University of Massachusetts Boston University Advancement

Alumni Spotlight

Many of our graduates are pursuing exciting and rewarding careers. Who are they? Read about a few of our recent grads.

JFK Award Winner Esther Smith: Ability, Drive, and Vision

Esther Smith In baseball, they're called "five-tool" players. They hit for power and average, are fleet of foot, field cleanly, and throw powerfully.

There's no such moniker suitable for describing the undergraduate who brings an overloaded intellectual toolbox to campus. But each spring, UMass Boston comes close when it bestows the John F. Kennedy Award for Academic Excellence upon an outstanding graduating senior.

The biology and anthropology double major served as co-president of the Golden Key International Honour Society, was named a McNair fellow, and received the Honors Program's Spaethling Award this year. Then there was her job in the legal department of the Massachusetts Department of Education, an internship at Boston Medical Center, and a presentation at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research in Salt Lake City, Utah.

A Remarkable Graduate

Arundhati Undurti: Captivated by "green" research

Arundhati Undurti Arundhati Undurti's journey to UMass Boston began in India, from which her family moved with her education in mind. But this award-winning biochemist-to-be entered the university somewhat reluctantly. "I couldn't afford to pay $30,000 or more a year to go somewhere else," she says, and she worried about fitting in. At first the worries seemed justified--during her first semester she was "pretty miserable." But soon she built a network of friends and, perhaps most important, began working in John Warner's green chemistry lab, where she was captivated by the research and the promise of developing environmentally friendly processes and products.

About Alumni:

Kathleen Bitetti '92 uses her artistry to blur the boundaries separating art, reality, and social commentary.

Bitetti with one of her works The all-white paper house, surrounded by a white picket fence, is strikingly beautiful. Luminous in natural light, the piece captivates visitors and draws them closer. As they approach the gate to this 10-foot-high, 16-foot-square structure crafted by sculptor and installation artist Kathleen Bitetti '92, they stop short. The paper house is made of restraining orders sewn together with sutures to portray the reality of domestic violence. "Beautiful things make people stop," explains Bitetti. "The unease comes later. That is my work."

The paper house is one of nine pieces comprising "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" Bitetti first installed the exhibit in locations throughout the Merrimack Valley during October 2002, while artist in residence at the Essex Art Center in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Like most of her works, the pieces blend sculpture and installation art using common items like beds, pillows, a kitchen table, and chairs, all painted white and stenciled with words that evoke the reality of domestic violence.

A Stand-Up Guy: Comedian Steve Sweeney '74 talks about community involvement, life on the road, and what he'd be willing to do for a million dollars.

sweeney Boston, it's often said, is a city of neighborhoods.
So is Steve Sweeney's mind.

Dubbed by one admirer "the undisputed King of Boston comedy," Sweeney embodies, almost literally, the city he calls home. A master of dialects and character voices, Sweeney can riff on everyone from Dorchester church ladies to Beacon Hill pols to certain radio personalities who seem a little too old to be peddling rock and roll to younger generations. In fact, while Sweeney has played to national audiences many times throughout his thirty-year career-not only by touring as a stand-up but also through roles in sitcoms and movies-he is so thoroughly Bostonian that he merits his own stop on the Freedom Trail.

"Everywhere I go with him," says John Conlon, associate chairman of the performing arts department at UMass Boston, "people seem to know him. They respond to him not only because he's funny, but because his characters combine all sorts of types we're all familiar with across the entire spectrum of Boston life."

Cutting-Edge Research

Eye on the Economy: Alan Clayton-Matthews provides real-world, real-time analysis for Massachusetts business leaders and policy-makers. With the Massachusetts business climate roiling like a winter storm, UMass Boston economist Alan Clayton-Matthews fittingly compares his work to that of a weatherman - one in the middle of a hurricane, no less.

A Discoverable Past: At sites from a provisioning plantation to a "pray town," UMass Boston students and faculty use the tools of archaeology to reveal earlier ways of life.