April 2001 University Reporter

Guitarist Janson Debuts New CD

At UMass Boston, old adages don’t always apply. Remember the one about “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach”? It’s not true for many of our faculty, who are both teachers and doers. The Music Department’s Peter Janson is a case in point. This widely respected “doer” in his field has just issued his second solo CD, Sometimes From Here, featuring his particular brand of acoustic steel-string guitar virtuosity. A party to celebrate its release will be held June 9 at the Mansfield Music and Art Society.

To find Sometimes From Here in a store or at Amazon.com, says Janson, you would look under the New Age or acoustic instrumental category. His music also has roots in classical, jazz, folk and world music, all of which, he says, are part of him.

Janson calls this CD “another level up” from his previous release, Across the Bridge, in that he’s seeking wider distribution and planning more performances. It is released by Eastern Woods Music, an artist-run company formed by Janson and his wife Bernadette Levasseur, an artist who designs the CD covers. Across the Bridge was a finalist for best acoustic instrumental album of the year at the International New Age Voice Music Awards.

For Janson, as for many performing musicians, teaching offers a way to “share the gift.” A part-time faculty member for a number of years, he instructs individual guitar students, conducts the university’s student jazz band, and teaches a jazz history course. “I love the students,” he says, “and I love teaching.”

Public Safety Officer Prepares for Campus Self-Defense Class

Sponsored by Student Life, Public Safety Officer Clara Molina recently completed an intensive self-defense training in the Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) system. RAD is a program taught nationwide for colleges and institutions to provide realistic self-defense tactics and techniques for women. In the workshop, Molina was among women police officers, teachers, and program directors from New York, Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts. The training was a week of intensive workshops, combining classroom time in which participants learned crime statistics and safety measures with hands-on self-defense techniques. The program reviewed a scenario of attacks and responses for different places ranging from the bedroom to ATM machines.

“They don’t teach you to fight. They teach self-defense. The most important thing to do is escape and survive,” explains Molina. The program taught safety measures as simple as maintaining outdoor lights around entry ways and giving a spare set of apartment keys to a friend instead of hiding it under a mat or plant where others can find it. Molina’s goal is to conduct RAD workshops here on campus for free. She is researching ways to bring the needed equipment here to practice the safety and self-defense techniques she was taught.

New York Times Praises Schwartz’s Cairo Traffic

New York Times writer David Kirby notes, “Lloyd Schwartz is the master of the poetic one-liner, which he puts to a variety of inventive uses in this new collection of his work.” Kirby’s March 11 review of Schwartz’s book Cairo Traffic, the author’s third book of poems, highlights many of these “one-liners” and examines Schwartz’s use of end-stopped stanzas, terse sentences, and humor. Published by the University of Chicago press, the collection also includes several translations of contemporary Brazilian poems. Schwartz has been giving poetry readings from his book since January, hitting such spots as the Somerville Public Library, the Brookline Booksmith, and Washington University in Washington D.C. Schwartz has been at UMass Boston’s English Department since 1982 and is the codirector of the Creative Writing Program. He won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1994.

CPCS’ Stevens Partners with Dorchester Police

Stevens Dennis J. Stevens, assistant professor of criminal justice at the College of Public and Community Service, has been asked to serve on the Neighborhood Network Council by Dorchester’s police commander, Captain Robert Dunford, for the purpose of sharing his expertise on community policing. The council, composed of presidents and representatives of the various neighborhood groups throughout Dorchester, meets monthly to help review police and community matters.

The work is a natural extension to Stevens’s research, which has been to evaluate Dorchester community policing with his criminal justice students. Stevens and his students have been surveying the neighborhood of 85,000 culturally divergent residents to examine their perceptions of safety and police involvement in their communities.

Distributing surveys in various languages, Stevens has asked residents to describe the three biggest problems they have with their communities, with police response, and with language and communication; he has also asked them to evaluate possible solutions. Results are indicating that community and police perceptions are very different. Stevens’s goals are to help communities and police work together. In a new textbook on community policing, he will be comparing these evaluations from community responses with other neighborhoods in Boston, as well as in Alexandria, Virginia, Sacramento, California, Miami, Chicago, and midland Texas. Stevens regularly contributes to law enforcement and publishing literature.

Judith Ramaley Joins NERCHE Think Tank as a “Sage”

Soon to step down as president of the University of Vermont, Judith Ramaley recently joined the Senior Academics Guiding Educational Strategies Group (SAGES) based at the New England Resource Center for Higher Education (NERCHE). A blended think-tank and senior fellowship program, SAGES brings together educational leaders from throughout New England to examine public issues which affect higher education. The organization was launched in March with funding from UMass Boston and the Mellon Foundation. Members includes former presidents, provosts, and foundation heads, with Sherry Penney, former chancellor, David Knapp, former president of UMass, and David Scott, former chancellor at UMass Amherst joining the group’s ranks. Deborah Hirsch is the director of NERCHE.

Maynard High School Students Intern at WUMB Studios

A.J. MacDonald and John Reed joined Maynard high school freshman A.J. MacDonald and sophomore John Reed joined the WUMB staff for a two-day internship in February to expand and hone their radio experiences. The internship was established through a new partnership between Maynard High School’s WAVM and WUMB radio. WUMB has offered Maynard High’s communication students the chance to expand their radio resumes with hands-on broadcasting projects at the station.

The high schoolers worked with WUMB’s General Manager Pat Monteith and Dave Palmater creating promotional materials for an upcoming benefit concert and experimenting with science fiction movie bytes to create the “Folk Odyssey 2001” radio spots for the WUMB spring fundraiser which started on March 23.

The inaugural internships were a success on both sides. WUMB was impressed with the students praising their professionalism and dedication. Monteith plans to sponsor future internships during Maynard High’s vacations and summer breaks.

April Spotlights