Grant boosts drive to transform treatment landscape for rare neurological disorders
The Medical Center is extending its participation in the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke’s Network for Excellence in Neuroscience Clinical Trials, a national network of academic medical centers tasked to create the resources and scale necessary to conduct clinical trials for rare neurological diseases. The new funding will focus on projects aimed to accelerate the study and approval of a growing wave of gene therapies that are already revolutionizing care, increase diversity in clinical trial participation, and train the next generation of clinical researchers.
In today’s issue:
Yellowjacket Weekend kicks off on Thursday
A Career Path Modernization project update on pay range transparency
Information and a webinar on the 2024 Child Care Subsidy for faculty and staff
University moves to Keeper, a new password management tool
Beginning September 6, the University is switching its enterprise password management tool to Keeper. Current faculty, staff, and students with an active University email address will be eligible for a free Keeper business account and up to five free family accounts. The desktop client for this self-service application is available via the University IT’s Software Center. Please be advised that LastPass will no longer be available to users beginning September 30. To avoid interruption, users should import their passwords from LastPass to Keeper. Learn more about this change here. For tutorials, FAQs, and more information, visit University IT’s Keeper web page.
“Having a way to engage with a positive force like fantasy sports can really add to one’s social circle,” says Renee Miller, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences. High levels of social satisfaction, she says, “are one of the best correlates with longevity and mental health.”
Around the high peaks of Adirondack Park, an interdisciplinary project explores environmental conflict through the art of storytelling. This year, ADK Climate Stories partnered with the Summer Sustainability Fellowship to explore how people living in Adirondack Park are experiencing climate change today. Learn more in this week’s Go Green blog post.
Celebrate the start of the academic year at Yellowjacket Weekend
Kick off the semester with Yellowjacket Weekend, the first Community Weekend of the academic year. Join Wilson Commons Student Activities August 31—September 5 for an end-of-summer celebration. Spend an evening with speaker and actor Brenda Song (“The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,” “New Girl,” “Station 19”) on Saturday. Tickets are $10 for Rochester undergraduate students; $17 for Rochester graduate students, faculty, and staff; and $24 for the general public. Buy tickets at the Common Market or online at rochester.universitytickets.com. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. From giveaways to poster sales to movie nights to athletic events, there will be plenty of opportunities to connect with the campus community during this Rochester Tradition. Stay tuned to the WCSA Instagram or Facebook pages for announcements and updates.
Applications for Art New York's spring 2024 semester extended to September 15
The Art New York program offers students credit for an internship in New York City that situates their program of study within the art world. Students in the program do not need to be art majors or minors and no previous art experience is required. The application deadline for the spring 2024 program is September 15. Learn more about the program and find the application here.
With its implementation in January, the Career Path Modernization (CPM) project will enable the University to provide a fully transparent pay range structure for staff. In the interim, on September 10, the University will introduce three important advancements as it moves toward this effort:
The pay range for each staff member’s current job will be visible to them via an individual self-service page in HRMS
Pay ranges will be included on all job postings
New pay administration guidelines, which outline the University’s compensation practices, will be published on the CPM and Compensation websites
The pay transparency page on the CPM website has information and videos to help you learn more. The full University staff pay structure will be available when the CPM project launches in January 2024.
Faculty workshops from the Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program
Have you heard about how ChatGPT and other large language models (sometimes called Artificial Intelligence or AI) are changing the landscape for writing instruction? Are you concerned about how to ensure that students do their own writing and meet your learning goals? The Writing, Speaking, and Argument Program has added a new faculty workshop for 2023 titled “Designing Writing Assignments in the Age of AI.” Learn more about this and other faculty workshops on assignment design, giving feedback, and peer review here. Workshops are offered upon request by groups of individuals or departments. Contact katherine.schaefer@rochester.edu for more information or to request a workshop.
‘Well-Being for Life and Learning’ training
This fall, the UHS Health Promotion Office is launching an inaugural “Well-Being for Life and Learning” training program for faculty and staff. The program will provide participants with simple strategies to create supportive environments in which students can flourish and, in turn, thrive academically. The self-paced training includes a series of required and elective workshops led by campus experts. All workshops will be offered in a hybrid format with virtual and in-person sessions throughout the semester. Once participants finish all components of the training program, they will receive a comprehensive guidebook, a sticker to place on their office door, an icon to place in their email signature, and recognition on the “Well-Being for Life and Learning” website. Find more information and register here.
2024 Child Care Subsidy materials and webinar
To help support the rising cost of child and dependent care, the University provides a Child Care Subsidy Program to assist eligible faculty and staff with child care expenses with awards of up to $3,600 a year, depending on total household gross income, through the pre-tax Dependent Care FSA. The annual application window for calendar year 2024 is September 8–25, 2023. Check out eligibility criteria and required materials and review the frequently asked questions section. To learn more, join the Office of Total Rewards on Tuesday, September 19, at noon for a webinar to get all of your questions answered. Register here for the webinar and email familycare@rochester.edu with questions.
Medicare and your HSA
As you near age 65, you may start to receive information from Medicare about the steps you need to take to enroll. Your eligibility to contribute to your Health Savings Account (HSA) is affected by your enrollment in Medicare. If you are collecting Social Security benefits, you are automatically enrolled in Medicare Part A, and if you are enrolled in any part of Medicare, you cannot contribute pre-tax dollars to your HSA. The Office of Total Rewards’ FAQs along with an informative video offered by HSA Bank may be helpful in understanding your HSA and Medicare.
Join the Goergen Institute for Data Science for “Careers in Data Science: What I Did on My Summer Internship (MS Version)”. Find out what master’s candidates did for their summer internships. Several data science master’s students will be sharing their internship stories and tips at this annual summer internship panel on Friday, September 1, at 11 a.m. in Wegmans Hall, Room 1400.
Yayoi Kusama exhibit coming to MAG
Yayoi Kusama’s INFINITY MIRRORED ROOM—LET’S SURVIVE FOREVER is coming to the Memorial Art Gallery, on loan from the Art Gallery of Toronto from September 14, 2023, through May 5, 2024.
LET’S SURVIVE FOREVER is an environment unto itself—visitors do not “view” it but rather “experience” it. Building on Kusama’s frequent themes of repetition and obliteration, the work invites visitors into a seemingly infinite field of silver orbs and captivates them with mirrored spheres suspended from the ceiling and arranged on the floor.
Admission to the museum is free for University faculty, staff, and students with their University ID. To enjoy member-only events and other perks, faculty and staff can purchase half-priced memberships to the museum online and in person. Members also receive priority access to the installation’s timed entry.
@Rochester is produced daily by University Marketing and Communications. You are receiving this message as a member of the University of Rochester community or as a subscriber. Please do not forward this newsletter to other distribution lists.
