Campus Notes
University Communications
University Reporter
Conferences, Presentations, and Workshops
On Monday, October 2, the McCormack Institute sponsored an off-campus workshop on "Why the Young Don't Vote?" held at South Boston High School, featuring comments from Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner, State Representative Antonio Cabral, Republic District Attorney Michael J. Sullivan of Plymouth County, and former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. The workshop was the joint project of UMass Boston undergraduate Jim Coughlin and McCormack Director Edmund Beard. The event drew some fifty young people from area high schools and colleges.
The newly established Office of Service Learning and Community Outreach was selected to participate in a Service-Learning Institute conducted and underwritten by the Vermont Campus Compact. Associate Provost Lisa Gonsalves; Dean of Student Affairs Stephanie Janey; OSLCO coordinator Jain Ruvidich-Higgins; and AmeriCorps VISTA Peachy Myers represented UMass Boston at the three-day conference held at Lyndon State College, Vermont on October 27-29.
UMass Boston biologists Jeremy Hatch, Jennifer Arnold, and Patty Szczys made presentations at workshops on the North American Colonial Waterbird Conservation Plan (October 30 -31) and the cormorant-fisheries conflict in North America (November 1), preceding the annual meeting of the Waterbird Society in Plymouth, MA.
Burton Holmes, director of continuing education marketing, for the Division of Enrollment Services and University Communications, chaired the annual conference for the New England region of the University Continuing Education Association (UCEA). This year's conference, "Strategies for Smooth Sailing: Charting a Course for Success," was held on October 25-27 in Westbrook, Connecticut. Jack Hughes, director of professional training programs, and Stuart Phillips, assistant director of professional training programs, Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education, took part in the panel presentation to discuss the topic "Developing and Sustaining Strategic Alliances with Corporate Partners."
On October 16 and 17, UMass Boston's Division of Corporate, Continuing, and Distance Education (CCDE) and the Boston and Northern New England chapters of the Society for Technical Communication sponsored InterChange, a conference for technical, marketing, and scientific writers, editors, and graphic designers. The conference attracted over 200 participants. Conference organizers from UMass Boston included CCDE Dean
Dirk Messelaar, Administrative Services Manager Joseph Lally, and Publications
Manager Brian Middleton.
Heléna Ragoné, Anthropology Department, gave a lecture,
"Surrogate Motherhood in America," at the 20th Annual Conference
of the Society of Reproductive and Infant Psychology at the University
of Birmingham, UK. She also participated in the conference "Bridging
the Gap: Policies in Adoption and Assisted Reproduction, A Round Table,"
at the Maclean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of
Chicago, IL.
The classics departments at UMass Boston and UMass Amherst jointly organized a workshop for Massachusetts Latin teachers on Saturday, September 30. The workshop, called "Guide by the Side of Sage or the Stage? Recent Approaches to Teaching Latin," was held at the UMass 1-495 Professional Development Center in Westborough. Classics professor Kenneth Rothwell was principal organizer of UMass Boston's role in the workshop. Leading off the workshop was Professor Suzy Groden of the Graduate College of Education, who opened the workshop by addressing underlying principles of student-centered teaching.
Florence Farrell of the Clinical Psychology Program will defend her final dissertation, "The Consequence of Depression for the Transition to Adulthood," on November 6.
Publications
Lilia I. Bartolomé, associate professor in the Graduate College
of Education, coedited the newly published book Immigrant Voices: In Search
of Educational Equity with Henry T. Trueba. She and Trueba wrote a chapter
for the book: "Beyond the Politics of Schools and the Rhetorica of
Fashionable Pedagogies: The Significance of Teacher Ideology."
The Biology Department's Kamal Bawa and grad student Reinmar Seidler are weighing in with the debate over sustainable development worldwide. Together, they are coediting a volume in UNESCO's forthcoming Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS) entitled Principles of Sustainable Development. Bawa and Seidler also are coauthors of a summary of "Principles of Sustainable Development" for the Forerunner Volume, as well as a summary chapter in the encyclopedia itself. Seidler is also author of a separate EOLSS chapter entitled "Strong vs. Weak Sustainability: the Limits to Capital Substitution."
Assistant Professor Avery Faigenbaum, Dept. of Human Performance and Fitness, coauthored a position statement paper entitled "The National Strength and Conditioning Association's Basic Guidelines for the Resistance Training of Athletes," which was published in Strength and Conditioning.
Zehra Schneider Graham, environmental manager, Environmental Health and Safety, coauthored the article "The New England Laboratories Project XL: An experiment in laboratory regulation" which was published in Chemical Health and Safety in their September/October 2000 issue.
Donaldo Macedo, Applied Linguistics, recently had his edited book Chomsky on Education published by Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. The book includes an extensive dialogue between Macedo and Chomsky in which they discuss the role of North American intellectuals in the reproduction of the dominant ideology. In addition, Macedo wrote an introduction to the 30th anniversary of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire and an essay entitled "Beyond Psychologizing Multiculturalism" in Immigrant Voices: In Search of Educational Equity.
Heléna Ragoné, Anthropology Department, has published her fourth book, Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, and Nationalism (coedited with France Winddance Twine). Her chapter is entitled "Of Likeness and Difference: How Race Is Being Transfigured by Gestational Surrogacy." She has also contributed a chapter, "Reproduction and Reproductive Technologies," for the Handbook of Social Studies in Health and Medicine and a chapter, "The Gift of Life: Surrogate Motherhood, Gamete Donation, and Constructions of Altruism," for Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in a Consumer Culture.
College of Nursing Professor Lin Zhan's book Asian Voices: Asian and Asian American Health Educators Speak Out was awarded Book of the Year by the American Journal of Nursing for the most outstanding professional development achievement.
Performances
Cheap Trills, a homage to Victor Borge, by music professor David Patterson, will be performed at "Toronto 2000: Musical Intersections" on November 3 by pianist Nanette Kaplan Solomon.
Awards and Honors
Contemporary acoustic guitarist Peter Jansen, Music Department, received "Best Acoustic Instrumental Album of the Year – Finalist" at the NAV Music Awards for his debut album Across the Bridge. Jansen has begun to record his next album, which has an anticipated release date of January 2001.
Kevin Bowen, director of the William Joiner Center, was named a recipient of an Artists Fellowship in Poetry for 2000 from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The awards are given every other year. This year, seven fellows were selected for poetry.
The New England American Studies Association recognized Lois Rudnick, American Studies Program, as an "outstanding" contributor to the field of American Studies and NEASA, and named its biennial book prize the "Lois Rudnick Prize for an Outstanding Book by a NEASA Member." Rudnick is the first recipient of the prize.
Grants
Lois Biener, Center for Survey Research, received a grant of $4,142,070 from the National Cancer Institute's new antismoking initiative to evaluate the effectiveness of three major types of public health interventions used by the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program.
In January 2000, Maria Papuga, Biology Department, received a 5-year, $500,000 NSF Early Career Investigator (CAREER program) Award to investigate red and white yeast. The CAREER program is highly competitive and targets pre-tenured faculty with a strong linkage between their teaching and research activities. The Presidential Young Investigator Awardees are chosen from among the CAREER awardees in a given year. The title of the grant is "Exploring Authentic Inquiry: Factors that Influence Students' Learning of the Process of Science."
Research and Polls
Robert Bucci, research director of the UMass Poll, conducted a nationwide survey for the Patriots' Trail Girl Scout Council that found that girl scouts are more likely to be involved in politics and vote than non-girl scouts. He is currently conducting a Massachusetts survey for the Division of Information Technology on the use of the Internet in the workplace.
The UMass Poll is currently working with Town OnLine and conducting a weekly survey of Massachusetts voters called MassPulse.
Appointments and Departures
Lois Biener, Center for Survey Research, was appointed to the Scientific and Program Advisory Steering Committee of the American Legacy Foundation and will serve as chair of the Evaluation Research Panel. The organization is responsible for the Truth.com national antitobacco media campaign.
Reverend Adrienne Berry-Burton has joined the Interfaith Campus Ministry as the Protestant campus minister. She has been appointed by the Board of Boston Cambridge Ministries in Higher Education (BCMHE), which oversees the ministry at UMass Boston as well as those at MIT, Suffolk University, Boston University, and Harvard University. She replaces Sarah Small, who served as the Protestant minister for many years, and has been ill for quite some time. Dean of Students Stephanie C. Janey recently accepted a position on the BCMHE Board as a representative from the UMass Boston community.
Mary Bonner, secretary for the English Graduate Program, retired from the University on October 21 after 26 years of employment. She moved to Ireland on November 1.
The National Academy of Sciences has appointed Gary N. Siperstein, director
of the Center for Social Development and Education, to a two-year term
on the Committee on Disability Determination for Mental Retardation.
Births
Fernando Colina, Office of Institutional Research, and his wife Sonia
had their first child, Olivia, on August 5.
A daughter, Liana Lesley Freeman, was born to Dale H. Freeman of the
UMass Boston Archives and his wife Andra on April 14, 2000.
In the News
McCormack Institute Director Edmund Beard was interviewed live on national
CNN television on October 3 on historical parallels to earlier presidential
debates, the potential impact of such debates on voters, and the legitimacy
of excluding third parties from the debates. Beard also offered pre-debate
commentary on Boston's WBZ Channel 4 and on New England Cable News.
Robert Bucci, research director of the UMass Poll, was quoted in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette on the tax rate rollback initiative.
Lou DiNatale, director of the UMass Poll, appeared on WBZ Channel 4 news commenting on the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy-Nixon Debate; on October 11, he gave debate commentary on New England Cable News.
Professor Garrison Nelson, senior fellow of the McCormack Institute and UMass Poll, was quoted by the Baltimore Sun, Burlington Free Press, Chicago Tribune, Congressional Quarterly, Providence Journal, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, andWashington Post on the upcoming elections in Vermont. He also was on WKDR-AM and WPTZ-TV giving commentary on the presidential debates.
Professor James Ward, Political Science Department, was interviewed by
WLVI Channel 56 to discuss the history of voting on October 18.
Correction
Due to a printer's error, the photos for the October University Reporter were scanned improperly, making them unclear and distorted.