Freecollege.com

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Doctors have a clearer picture than ever before of how much radiation reaches sensitive tissues during routine X-rays and similar imaging, thanks to sophisticated models of the human body being developed at the University of Florida.

“We’re building a rich library of computer simulation tools and 3-D patient models that will make dose estimates much more accurate and patient-specific,” said Wesley E. Bolch, a professor in the UF departments of nuclear and radiological engineering and biomedical engineering, and a member of the UF Shands Cancer Center.

In the March 5 issue of Physics in Medicine and Biology, Bolch and researchers in his lab discuss how they used three-dimensional microCT imaging to describe cartilage, bone marrow and two types of mineral bone in 20 different skeletal sites from two newborns. It is the second in a series of planned articles that will describe variations in tissue and bone that can affect how much radiation is absorbed by the body.

They discovered that children have a greater percentage of total mineral bone in direct contact with sensitive bone marrow than do adults. This has implications for radiation treatments and types of chemotherapy used to treat cancer patients, especially therapies targeting pediatric bone cancers.

In contrast to existing models, the study also found that a large amount of the electron and beta particle energy once believed to stay contained within the bone marrow of children actually escapes to surrounding tissue, said Deanna Pafundi, a UF researcher and lead author of the paper, now a research fellow at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. This finding is being used in existing UF research calculating the impact of radiation to the skeletal surrounding tissues, she said.

Radiation epidemiologists can use the revised model to look back in time, estimating doses of radiation associated with leukemia risk, Bolch said. He pointed to the case of unusually high rates of leukemia among a Russian population exposed to river discharges of bone-seeking radionuclides during the Soviet’s nuclear weapons program in the 1950s. UF’s newborn skeletal model suggests that radiation doses to newborn bone marrow have been overestimated by existing clinical skeletal models.

Most current estimates of bone marrow radiation dose are obtained from two-dimensional images acquired from seven skeletal sites in a 44-year-old adult male during the late 1960s, Bolch said. UF’s current work seeks to replace these widely used estimates from the University of Leeds by using three-dimensional imaging and extending the work to the pediatric and prenatal skeleton. The work will illustrate how bone marrow radiation dose can vary with patient size, whether a patient has osteoporosis, and marrow health.

“Wes Bolch is doing research that will give clinicians the tools to reduce the level of patients’ radiation exposure. It’s very important work,” said George Xu, a professor in the department of mechanical, aerospace and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

The models are being created at a time when the medical community is sounding the alarm about the potential for harm from excessive radiation exposure. According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, the average annual radiation exposure in the United States increased about
75 percent between 1982 and 2006. During that time, the proportion of exposure due to medical interventions rose from 15 percent to 48 percent.

“The current philosophy is that there is a small but perceptible risk of cancer with every radiation exposure. Consequently, you want to maximize the dose delivered to the tumor in radiation therapy, while minimizing the dose and thus additional cancer risk to surrounding healthy tissues,” Bolch said.

Children are at particular risk from radiation exposure, Bolch said, as the carcinogenic effects of radiation have more time to develop in children than in adults. In response to these concerns, professionals involved in pediatric imaging have launched a campaign, dubbed Image Gently, to highlight opportunities to lower radiation dosing when imaging children.

“The risk in using ionizing radiation for both therapy and imaging is never going to be zero, but it can be reduced through proper guidelines and patient modeling of these procedures,” Bolch said.

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He says if Legislature must cut further, UF should decide how

Contrary to a common misperception, Florida universities have suffered among the worst state budget cuts in the country.

Looking to the future, more cuts are likely. But the University of Florida firmly opposes measures that could reduce salaries, benefits or otherwise impact employees, and should be given the chance to decide how to make its own cuts.

Those were University of Florida President Bernie Machen’s two main messages to members of the UF Board of Trustees gathered Tuesday morning for the board’s regular quarterly meeting at Emerson Alumni Hall.

Machen said recent headlines about draconian cuts to Arizona, Nevada and California universities have led to the impression that Florida universities had gotten off relatively easily. While the picture may change next fiscal year, he said, cuts to Florida universities began three years ago – a year before most other states. Also, recent University of Washington study found Florida universities were cut 22 percent between 2008 and 2010, more than Michigan, with a 9 percent cut; California, with a 19 percent cut and Nevada, with a 20 percent cut.

“Our cuts are worse,” he said, displaying a PowerPoint slide of a bar graph comparing Florida’s cuts to higher education budget cuts and increases in other states. “As a percentage of the state appropriation for higher education, Florida is the worst in the nation.”

Machen said it’s important to put Florida’s cuts into perspective because several other states are seeking to maintain their higher education budgets — despite experiencing economic downturns and budgetary contractions as painful or worse than Florida’s.

He singled out Michigan, saying it “has much worse unemployment than we do, 14.3 percent unemployment, but their governor has announced there will be no further cuts in higher ed.”

Machen said UF has effectively completed $140 million in cuts, much of it through proactive measures such as offering a one-time early retirement option that 127 employees have taken advantage of, leading to “significant savings” of state dollars, he said. The university has been helped by the addition of federal stimulus money, as well as increased tuition dollars from recent legislation allowing universities to raise tuition as much as 15 percent annually.

“If we had not already reached this point in our budget cuts, and if we had not already been awarded such a generous stimulus allocation from the state, and if we had not also been awarded the opportunity to regulate tuition, we wouldn’t be talking,” he said. “We would be in the kind of retrenchment mode that Nevada and California are in.“

Machen said he had hoped cutting $140 million would be enough. However, he said, more higher education cuts appear to be in the offing in the current legislative session and next year’s session – when federal stimulus funds will no longer be available.

On the one hand, he said, UF is not in as bad a position as some institutions because it did not blend its roughly $82 million in stimulus funds into its annual recurring budget, but used the money for one-time expenses. Stimulus dollars are supporting the current hiring of as many as 100 new faculty members, but increased tuition will cover their salaries when the funds run out.

On the other hand, Machen said, he and other UF officials are concerned about discussions in Tallahassee that center on saving state dollars through employee furloughs, salary cuts, health insurance increases and changes to reductions to state retirement benefits.

If also applied to universities, all such measures would damage UF by hurting morale and making it difficult for the university to compete with its national peers in hiring and keeping the best employees.

“One of my worries is, it could look as if we are not being cut as much on the base budget side,” he said. “But if you are cutting our employees, you are cutting us.”

Machen said UF’s track record during the past three years has demonstrated it can manage budget cuts responsibly, and that he hoped the Legislature gives UF the same freedom to deal with any future cuts. At the close of his remarks, he noted that UF is advocating several proposals in Tallahassee designed to allow the university to be more “entrepreneurial” — including charging single or “block” tuition and boosting distance learning fees.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Thomas J. Mitchell was named the University of Florida’s new vice president for development and alumni affairs during today’s meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees. In this role, he will lead the university’s fundraising efforts as the head of the UF Foundation and direct the resources of the UF Alumni Association.

Since 2002, Mitchell has served as vice chancellor of university advancement of the University of California, Irvine, and president of the UC Irvine Foundation. He comes to UF with a wealth of university fundraising experience. He was recognized this month by the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, known as CASE, as one of two people nationwide who has made extraordinary contributions to the advancement, quality and effectiveness of his university foundation and to the field of higher education foundations.

He begins at UF on June 1 and replaces Paul Robell who is stepping down as vice president after 15 years.

“With an impressive track record and more than two decades of university fundraising experience, Tom has an ideal skill set to continue a legacy of excellence established under Paul’s leadership,” UF President Bernie Machen said. “I’m pleased he’s agreed to join us in Gainesville and the UF leadership team.”

With more than 24 years of experience in higher education fundraising, Mitchell is recognized as a national thought leader in philanthropic program development. His advancement team has been honored with 55 CASE Awards, recognizing excellence.

Under his direction, annual private support has increased 265 percent and the endowment has doubled in size. Mitchell led the planning, implementation and management of UC Irvine’s $1 billion Shaping the Future Campaign.

“I am excited about joining one of the nation’s premier institutions of higher education. It is my hope to build upon the great work of President Machen and Paul Robell,” Mitchell said. “This is an exceptional opportunity and I am honored and humbled to be selected.”

Prior to his time in California, Mitchell served as associate vice president and as president of the Iowa State University Foundation as well as vice president for development at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Ill. Mitchell also served the University of Nebraska system in various development positions. An avid sports fan, Mitchell coached several basketball teams in Nebraska and Iowa early in his career.

He earned a bachelor of science degree in physical education and business administration from Southeast Missouri State University and a master’s in education administration from the University of Nebraska.

Robell has agreed to stay with the UF Foundation part-time through the end of the Florida Tomorrow capital campaign which aims to raise $1.5 billion. Since 1987 when Robell started at the UF Foundation as a capital campaign director, more than $2.25 billion has been raised in private gifts and pledges in the three capital campaigns he has led.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — For patients with diabetes and heart disease, less isn’t always more — at least when it comes to blood pressure.

New data show an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or death for patients having blood pressure deemed too high — or too low, according to Rhonda Cooper-DeHoff, an associate professor of pharmacy and medicine at the University of Florida. She reported her findings today (Sunday, March 14) at the American College of Cardiology’s 59th annual scientific session in Atlanta.

She recommends raising the systolic bar above 120 for blood pressure in patients with diabetes and coronary artery disease, saying that levels between 130 and 140 appear to be the most healthful.

Based on hypertension treatment guidelines, health-care practitioners have assumed that with regard to blood pressure, “the lower, the better,” Cooper-DeHoff said. But, The International Verapamil SR-Trandolapril study, known as INVEST, suggests that the range considered normal for healthy Americans may actually be risky for those with a combined diagnosis of diabetes and coronary artery disease.

“Our data suggest that in patients with both diabetes and coronary artery disease, there is a blood pressure threshold below which cardiovascular risk increases,” Cooper-DeHoff said.

As many as two out of three adults with diabetes have high blood pressure. Normal blood pressure as defined by the American Heart Association is less than 120 systolic and less than 80 diastolic. Blood pressure greater than 140 is still associated with a nearly 50 percent increase in cardiovascular risk in patients with diabetes. But efforts to reduce systolic blood pressure to below 130 did not appear to offer any additional benefit to diabetics with coronary artery disease compared with reduction of systolic blood pressure to between 130 and less than 140.

Cooper-DeHoff’s study reveals for the first time that this group of patients also had a similar increase in risk when their blood pressure was controlled to lower than 115 systolic — the range recommended as normal by the American Heart Association.

Dr. Stephan Brietzke, an endocrinologist who did not participate in the research, was intrigued by the findings, saying that they parallel recent studies looking at blood sugar control, which suggest a U-shaped curve with higher cardiovascular risks at both “too high” and “too low” extremes.

Brietzke, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia since 2002, led a multidisciplinary team that developed Veterans Health Administration and Department of Defense collaborative guidelines for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. He sees this as an important study for doctors treating patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“Identifying thresholds of when to initiate treatment, and when to say ‘good enough,’ is extremely important not only to optimize patient outcomes, but also to help reduce unnecessary costs of care,” Brietzke said.

The AHA reports that heart disease or stroke is the top cause of death for people with diabetes, affecting more than 60 percent of patients. High blood pressure, common in diabetes, doubles the risk of cardiovascular disease.

The INVEST study is the first to evaluate the effects of blood pressure-lowering in diabetic patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease. Researchers analyzed data collected from 6,400 patients from fall 1997 to spring 2003. The patients, who were 50 or older, were recruited from more than 850 sites in 14 countries. The researchers further consulted the national death index for U.S.-enrolled patients for an additional five years to compare death rates of patients based on their blood pressure category ranging from tightly controlled to non-controlled hypertension.

Abbott Laboratories provided funding for INVEST. Cooper-DeHoff also received support from a National Institutes of Health career development award.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The University of Florida Technology Fee Advisory Committee is seeking ideas for how to improve or enhance current information technology services or create new ones.

Any student, faculty or staff member is invited to submit a concept paper before April 12. Based on the committee’s review, some submitters will be invited to prepare a full project proposal. With assistance for technical groups, the committee will then evaluate and prioritize recommendations for project funding. Recommendations will go to the UF Chief Information Officer. The projects will be funded by the technology fee that became effective last fall.

“The committee is looking forward to creative ideas for new services and infrastructure improvements that will improve learning outcomes,” said Fedro Zazueta, professor and associate chief information officer.

A list of current services provided by UF IT can be found at http://www.it.ufl.edu/services/.

Information on how to submit a concept paper can be found at
http://www.it.ufl.edu/community/techfee/concept_paper.html.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Eric Greitens, who co-founded a nonprofit organization dedicated to matching wounded and disabled veterans with service opportunities in their communities, will speak March 24 at the University of Florida’s Bob Graham Center for Public Service.

Greitens, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, helped create The Mission Continues using his combat pay when he returned stateside from Fallujah in 2007. A few days earlier, he had escaped permanent injury when he was shielded from the brunt of the car bomb blast that exploded outside his barracks. Questioning other wounded and disabled veterans, Greitens discovered a common theme: injuries may deny a soldier return to military service, but they do not quell the desire to serve.

Now a Senior Fellow at the Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri, Greitens will speak about “A Different Kind of Service” at 7 p.m. in the McKay Auditorium, Pugh Hall Room 170.

The Mission Continues co-founder, Kenneth Harbaugh, says that not only should wounded soldiers be recognized for “the sacrifices they have made, but for everything they have left to give.” The organization supports several programs for these veterans. Greitens has contributed more than 2,000 volunteer hours to The Mission Continues and received a President’s Volunteer Service Award in 2008 in recognition of his national leadership.

Jacksonville’s Adam Burke received a full-time Mission Fellowship last year. Burke was injured in a mortar blast while deployed as an infantryman in the U.S. Army. Returning home, he began Veterans Farm, a horticulture therapy farm, to help other veterans like himself with cognitive and hand/eye coordination skills through horticulture therapy.

Greitens was born and raised in Missouri, and was an Angier B. Duke Scholar at Duke University, where he studied ethics, philosophy and public policy. Selected as a Rhodes Scholar and a Truman Scholar, he attended Oxford University, earning a master’s degree in development studies and a doctorate in politics.

As a Navy SEAL officer, Greitens deployed four times and served as the commander of a Joint Special Operations Task Unit, a Mark V Special Operations Craft Detachment and an Al Qaeda Targeting Cell. Greitens was appointed by the president in 2005 to serve as a White House Fellow.

“Eric Greitens: A Different Kind of Service” is free and open to the public. This event will also be streamed live on March 24 from the Bob Graham Center Web site, www.bobgrahamcenter.ufl.edu.

The Bob Graham Center provides students with opportunities to train for future leadership positions, meet policymakers and take courses in critical thinking, language learning and studies of world cultures. Its mission is to foster public leadership and solve issues related to the Americas and homeland security. It also serves as a magnet to attract distinguished scholars and speakers to Florida.

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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — University of Florida and Shands HealthCare officials today unveiled conceptual drawings that they believe point the way to the future of the Southwest Second Avenue corridor linking the UF campus to downtown Gainesville.

The drawings of possible development of Shands’ 11-acre site between Southwest 10th Street and Southwest Seventh Terrace, formerly the site of Shands at AGH, were presented during a meeting of the Community Redevelopment Agency. The property will now be known as Innovation Square.

Although officials emphasized that the drawings are only a starting point for the discussion of how the area will develop during the next 10 to 20 years, they said the project represents an important collaboration designed to give the community another solid economic growth engine.

“This is really a good example of how this process is supposed to work. All the key stakeholders recognized the need for a long-term economic vision for that area, and so they came together and created one,” UF President Bernie Machen said. “The best part is, this project truly has the potential to help everyone – the university, the city, small businesses and working professionals.”

Gainesville Mayor Pegeen Hanrahan said she thinks the concept is a great step.

“This project represents the next step in a community partnership that is establishing UF and Gainesville as an international leader in cultivating technological innovation and transforming innovative ideas into world class bioscience and technology companies,” Hanrahan said. “Plans for this site and the Southwest Second Avenue corridor reflect the bright promise of the university and the city to create opportunity and prosperity for our community.”

The anchor of the corridor, as officials envision it, will be the 45,000-square-foot Florida Innovation Hub at UF. Described as a “super incubator,” the hub will contain space for UF startup technology companies as well as related businesses. The building also includes office space for UF’s Office of Technology Licensing and UF Tech Connect, both of which assist with the commercialization of emerging technologies.

Construction is expected to begin in June and wrap up by fall 2011. The project is being funded in part with an $8.2 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration. The university is contributing $5 million to the effort.

Officials foresee mixed use for the remaining acreage, possibly including both public and commercial spaces. Plans for the new site will continue to develop over the next year, Machen said. Funding for the property’s long-term development likely will come from a variety of sources, public and private, depending on the nature of the project at hand.

Machen said the project represents the efforts of several community organizations, including UF, Shands HealthCare, the city of Gainesville, Gainesville Regional Utilities, the Gainesville Area Chamber of Commerce and the Community Redevelopment Agency.

Looking beyond the Innovation Hub and the surrounding property, community leaders believe the Second Avenue corridor will add a vital element to the community by creating an unbroken bridge between the UF campus and downtown Gainesville.

That corridor likely will be home to residential, office and recreational space, Hanrahan said.

During the past decade, the city of Gainesville and Gainesville Regional Utilities have invested millions of dollars in improvements to Southwest Second Avenue, including repaving the street, moving overhead power lines underground, and adding roundabouts, landscaping and better lighting and drainage.

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Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:

As you return from spring break, I am writing to share with you what happened in an incident at Corry Village involving a graduate student and what we are doing in response.

On March 2, University Police were called to the on-campus housing complex by residents concerned about a disturbance caused by Mr. Kofi Adu-Brempong. After nearly two hours of attempts to resolve the situation, police entered his apartment and during an ensuing encounter the student was shot by the police.

Since that night our thoughts and concerns have been with everyone affected by this incident, particularly Mr. Adu-Brempong, his family, residents of Corry village and the University Police Department. Many questions remain about the events of that evening, and we are awaiting the report of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE), which is conducting an independent investigation to determine the facts in this case. Be assured, as soon as possible the University will respond fairly and appropriately to the findings, whatever they are. Mr. Adu-Brempong is recovering but faces serious charges.

Once FDLE completed its interviews and data collection for its report, the University began to follow-up with its own internal reviews. The University Police, Department of Housing and Residence Education, and the Counseling and Wellness Center are responding at this time.

Due to the unprecedented nature of this incident, I believe, and Chief Linda Stump agrees, we must go to extra lengths to fully analyze every aspect of this case. For that reason I have retained the firm of Margolis Healy & Associates to closely monitor, review and provide recommendations to the University. Their work will be independent and utilize national norms in assessing what happened and what needs to be done in the future. These public safety experts have impressive credentials, having led university police departments and the associations that accredit them. They will also be available to advise Chief Stump. When their investigation is complete their final report and recommendations will be presented to me and I will release it, in its entirety, to the public.

In the last week UF Student Affairs and Division of Housing staff members have been in touch with Corry Village residents to ensure that lines of communication between the University and the residents remain open. That is why I sent an e-mail to the Corry Village community last week encouraging them to contact FDLE if they have any information to share regarding the shooting. I extend that invitation to anyone who has information they feel may be relevant. We want all the facts in this case to be considered.

As members of an academic community we cherish openness and are mindful of the importance of having all the facts before arriving at conclusions, making decisions or taking action. To that end, I ask that you have patience until the process moves to its conclusion. We will do what is right and keep the University of Florida strong and free.

Thanks for your concern and your attention.

Sincerely,

President Bernie Machen

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This op-ed appeared March 11 in Religion Dispatches.

By: Bron Taylor
Bron Taylor, a professor at the University of Florida, is author of Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future and editor of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature.

Avatar had audiences rooting for nature, against the destruction of marauding tanks — but the Oscar went to the film that offered a soldier’s-eye view.
The competition for Best Picture is over. But the war of the worlds, and worldviews, in Avatar and The Hurt Locker, continues.

In The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow provided a terrifying depiction of efforts by US soldiers to survive while fighting insurgents and disarming bombs in Iraq. Their battle was both against an evil enemy and to retain their sanity and humanity.

As is typical in Hollywood war films, The Hurt Locker carried a subtle anti-war message compatible with patriotic sensibilities. Underscoring her own patriotism, when accepting the best picture and best director awards, Bigelow dedicated them to the “women and men in the military who risk their lives daily to keep us safe.” With these words and in the film, Bigelow reminds us that war is hell, while reassuring us of our good intentions.

For all the terror it depicted, the message was predictable and safe.

A Modern Form of Nature Religion

In Avatar, director James Cameron told the emotionally wrenching tale of the Na’vi, the aboriginal inhabitants of a distant world, defending themselves against an invading human army. The film was obviously a metaphor for the long war between large-scale civilizations and the small foraging societies that they supplant.

Because most of Earth’s people are citizens of such civilizations, Avatar’s message was anything but safe.

Why, then, has Avatar so clearly won the global battle for hearts and minds, becoming the most profitable motion picture of all time?

The answer is, I believe, that the heart of the film lies not in its criticism but its expression of our natural love of nature. The film evoked our longing for connection and belonging to the sources of our existence.

Cameron understood this, as seen in a recent interview, attributing the success of Avatar to the ways it is connecting the audience to nature and the environmental cause.

Additionally, the film was appealing because it offered a meaningful worldview and a reverence for life ethic compatible with modern scientific sensibilities. This was nowhere more apparent than in the delight expressed by the scientist, Dr. Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), as she explored Pandora’s living systems. The evocative power of the film was thus rooted in nothing less that the way in which it expressed and promoted a modern form of nature religion.

With nature religion, all life is sacred, related as kin, and mutually dependent. The term ‘sacred’ generally refers to the places and forces that precipitate healing, rebirth, and transformation. The word is also used to refer to the source of life, so with nature religion, the universe, biosphere, and habitat are sacred. These things constitute a new Holy Trinity in contemporary nature religion because life is absolutely dependent on them.

Nature religion is, of course, commonly associated with Native Americans and other indigenous people, as it was in Avatar. But the film suggests that all open-hearted humans can come to such spirituality, just as did several of the invaders. These humans learned to perceive the magic and intrinsic value of nature, converted to Na’vi ways, and fought to defend life itself. Some, like Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), were even reborn in Na’vi bodies, able to breathe the air of their new home

Emotional Treason?

As Cameron put the conversion motif, the film urges people to look at themselves from “nature’s point of view.” He then noted that the biggest cheer consistently erupts from the audience when the reptilian hammerheads rout the destructive human invaders. Cameron expressed delight that, by the end of the movie, everyone is “rooting for nature.”

This is a remarkable achievement since most in his audience belong to the very civilizations which, for millennia, have labored to bend nature to their will, while eliminating, often violently, the small-scale societies that are inconveniently in the way.

When we root for nature in the film, at least subconsciously, most of us are committing emotional treason against our own civilizations.

This unlikely event is possible because feelings of belonging and connection to nature are part of our emotional repertoire. We evolved here and find biologically intact ecosystems beautiful because, when we are drawn to and protect such places, we flourish.

This affinity for nature may exaplain the global appeal of Avatar but not why it ran second in the Oscar competition. Ironically, in the battle between these cinematic epics, The Hurt Locker was portrayed as countercultural, when it actually pandered to patriotic convention. Meanwhile, Avatar was cast as technologically radical while few commented on its radical critique of a militarized technological civilization, or on its countercultural religious vision. These are things some Academy voters, little doubt, found too radical to support.

Avatar, nevertheless, spoke the deeper truths. It reminded us about true belonging and how we should live. It evoked in us what we know deep in our genome, that our wellbeing, and the wellbeing of all life, is mutually dependent. It urged us to recognize that all life is sacred and worthy of reverent defense.

Not everyone who enjoyed Avatar will grasp and act on the message. But we ignore its message to our impoverishment and peril.

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A campus transit planning forum will be held as part of the process for updating the University of Florida Campus Master Plan for 2010-2020. Students, faculty and staff are invited to give input on transit access for getting to campus and getting around on campus.

These ideas will be incorporated into long-range plans of the University, RTS and the Gainesville community. The campus master plan website http://www.masterplan.ufl.edu/cmp2020.htm has additional information on the overall planning process and ways for the public to keep informed of progress.

Two sessions are scheduled, so participants can choose a time when it is most convenient.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Reitz Union Ballroom, Grand Salon A & E

1:30-3:00 PM AND 5:00-6:30 PM

AGENDA:

Overview Presentations

- Whit Blanton, Renaissance Planning Group (10 min)
- Doug Robinson, Regional Transit System (10 min)

Small Group Work Sessions (50 min)

Wrap-Up (20 min)

If you require any type of an accommodation for an event sponsored by the University of Florida, accommodation requests must be made at least 72 hours in advance of the function. To arrange accommodations, contact the UF ADA Office at 392-7056 or 711(TDD/TTY).

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