the activity of his heroes in the novel Doctor Zhivago.” In his keynote, Strokanov analyzed the possible prototypes for such a city among existing real cities in Russia and came up with his own interpretation of the origins of the name for Pasternak’s city. He went on to explain why Pasternak named it Yuryatin, based on the results of his multiyear research.

An article based on his keynote presentation will be published in the international journal Russian Literature and Art.

Strokanov also presented in the conference section, “Memory about Boris Pasternak: Museums and monuments to the poet and writer in Russia and abroad,” in which he discussed how the memory of Pasternak is preserved through the museums devoted to Boris Pasternak in Moscow, Chistopol, and Vsevolodo-Vilva, as well as recently erected monuments.

Justin Lander, a part-time faculty member in the Visual Art program at NVU’s Lyndon campus teaching puppetry this semester, is also one-half of Hardwick-based Modern Times Theater. Lander and partner Rose Friedman were interviewed about how they develop the content for their shows by Puppet Pages, a collaborative association founded and run by puppeteers in response to the impact of Covid-19. 

With performing artists of all genres needing to reinvent the way they work in the face of safety restrictions, Lander’s theater work has gone from live and in person to live and online. As Lander says, “We’re doing what we do and reinventing ourselves.” 

Lander’s NVU Puppetry class will present its own online show — a Puppet Cabaret — in November. We’ll be sure to provide a Zoom link to the combination of live and pre-recorded pieces of student work.