Latest news with #UniversityofTennesseeatKnoxville
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Approving SEC budget now in Donde Plowman's purview as new executive committee president
Chancellor Donde Plowman, in addition to leading the University of Tennessee at Knoxville through a historic period of growth, will approve the budget and oversee financial decisions of the Southeastern Conference in her new role as executive committee president. Elected May 29, Plowman will begin her two-year term effective July 1. She was an executive member in 2022 and 2023, and she served as vice president of the committee beneath University of Alabama President Stuart Bell from 2023 through 2024. 'I look forward to working with my SEC colleagues an (SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey) over the next two years,' Plowman posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. 'Can't wait to get started!' The committee is made up of three SEC officers and four people elected during its annual spring meeting. The elected members include a CEO, director of athletics, senior woman administrator and faculty athletics representative. Though Plowman's committee term comes to an end in 2027, she will continue leading UT as chancellor until at least 2029. All 20 Tennessee programs reached the NCAA postseason or a bowl game in 2023-24, with the Vols winning a baseball national title and reaching the Elite Eight in men's basketball in a banner year for Tennessee Athletics. Not only is UT a member of the SEC, but Knoxville is the conference's birthplace. The SEC was founded in December 1932 at the Farragut Hotel on Gay Street, now the Hyatt Place. The full list of executive committee members: President: University of Tennessee at Knoxville Chancellor Donde Plowman Vice President: University of Missouri President Mun Choi (will become president in 2027) Secretary: Texas A&M Faculty Athletics Representative Paul Batista University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce (will become VP in 2027) University of Florida Faculty Athletics Representative Chris Janelle University of Georgia Athletics Director Josh Brooks University Kentucky Senior Woman Administrator Rachel Baker The election happened during the third day of the SEC's Spring Meetings, where university presidents, chancellors, coaches and others discussed topics including scheduling, the transfer portal and the College Football Playoff and the pending House v. NCAA settlement. Keenan Thomas reports for the Knox News business growth and development team. You can reach him by email at Support strong local journalism and unlock premium perks at This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Tennessee chancellor Plowman elected SEC Executive Committee president
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The Most Ingenious Hawk in New Jersey
In November of 2021, Vladimir Dinets was driving his daughter to school when he first noticed a hawk using a pedestrian crosswalk. The bird—a young Cooper's hawk, to be exact—wasn't using the crosswalk, in the sense of treading on the painted white stripes to reach the other side of the road in West Orange, New Jersey. But it was using the crosswalk—more specifically, the pedestrian-crossing signal that people activate to keep traffic out of said crosswalk—to ambush prey. The crossing signal—a loud, rhythmic click audible from at least half a block away—was more of a pre-attack cue, or so the hawk had realized, Dinets, a zoologist now at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told me. On weekday mornings, when pedestrians would activate the signal during rush hour, roughly 10 cars would usually be backed up down a side street. This jam turned out to be the perfect cover for a stealth attack: Once the cars had assembled, the bird would swoop down from its perch in a nearby tree, fly low to the ground along the line of vehicles, then veer abruptly into a residential yard, where a small flock of sparrows, doves, and starlings would often gather to eat crumbs—blissfully unaware of their impending doom. The hawk had masterminded a strategy, Dinets told me: To pull off the attacks, the bird had to create a mental map of the neighborhood—and, maybe even more important, understand that the rhythmic ticktock of the crossing signal would prompt a pileup of cars long enough to facilitate its assaults. The hawk, in other words, appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is, with all due respect, more impressive than how most humans use a pedestrian crosswalk. Cooper's hawks are known for their speedy sneak attacks in the wild, Janet Ng, a senior wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told me. Zipping alongside bushes and branches for cover, they'll conceal themselves from prey until the very last moment of a planned ambush. 'They're really fantastic hunters that way,' Ng said. Those skills apparently translate fairly easily into urban environments, where Cooper's hawks flit amid trees and concrete landscapes, stalking city pigeons and doves. That sort of urban buffet seems to have been a major incentive for this particular Cooper's hawk, Dinets, who published his observations of the bird in Frontiers in Ethology, told me. One of the (human) families in the neighborhood regularly dined outdoors in the evening, leaving a scattering of food scraps on their front lawn that would routinely attract a group of small birds the next morning. But the hawk needed perfect conditions to successfully dive-bomb that flock: enough cover, from a long-enough line of cars, to attack unseen. That scenario would play out only on weekday mornings, when both foot and car traffic were heavy enough that the crosswalk signal would stall lines of cars down the streets. Over several months, Dinets noticed that the bird seemed to have figured out this complex system of ifs, ands, or buts. The hawk appeared only when the necessary degree of congestion was possible. And only after the pedestrian-crossing signal was activated would it ready itself for an attack—perching in a nearby tree to wait for the backlog of cars that it knew would soon manifest. Then, only after the queue stretched long enough to totally conceal its path, the bird would head toward its prey. The crosswalk signal seems to have been key to this plan: The hawk could predict with startling accuracy how well cloaked it would be—and, thus, the success of its attack. 'The hawk understood the connection,' Dinets told me. That's hard to prove without experimentation, beyond Dinets's observation of this single bird—but that this hawk figured out the chain reaction that this signal could set off, under weekday-morning conditions, is definitely plausible, several researchers told me. Plenty of animals, including other types of birds, have proved themselves savvy in human environments. Pigeons, for instance, wait for humans to turn on drinking fountains, then sip the water. Ng has spoken with farmers and ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan who have seen hawks use the sounds of gunshots during gopher hunts as a cue that a feast is impending. And crows have been spotted dropping hard-shelled nuts into roads so that cars will crack them open. Still, Ng, who wasn't involved in the observations, told me that this hawk's feat is impressive, even if no other bird ever replicates it. The hawk clued into a human signal, in a human system, that was multiple steps removed from its target. Managing these attacks required a degree of foresight, a mental map of the neighborhood, even a sense of a human week's rhythm—understanding, for instance, the difference between weekday rush hours and weekend lulls. The bird also appears to have picked up on all of this relatively quickly: Many Cooper's hawks spotted in cities come to urban areas only for the winter, which hints that this one may have conjured its plan of attack as a recent immigrant to the area. Generally speaking, the faster a creature learns something new, the more cognitively adept it is likely to be, Joshua Plotnik, a comparative-cognition expert at Hunter College, told me. And this hawk managed all that as a juvenile, Ng pointed out—still in the first couple of years of its life, when most Cooper's hawks 'are just not good at hunting yet.' A common cause for mortality at this age, she said, is starvation. But maybe the most endearing part of this hawk's tale is the idea that it took advantage of a crosswalk signal at all—an environmental cue that, under most circumstances, is totally useless to birds and perhaps a nuisance. To see any animal blur the line between what we consider the human and non-human spheres is eerie, but also humbling: Most other creatures, Plotnik said, are simply more flexible than we'd ever think. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
23-05-2025
- General
- Atlantic
The Most Ingenious Hawk in New Jersey
In November of 2021, Vladimir Dinets was driving his daughter to school when he first noticed a hawk using a pedestrian crosswalk. The bird—a young Cooper's hawk, to be exact—wasn't using the crosswalk, in the sense of treading on the painted white stripes to reach the other side of the road in West Orange, New Jersey. But it was using the crosswalk—more specifically, the pedestrian-crossing signal that people activate to keep traffic out of said crosswalk—to ambush prey. The crossing signal—a loud, rhythmic click audible from at least half a block away—was more of a pre-attack cue, or so the hawk had realized, Dinets, a zoologist now at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, told me. On weekday mornings, when pedestrians would activate the signal during rush hour, roughly 10 cars would usually be backed up down a side street. This jam turned out to be the perfect cover for a stealth attack: Once the cars had assembled, the bird would swoop down from its perch in a nearby tree, fly low to the ground along the line of vehicles, then veer abruptly into a residential yard, where a small flock of sparrows, doves, and starlings would often gather to eat crumbs—blissfully unaware of their impending doom. The hawk had masterminded a strategy, Dinets told me: To pull off the attacks, the bird had to create a mental map of the neighborhood—and, maybe even more important, understand that the rhythmic ticktock of the crossing signal would prompt a pileup of cars long enough to facilitate its assaults. The hawk, in other words, appears to have learned to interpret a traffic signal and take advantage of it, in its quest to hunt. Which is, with all due respect, more impressive than how most humans use a pedestrian crosswalk. Cooper's hawks are known for their speedy sneak attacks in the wild, Janet Ng, a senior wildlife biologist with Environment and Climate Change Canada, told me. Zipping alongside bushes and branches for cover, they'll conceal themselves from prey until the very last moment of a planned ambush. 'They're really fantastic hunters that way,' Ng said. Those skills apparently translate fairly easily into urban environments, where Cooper's hawks flit amid trees and concrete landscapes, stalking city pigeons and doves. That sort of urban buffet seems to have been a major incentive for this particular Cooper's hawk, Dinets, who published his observations of the bird in Frontiers in Ethology, told me. One of the (human) families in the neighborhood regularly dined outdoors in the evening, leaving a scattering of food scraps on their front lawn that would routinely attract a group of small birds the next morning. But the hawk needed perfect conditions to successfully dive-bomb that flock: enough cover, from a long-enough line of cars, to attack unseen. That scenario would play out only on weekday mornings, when both foot and car traffic were heavy enough that the crosswalk signal would stall lines of cars down the streets. Over several months, Dinets noticed that the bird seemed to have figured out this complex system of if s, and s, or but s. The hawk appeared only when the necessary degree of congestion was possible. And only after the pedestrian-crossing signal was activated would it ready itself for an attack—perching in a nearby tree to wait for the backlog of cars that it knew would soon manifest. Then, only after the queue stretched long enough to totally conceal its path, the bird would head toward its prey. The crosswalk signal seems to have been key to this plan: The hawk could predict with startling accuracy how well cloaked it would be—and, thus, the success of its attack. 'The hawk understood the connection,' Dinets told me. That's hard to prove without experimentation, beyond Dinets's observation of this single bird—but that this hawk figured out the chain reaction that this signal could set off, under weekday-morning conditions, is definitely plausible, several researchers told me. Plenty of animals, including other types of birds, have proved themselves savvy in human environments. Pigeons, for instance, wait for humans to turn on drinking fountains, then sip the water. Ng has spoken with farmers and ranchers in Alberta and Saskatchewan who have seen hawks use the sounds of gunshots during gopher hunts as a cue that a feast is impending. And crows have been spotted dropping hard-shelled nuts into roads so that cars will crack them open. Still, Ng, who wasn't involved in the observations, told me that this hawk's feat is impressive, even if no other bird ever replicates it. The hawk clued into a human signal, in a human system, that was multiple steps removed from its target. Managing these attacks required a degree of foresight, a mental map of the neighborhood, even a sense of a human week's rhythm—understanding, for instance, the difference between weekday rush hours and weekend lulls. The bird also appears to have picked up on all of this relatively quickly: Many Cooper's hawks spotted in cities come to urban areas only for the winter, which hints that this one may have conjured its plan of attack as a recent immigrant to the area. Generally speaking, the faster a creature learns something new, the more cognitively adept it is likely to be, Joshua Plotnik, a comparative-cognition expert at Hunter College, told me. And this hawk managed all that as a juvenile, Ng pointed out—still in the first couple of years of its life, when most Cooper's hawks 'are just not good at hunting yet.' A common cause for mortality at this age, she said, is starvation. But maybe the most endearing part of this hawk's tale is the idea that it took advantage of a crosswalk signal at all—an environmental cue that, under most circumstances, is totally useless to birds and perhaps a nuisance. To see any animal blur the line between what we consider the human and non-human spheres is eerie, but also humbling: Most other creatures, Plotnik said, are simply more flexible than we'd ever think.
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
University of Tennessee's $2.37 billion budget includes no tuition hike but increased fees
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville has proposed a new budget that won't increase tuition, but students could see increases to mandatory fees for the fall 2025 semester if the budget is approved. UT's proposed budget is an estimated $2.37 billion, an increase of more than $200 million compared to last year. The increase aligns with growth on campus, along with a rapidly growing interest in UT among prospective students, who submitted more than 63,000 applications for the upcoming fall semester. "Our team is sorting through it right now, but I can tell you this: It's going to be historic in terms of both numbers and the academic profile of the students that are going to be with us in the fall," Chancellor Donde Plowman told her Advisory Board on May 2. Tuition would remain stagnant after last year's 2% hike for in-state students and 4% hike for out-of-state students, the first increases since 2020. Plowman instead has proposed increases to several mandatory fees, which students pay for the fall and spring semesters: The facilities fee would increase $30 for in-state students and $46 for out-of-state students, totaling $630 and $946, respectively. This fee helps pay for building maintenance and construction projects. The transportation fee would increase by $24 to $258 total. This fee goes toward UT buses and their routes on campus. The library fee would increase by $10 to $90 total. This fee helps pay for databases, the library collections and activities. Dining service rates would increase by a flat rate of 3.6%, except for the Flex Plan. The increase would be by $21-$90 depending on which plan students pick. The increase would offset inflation costs for food, maintenance and salaries. UT also has proposed discontinuing the $24 per day unlimited meal access fee. Housing rates would increase 5% for every option. The increase would be by $152-$295 depending on which type of room students choose. The increase would help pay for rising costs, debt and maintenance projects. In-state students could expect to pay $30,394 for the full academic year, including tuition, fees, housing and food. Out-of-state students could expect to pay $50,170. The Chancellor's Advisory Board approved the proposed budget May 2. It will be presented to the UT System Board of Trustees for approval during its annual meeting June 30-July 1. Students now can pay a $299 flat fee that covers all course materials for all classes, both online and physical copies. Mini and summer term subscriptions cost less, and students have the option to opt out of the "Total Access" program to purchase individual textbooks. The FUTURE program, which helps students with intellectual and developmental disabilities transition from high school to adult life, would have a $4,500 increase. A $3,600 increase is proposed for the PASS program, a support service for UT students diagnosed on the autism spectrum. However, these changes align with the reimbursement rate for the state's Vocational Rehabilitation Program, so the increases shouldn't come with a cost for students. Three colleges would have unspecified increases to cover supplies, materials, equipment and field trips: the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Communication and Information and the College of Education, Health and Human Sciences Six professional degree programs would receive increases as well: CRNA Program for anesthetist nurses Strategic Leadership Executive Master of Business Administration Professional Master of Business Administration Master of Arts in Economics Master of Science in Marketing Master of Science in Supply Chain Management Global Study abroad programs would have a new flat fee of $350 to compete with other SEC schools and fund trip budgets. Parking permits for faculty and staff members would increase by 5%, with rates determined by their salary scale. UT also has proposed ending the confirmation deposit for fully online students by the spring 2026 semester to eliminate barriers for students as UT moves full steam ahead with its Arizona State University partnership. UT projects an estimated revenue of nearly $12.7 million through these changes, with revenue going toward student services, building maintenance, food services, parking (including a new garage) and replacing or improving student housing. Educational and general revenues make up the majority of the proposed $2.37 billion budget, with tuition, fees and state funding providing most of the revenue stream. The revenues cover professor salaries, scholarships and research, as well as UT's auxiliary functions like sports and bookstores, which in turn provide revenue. UT's revenues are exceeding the university's expenses, according to agenda documents. Based on internal surveys, confidence in UT has grown over the past two years, and it bodes well for UT's competitiveness as it nears the national enrollment cliff, a period in which the 18-year-old population will decline. Tennessee is projected to see a rise in high school graduates against the national decline, according to data from Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. That could make UT a more desirable university in the state, as well as nationally, while driving other universities to become more aggressive recruiters. UT leaders have emphasized the affordability of in-state tuition and the competitiveness of the out-of-state tuition, all while building new facilities, improving athletics and launching new programs. The success of UT's competitiveness is tangible in the growing number of applications. "That is remarkable," board member Tom Smith said. "To be able to do that and maintain that (affordability, value and competition) is really something we should be proud of." Keenan Thomas reports for the Knox News business growth and development team. You can reach him by email at Support strong local journalism and unlock premium perks at This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: University of Tennessee budget would keep same tuition, increase fees
USA Today
29-01-2025
- Business
- USA Today
University of Tennessee researchers told to press on as Trump funding pause rattles campus
The University of Tennessee at Knoxville's research department is directing researchers to continue working on federally funded projects with an understanding future funding could be in jeopardy as the entire UT system monitors how President Donald Trump's executive orders could force universities to rethink how they operate. Some of Trump's executive orders since taking office Jan. 20 have targeted federal agencies that fund loans and grants, as well as diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Deborah L. Crawford, vice chancellor for research, innovation and economic development at UT, sent out a mass email Jan. 27 that outlined to students, staff and faculty some of the ways Trump's orders are raising questions within the university community. 'The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health, has issued a freeze on public communications, including funding opportunity announcements, and has suspended the study sections that review proposals,' Crawford said in the email. 'The U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture has removed funding opportunity announcements from their website and has paused upcoming submission deadlines while they complete an internal review.' UT and its researchers spent $153.63 million in federal funds for research and development in 2023, according to the Higher Education Research and Development Survey. In 2024, UT Knoxville spent more than $384 million on various research projects. Crawford urged researchers to continue working on projects already funded unless a stop-work order is issued by the project's sponsor. Partial stop-work orders issued by the by the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Department of Labor have been implemented "for projects or project components focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,' she said. Crawford also suggests researchers continue with research proposals even if competitions have been postponed. Pause on federal funding won't affect student financial aid The president's Office of Management and Budget sent out a memo Jan. 27 announcing a pause on federal funding for grants and loans from federal agencies, leading to widespread confusion about who would be affected and how. U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan in Washington blocked the pause from going into effect Jan. 28, ordering the Trump administration not to halt grant and loan funding until at least Feb. 3, when another hearing will take place, according to USA TODAY. The block is to "maintain the status quo," but it doesn't prevent Trump from freezing funding for new programs and does not require the president to restart funding that already ended. The Constitution grants Congress the power to determine spending, not the president, and attorneys general in six states filed similar lawsuits against the funding freeze. Before the judge's ruling, USA TODAY confirmed the pause will not apply to direct individual assistance. That includes vital financial aid for students in the form of federal direct student loans and Pell Grants, according to a statement from Madison Biedermann, the deputy assistant secretary for communication strategy at the U.S. Department of Education. Other federal student aid funds won't be halted, either, according to a banner on the website. "We continue to award and disburse federal student aid," the website said Jan. 29. Individual assistance is mentioned in a footnote of the Office of Management and Budget memo, but it does not outline exceptions to the pause. The UT System is 'closely monitoring the situation and evaluating any potential impact on the University as new information becomes available,' spokesperson Melissa Tindell told Knox News in an email. Other ways Trump's executive actions could change policies at the University of Tennessee The president also has signed orders lifting restrictions on authorities to conduct immigration arrests on students and to arrest students involved in the Israel-Hamas War protests. UT doesn't knowingly admit undocumented students, according to a 2018 policy brief. The Migration Policy Institute reports there are around 4,000 "unauthorized" people ages 18-24 enrolled in schools across the state, but does not specify the schools the students attend, specifically whether they are high schools, trade schools, two-year colleges or four-year UT enrolled an undocumented student, the student wouldn't receive in-state tuition. UT does provide resources to locate scholarships for Deferred Action on Childhood Arrival recipients, commonly called Dreamers, and immigrant students and minority students. Trump signed an order to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, commonly called DEI, in federal agencies. Additionally, the executive order targets universities with endowments of $1 billion or more, which includes UT and Vanderbilt University in Nashville. The executive order states that nine organizations - including higher education institutions - will be identified to be investigated. The flagship Knoxville campus has endowments of $1.1 billion, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. In November 2023, the university changed the name of its Division of Diversity and Engagement office to the Office of Access and Engagement. Keenan Thomas is a higher education reporter. Email X, formerly known as Twitter @specialk2real. Support strong local journalism by subscribing to
