College of Public and Community Service Honors Marie Kennedy

By Leigh DuPuy

Marie Kennedy’s colleagues filled the College of Public and Community Service (CPCS) Plaza for her "moving on" party, speaking of her 25 years of service with high praise and gratitude for her commitment to the college.
Since arriving at CPCS in 1978, Kennedy has served in many capacities--as professor of community planning, as well as the center head for both community planning and career programs, and program director of community planning and human services. At the time of her retirement, Kennedy was serving as associate dean for academic affairs.

Throughout her career, Kennedy was known for her ability to combine activism and scholarship. "It fueled her teaching and writing, about community development, planning, education, and participatory action research," said Suzanne Allmendinger, director of community outreach at CPCS. In addition to her work at CPCS, Kennedy devoted many hours to assisting community organizations beyond the Greater Boston area, including those in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

In a planned lecture for the event, Kennedy shared some of her personal motivations for her career path and interest in transformative community planning. "Lifting the voices of those who have been silenced by lack of education, lack of English–language ability, lack of legal freedom, lack of access to the mike--this has been a quest that has defined much of my adult life and has shaped my professional, academic, and activist practice," she said.

Kennedy was effusive about her experience with those at the college, saying, "I have been privileged to work with and learn from remarkable students and terrific colleagues."

In defining what she believes to be genuine community development, Kennedy noted, "A good planning project should leave a community not just with more immediate ‘products’--e.g., more housing--but also with an increased capacity to meet future needs. In other words, the process should be empowering to community members."

Drawing from her experiences locally and abroad, Kennedy outlined what she considers to be foundations for successful transformative planning: the self-awareness of planners in recognizing their own biases; the ability to help people make informed decisions for themselves; and the critical necessity for organizing political and education strategies. For Kennedy, it is most important to empower the community throughout the process.

Kennedy closed with a description of her goals for ideal community planning: "The challenge is to constantly expand ordinary people’s self-confidence, their trust in each other, their ability to understand and strategize about their situation, and through this their control over that situation."

Image: Marie Kennedy, professor of community planning and associate dean for academic affairs, celebrated her retirement on December 10. (Photo by Harry Brett)

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