Chancellor's Monday Message
Monday, March 23, 2015    
Have you ever seen the Salvador Dali painting "Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln" (click here)? Can you see Gala at the center, a small picture of Lincoln to the left, but stepping back, do you perceive that the entire painting is the head of President Lincoln? Dali was one of the most prominent practitioners of surrealism, an artistic movement that focused on expression of the subconscious through the creation of fantastic images and the juxtaposition of improbable or irrational objects. Last Thursday, while traveling through Florida for UMass alumni and donor events, I enjoyed the opportunity to visit the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg with our donors Richard and Muriel Lafrance and Interim Vice Chancellor Jack Moynihan. An old friend, architect Yann Weymouth, escorted us and proudly pointed out the distinctive features of his building design: a 75-foot geodesic glass bubble called the "enigma," a magnificent helical staircase, and a "mathematical garden" on the exterior. What wonderment!

 

Two weeks ago, Assistant Vice Chancellor Michael Hayes arranged for two architectural teams to present their designs to our Cabinet. Lynne Brooks from Bruner/Cott in Boston displayed the plan for the new Charlton Learning Pavilion, an expansion of the existing building that will add an auditorium, classrooms, and student gathering spaces. The team from the firm Ellenzweig explained the architectural renderings for the new SMAST Building that will be constructed on Rodney French Blvd. We expect to break ground for the Charlton expansion this coming June and for the SMAST Building in the Fall of 2015. Additionally, architect Kevin King from Ayers Saint Gross discussed the progress of our campus master plan. Please make sure you participate in the upcoming workshops for the master plan.

 

Kudos to Professor Ramprasad Balasubramanian for his new $225,000 Office of Naval Research (ONR) grant to support the study "Distributed Architecture to Address Communication Challenges in Achieving Multi-Unmanned Undersea Vehicle Autonomy"!

 

Congratulations to Professor Lucas Mann, whose book Lord Fear: A Memoir will be published in May! Two of the reviews on the Amazon website described Professor Mann as "the most incredible young memoirist in this country" and the book as "a powerful one, for its honesty, its emotional precision, and most of all for Mann's ability to probe, accede to, and resist the mythologizing power of memory."

 

Hats off to Sarah Kieran, who won the Cacchione Cup as the UMass Dartmouth equestrian team tied for sixth place at the IHSA Show at Roger Williams University last Saturday! This is the second consecutive Cacchione Cup awarded to Sarah.

 

I commend Dean Mary Lu Bilek and the Law School faculty for a positive American Bar Association (ABA) accreditation site visit last week, the third one in a five-year sequence prior to a final accreditation decision. As well, Dean Angappa Gunasekaran and the Charlton College of Business faculty deserve praise for a successful Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) reaccreditation visit! Thank you to their respective administrative teams, and to Provost Mohammad Karim and Vice Provost Magali Carrera for shepherding us through both processes.

 

We completed our annual Florida alumni development trip by converging with the UMass System alumni celebratory events at the Saint Patrick's Day parade in Naples on March 14, at the South Florida Museum and Aquarium in West Palm Beach on March 17, and at the Red Sox versus Twins baseball game at the Jet Blue Park in Fort Myers on March 18. In between, Interim Vice Chancellor Jack Moynihan and I enjoyed remarkable opportunities to meet with our beloved Claire T., Patrick and Lillian Carney as well as with extraordinary alumni whose professional successes and fascinating stories about their experiences at UMass Dartmouth touch and inspire me.

 

Stephen Donovan, a 1966 B.S. Accounting alumnus who rose to become President of the Global Beverage and North American Food & Beverage of Procter & Gamble Company, recounted growing up in New Bedford, working at Stop & Shop to support himself through college, and taking eight years to graduate from our precursor SMTI. He and Jack Hawes, a 1966 B.S. Management alumnus and retired CEO of Universal Fasteners, were the student leaders and organizers of the famous Torch Run on February 18, 1965. William Hayden, a 1962 B.S. Accounting graduate, currently the Managing Director of PNC Capital Markets, and who has been named multiple times as among the top 25 most successful African Americans on Wall Street, captivated us with his stories of growing up in a house on Buttonwood Street and playing at Buttonwood Park with childhood friends. They and a multitude of accomplished alumni represent the best of UMass Dartmouth.

 

Have a great week!

Chancellor's Signature
UMass Dartmouth