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Friends and Colleagues: 
Greetings from sunny Columbia Point. It's been a wonderful summer, that seems to be going on forever, since the spring was so warm. So far, global warming has been good for New England.
Even in the summer heat, McCormack Graduate School is making changes and continues to have an impact on the world around us. We are particularly proud that Dr. Michael Johnson, Chair of the Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, just received a $375,000 award from the National Science Foundation for a two-year project titled "Decision Models for Foreclosed Housing Acquisition and Development." Michael is principal investigator, with co-PIs from UMass Amherst and UMass Lowell. This is the largest award ever made to a member of our Public Policy faculty, and sets a great precedent for revenue generating social science research and for cross-campus collaboration. Congratulations Michael!
Our Center for Democracy and Development, founded and run by former interim MGS Dean and McCormack Institute Founder Dr. Ed Beard, received recognition in the Globe for its extraordinary work in training Chinese judges. USAID has been supporting this project for years, and it serves as an outstanding model for exporting the work of MGS around the world.
Our Commonwealth Compact staff, in collaboration with Dean Phil Quaglieri of the UMB College of Management and leadership from Bentley and Northeastern Universities, have created a Commonwealth Compact Business School Collaborative to promote the retention and promotion of minority business school faculty. This is an unusual collaboration among competitors, recently written up in the Boston Business Journal, being replicated by other employment sectors (such as higher ed and healthcare) among signers of the Commonwealth Compact.
I am pleased to announce that I have appointed David Sparks to serve as the permanent Director of the Collins Center. Under the founding leadership of Dr. Shelley Metzenbaum and now David-and with the irreplaceable help of Deputy Director Steve McGoldrick, who knows everyone in municipal government and everything about municipal government-the Collins Center is already making a big impact on Massachusetts state and local government, particularly in the areas of performance management and regionalization. Congratulations David! And the Collins Center has its first out-of-state engagement assisting the receiver of Central Falls, Rhode Island in its financial and operational turnaround.
This month we launched the website for the Collaborative Institute on Oceans, Climate and Security (CIOCS-pronounced "sy-ox") co-sponsored by MGS and the UMB College of Science and Math. This remains a very important and exciting interdisciplinary and broadly collaborative research institute reflecting our continuing expansion into the international policy arena. Special thanks to Vanessa DiCarlo, CIOCS Development Assistant, for her tremendous work on this site.
We regretfully say farewell to 13 year McCormack Institute/Graduate School employee Mike MacPhee. He started with the Institute as a work study student, and became the face of the Institute as he welcomed everyone to the 10th floor Healey "suite" (to put it nicely). And for many years, becoming full-time in the last couple, he was the guide, mentor, friend for a decade of MSPA students. Mike MacPhee is the kind of soul we want in MGS staff. He will be missed and fondly remembered. The job position has been listed here.
We have added a particularly important employment opportunity to our job postings, a search for a new Executive Director of Oiste, the Latino Civic Education Initiative to replace our friend Giovanna Negretti. I hope you'll think hard about candidates for this exciting opportunity, and check out our other job listings as well.
And finally, Dr. Murray Frank, a founding fellow of the McCormack Institute and continuing MGS collaborator, sent me an email asking who I was referring to in the last "Update," when I wrote of a "political leadership more concerned with partisan advantage than a willingness to compromise for progress." Like so many others, I do abhor our inability at the national level to find a bi-partisan coalition for anything other than (and this is fragile) money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It certainly seems to me that more dramatically than ever before, the Republican leadership in Congress has decided to oppose virtually any Presidential or majority party initiative, taking partisanship to an extraordinary new level. But the Democrats have also used the 60 vote rule in the Senate when they were in the minority to stymie "Republican" legislation, and used all manner of devices to block presidential appointments. It is just a terribly vicious and depressing state of affairs. Is there any chance that if the Democrats lost either the House or the Senate, that they would work to find common ground with the Republican leadership to move legislation that leadership supported?
I'm sorry to say I doubt it.
Enjoy August.
Steve Crosby, Dean
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Job Opportunities of Interest |
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MGS Internship Opportunity
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UMass Boston Career Services
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Visit Career Services or call 617-287-5519.
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Inclusion's the Game at Shriver Camp
Boston Herald, July 31, 2010
Article about Camp Shriver quotes Camp director and MGS Professor Gary Siperstein.
Recovery Continues Amid Worrisome Trade Deficit
americanprogress.org July 30, 2010
MGS Professor Christian Weller writes how business investment is carrying the recovery forward, but the trade deficit grows more worrisome.
Bring on the 'Geek Patrol' to Look at Town's IT Services
southcoasttoday.com, July 29, 2010
Article about the IT assesment performed by MGS's Collins Center for Public Management for the town of Middleborough.
Stimulus Jobs
CNBC, July 26, 2010
Assessing the state of the stimulus, with MGS Professor Christian Weller.
Retired judge to run broke RI city's finances
Associated Press, July 17, 2010
Article on how retired Superior Court Associate Justice Mark Pfeiffer will oversee Central Falls' finances mentions that he will partner with the Edward J. Collins Jr. Center for Public Management at UMass Boston.
FEMA D.A. Rich Serino Addresses Conference On Disaster Recovery Focusing On Elderly, People With Disabilities
Fema.gov, July 13, 2010
FEMA Deputy Administrator Rich Serino spoke at a conference put on in partnership with the McCormack Graduate School's Center for Rebuilding Sustainable Communities after Disasters (CRSCAD).
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 Robin Lush, a student in our International Relations program, is currently spending a month in rural Haiti conducting research for her final project. She is exploring the role of women in the reconstruction of Haitian society following the devastating January 2010 earthquake and is "blogging" her experience on the McCormack Graduate School Facebook page. Her updates and photos provide a fascinating look at this huge humanitarian challenge.
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Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance
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Registration is now open for CONFLICT STUDIES: The New Generation of Ideas, The Eighth Biennial Conference for Graduate Students Studying Conflict, taking place at UMass Boston October 22 - October 23, 2010, and sponsored by Graduate Programs in Dispute Resolution.
The Association for Conflict Resolution will present Peacemaker Award to Padraig O'Malley at its annual conference in Chicago on September 2nd. Associate Professor Darren Kew of the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security, and Global Governance will present the award on behalf of the organization. Instituted in 2001, the Peacemaker Award acknowledges the significant and sustained contributions to bring peace through various conflict resolution approaches to ethnic, religious, and civil conflicts that have raged domestically and outside the United States. Prior recipients have included Senator George Mitchell, Ambassador John McDonald, and former congressman Lee Hamilton.
New Fall Courses
Craig Murphy and Maria Ivanova, the two new faculty joining the Department of Conflict Resolution, Human Security and Global Governance this Fall, will each be teaching courses in their areas of specialization. The classes are open to both matriculated and non-matriculated students. Details for non-matriculated students can be found here;
in WISER, the classes are cross-listed:
Craig Murphy DisRes 697L #21068/PAFG 697L #21070 Special Topics: Global Governance
Maria Ivanova DisRes 697L #21069/PAFG 697L #21071 Special Topics: Global Environmental Governance
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The Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy
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Registration is now open for two new PWPP online courses offered this fall. Classes start September 13th.
Understanding Political Systems Worldwide: A Gender Lens
Women's Leadership in a Global Perspective
2010 National Now Conference
Loving our Bodies, Changing the World Boston, July 2-4
 Participants heard more about NOW's "RATIFY Women" which is a campaign calling for the US ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) as well as the state of the women's movement, electoral politics, women of color and empowerment. Attendees from the Center for Women in Politics: Anne Forman, Meredith Stafford and Donna Stewartson, 2010 PWPPP Alumni: Teresa Jenkins, Kenille Daniel, Gabrielle Giron.
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 Robert Weiner, Graduate Program Director of International Relations,will be working with Global Integrity, a Washington based NGO , which tracks governance and corruption trends around the world. Weiner will be evaluating the state of corruption in Romania and Moldova.
 Rezarta Bilali has had a busy summer schedule, speaking and making presentations at three conferences:
* "Historical Memories of Intergroup Conflict" presented at Intergroup Conflict: Bridging Social Psychology and Peace Perspectives. UMass Amherst, June 17-20, 2010.
* "The Effect of Group Identity on Construals of Intergroup Violence" at International Association for Conflict Management conference, June 24-27, 2010.
* Presented two papers at the International Society for Political Psychology conference in San Francisco, July 7-10, 2010.
"Beyond Denial: Responsibility and Accountability in the Aftermath of Mass Violence" and "The Differential Effect of Identity Centrality and Ingroup Superiority on Construals of Past Intergroup Conflict"
 David Matz spent 6 weeks in China, where he was a visiting scholar at Jilin University Law School. At Jilin he taught classes in Negotiation and alternative dispute Resolution. In addition, he gave a series of lectures on human rights at Jilin and a number of other universities. Matz also served as a judge in the second annual law student Negotiation Competition in Beijing; Matz co-founded this competition last year, in cooperation with Professor Andrew Lee of Beijing University School of Law.
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Want to post your event?
All submissions should be received at least ten days before the event date. The MGS Update cannot guarantee that all submissions will be published. Inquiries regarding the events published in The MGS Update should be directed to the phone number or email provided. Please send listings to robert.okeefe@umb.edu or call 617.287.5536.
Thank you.
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