¶¶Òõ̽̽

<img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/images/features/votingbooth_300x212.jpg" height="212" width="300" />In this installment of "Viewpoint," a feature examining issues of the day through the perspectives of ¶¶Òõ̽̽ faculty, we ask members of the political science, history, and mathematics and statistics departments to weigh in on Burlington's instant runoff voting system.

<p>On the northeast coast of New Zealand's North Island, the Waipaoa River drains into the dazzling sea. Upriver, things are not so pretty. More than a century of land clearing for farming has created some of the most dramatic erosion in the world: raw amphitheatres and gullies dump tons of fine-grained mud into headwater streams, choking wildlife with silt and flooding vineyards downriver.</p>

<img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/images/features/spires_300x212.jpg" height="212" width="300" />Having just run a week-long gauntlet that included reviews by five separate internal groups, the authors of the four Transdisciplinary Research Initiative proposals that survived the arduous vetting process could be forgiven for wanting a breather.

¶¶Òõ̽̽ made a strong showing at an annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board held in Washington, D.C. in January. Faculty, staff and graduate students from the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ Transportation Research Center presented 17 projects at the conference, which attracts 10,000 attendees from all around the world, including policy makers, administrators, practitioners, researchers, and representatives of government, industry, and academic institutions.

<img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/images/features/fmiller_300x212.jpg" height="212" width="300" />The State of Vermont is currently crafting what could become one of the more transformative educational documents in the country. The process is still under way, but education and policy scholars from around university are playing strong roles in shaping the recommendations.

About 200 people were on hand Monday night at the Davis Center for a spirited debate titled "Nuclear Power: Promise or Peril." The event, the fourth in a debate series called the Janus Forum, which opposes nationally prominent speakers with differing views on timely social issues, pushed well past its 90-minute time limit, as the speakers took pains to clarify their positions in a lively back-and-forth, and audience members trooped to a central microphone to grill the speakers themselves.

<img src="http://www.uvm.edu/~uvmpr/images/features/trustees0210_300x212.jpg" height="212" width="300" />Prospective tuition increases, an aspiring program called Spires of Excellence, and a changing of the guard headlined last week's ¶¶Òõ̽̽ board of trustees meeting.