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 The McCormack Update

October 11, 2011

                                                                                                                                                             

Dean Steve Crosby - 09

Friends and Colleagues-      

 

Each year, the Chancellor of UMass Boston asks one of the campus colleges to nominate and host the guest speaker for our Fall Convocation Ceremony.  This year was our turn, and following the suggestion of MGS senior leadership, we nominated Ms. Elizabeth Warren.  At the time, she was working in the White House to help establish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and was widely expected to be nominated to run that body.  Instead, as you know, the President did not nominate her for that position, she returned to Massachusetts and her job at the Harvard Law School, and decided to run for the United States Senate.  Fortuitously for us, she announced her candidacy one day before we hosted her on campus, which made her Convocation appearance and subsequent lunch with MGS faculty and staff especially exciting. Ms. Warren's advice to students at Convocation was steeped in her own past: "So when someone says to you, 'you can't do something,' if you believe in it do it anyway. When someone says, you're going to get beat even before the game begins, quit,' then get in there and fight harder.  Stand up for what you believe in, because sometimes, sometimes you can win."

 

With that auspicious beginning to the school year, we welcomed an entering class of 130 students to MGS, 20 PhD, 72 Masters, and 38 Certificates, from 11 countries plus the United States.  The average age of our entering class is 34.7 years, with the youngest at 21.8 and the oldest at 61.3.  We encourage our entering, as well as returning, students to get a taste of the full variety of activities at the school; do keep an eye on the calendar of events and do check the curriculum offerings for courses and other programs that might interest you.

We are continuing to win groundbreaking new grant awards:

  • The Center for Peace, Democracy and Development recently won a $700,000, three year grant from USAID, to collaborate with the Nigerian Interfaith Mediation Center to do interfaith conflict resolution with Muslims and Christian communities.
  • Our Edward J. Collins Center for Public Management was just awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the next stage in implementing a comprehensive performance management system across all of the secretariats of the Executive Branch.  This is the most ambitious and comprehensive performance management project ever attempted across state government, and is designed to help all of the Governor's key executives advance his targeted priorities in MassGoals: reducing youth violence, closing the achievement gap, creating jobs, and controlling health care costs.   

In a time of severely constrained public resources, the public sector must be able to deliver services in the most cost effective manner possible. The Collins Center's approach to rigorous performance management is one of the best tools available to ensure that delivery, and we look forward to marketing this resource across the country.

 

Ardiana and MilosAnd finally, I want to share with you one very happy event:  Over a year ago, when I was in Mitrovica, Kosovo at the 2nd Annual Forum on Cities in Transition from Conflict (FCTC), Moakley Chair Padraig O'Malley and I decided to award UMass Boston scholarships to two extraordinary young people, one a Kosovar and one a Serb, whose participation in our conference demonstrated powerfully how people from fractured societies can come together to achieve common goals.  I'm delighted to tell you that Ardiana Osmani, a young Kosovar woman from Mitrovica South, arrived in Boston on Friday, a full time student in English as a Second Language.  And we expect Milos Golubovic, a Serb from Mitrovica North, to join us in January. It is a thrill to welcome Ardiana and Milos to the United States and to UMass Boston, and kudos to Pat Peterson for her tenacious help in raising the money to provide these scholarships.

 

When I last wrote, the Red Sox were in first place. Some things don't work out, but the chrysanthemums will still bloom.  Welcome back to school and have a wonderful fall.

 

 

Deans signature

Steve Crosby, Dean

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Meet the Faculty 

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MGS in the NEWS

Buyer Beware
Center for American Progress,
September 30, 2011
MGS Professor  Christian Weller authored this article about how alternative-benefit plans could increase turnover among more experienced public employees, including teachers.

Dracut Board Hopes to Hire New Manager
Lowell Sun, September 27, 2011
Dracut selectmen have hired Richard Kobayashi, an associate with the Edward J. Collins, Jr. Center for Public Management, to lead the search for a new town manager.

Economic Snapshot for September 2011
Center for American Progress,
September 27, 2011
Weller reveals the status of economic growth in the U.S., the labor market, and financial distress.

'Stay the Course'
Lethbridgeherald.com,
September 22, 201
1
John McGah, Executive Director of Give US Your Poor, was interviewed in an article by the Lethbridge Herald following his lecture at the "Bringing Lethridge Home" conference.

Ryan McLane Melrose Welcomes New Veterans Service Officer 
Melrose Patch,
August 18, 2011
Public Policy PhD student Ryan McLane has been named Melrose's Veterans Service Officer.

Student News

Congrats to our newest alumnae.  Erin McGaffigan, PhD successfully defended her Public Policy dissertation, "Understanding Participant Involvement in the Design, Implementation, and Improvement of Cash and Counseling Programs."  Kimberly Sauder Stoeckel has earned her PhD in Gerontology following the successful defense of her dissertation research on "The Role of Home Environments in Residential Adjustment Decision Making in Later Life."

 

Seeking students and alumni to feature in "60 second interviews"
As a new way to promote our fine graduate programs at MGS, we would like to feature one current student or alumnus/a in all future newsletters and post them on our website as well.  If you wish to tell your story about why you chose to study here or how you have put your degree to work in your chosen career field, please email our director of marketing and communications at [email protected].
Events Calendar
College Conversations  

Save the date: November 8, 3:30 - 5 p.m

 

"Whom Is It Helping Anyway? Globalization and the Crisis in Capitalismwith Professor Maria Ivanova  and Michael Keating

 Graduate Student  Recruitment   

Help us spread the word that MGS will be recruiting at the following graduate school fairs this fall: 

 

October 24 at Colby College (Waterville, ME) 

 

October 25 at Bates College (Lewiston, ME)  

 

October 25 at Bowdoin College (Brunswick, ME)  

 

October 26 at UMass Amherst (Amherst, MA)  

 

November 16 at UMass Boston Graduate Showcase 

 Faculty Search Underway  

The Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs seeks to hire a tenure-track assistant professor whose research supports goals of social justice in diverse areas of inquiry with an embedded international, comparative focus. We are looking for someone with expertise in educational or health policy who is interested in policy impacts on communities of color or disadvantaged communities.  Read the full job description. 

Public Policy and
Public Affairs 
Michael AhnIn September, Michael J. Ahn, Assistant Professor was nominated as the President-Elect for Northeast Conference on Public Administration which incorporates various American Society for Public Administration state chapters and academic and public institution members in the Northeast region of the country.  The election will take place in October.  However, as the President-elect of MassASPA, he will be working this year to coordinate the NECoPA conference in Boston - hopefully here at UMass Boston.  Professor Ahn has also been elected as a committee member for the Section on Science and Technology in Government (SSTIG) for ASPA.
Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy  
Carol Hardy-Fanta NewOn September 12th, Carol Hardy-Fanta, director of the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, gave the keynote speech at the opening ceremonies of Hispanic Heritage Month at Brandeis University; the topic was Hispanic immigration and the DREAM Act.  On September 4th, she presented a paper titled "Perceived Constituency Linkages and Dimensions of Representation among Racial Minorities in Subnational Levels of Office" at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in Seattle, Washington. At the same meeting she also gave a panel presentation at the Latino Politics Workshop; the topic was "Latina Perspectives in Political Science: Research Questions, Analytical Approaches, and Unique Insights."
Center For Social Policy

The Center for Social Policy was selected for participation in a two-day national webinar this month on Characterizing Neighborhood Change with Data, sponsored by the Coalition of Urban Serving Universities, Office of Urban Initiatives in Washington, D.C.   The webinar highlights examples of university partnerships with neighborhoods/local communities across the country, with a particular focus on the use of neighborhood data as part of their urban-serving missions.   Tim Davis, a senior member of the CSP research team, will present the center's evaluation of the Fairmount Initiative as the case study for this webinar.

 

CSP & CWPPP    

On October 3, at an event co-sponsored by the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy and the Center for Social Policy, Henrik Wagenaar, Professor of Public Policy at Leiden University (The Netherlands), presented to a round table of practitioners, students and faculty on the results of a major comparative study on prostitution policy in Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands, where it has been either legalized or regulated. Participants enjoyed an excellent discussion on his research findings, as well as on the how policies were created and the impacts on the women involved.

OLLI  

Sponsored by McCormack Graduate School's Gerontology Institute, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) was established in 1999 and has been successfully attracting older learners to its educational courses, lectures, social events, and travel opportunities. This fall, OLLI formed an alliance with Stonewall Communities Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI), a Boston-based non-profit serving gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered seniors. The Stonewall Communities program has offered classes and lecture programs to its more than 200 members throughout eastern Massachusetts for the past four years.


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