Chancellor's Monday Message
Monday, June 22, 2015    

Happy Father's Day to all Dads! I hope you had a joyful Sunday surrounded by the love and caring of your sons and daughters. To those in our community who are observing Ramadan to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to the prophet Muhammad, we wish you a good fast from sunset to sundown today and every day of the month.

 

I invite you once again this year to join me at the Bristol County Savings Bank Freedom Festival on Friday, July 3, 2015, at 5:30 PM at our athletic fields outside the Tripp Athletic Center on campus. As always, we anticipate a crowd of more than 12,000 in a festive celebration of July 4th, complete with music by Santa Mamba, El Caribe, and the Town of Dartmouth Community Band; and food, frolic, and fireworks. I look forward to seeing you there!

 

Congratulations to Professor of Music Tianxu Zhou, the Director of our Choral Program, and 15 UMassD choir students who just ended their successful and well-attended international performances in Florence and Rome!

 

Kudos to Professor of Civil Enginering Walaa Mogawer for a new $119,978 research grant from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation for his proposed research, "Implementation of Strategic Research Program 2 (SRP2) Technologies Preservation Approaches for High Traffic Volume Roadways."

 

Plaudits to Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Sukalyan Sengupta for his National Science Foundation grant in the amount of $101,582 to support the study, "Collaborative Research: GOALI - Sustainable Phosphates Recovery from Agricultural Waste," in partnership with Professor Lee Blaney from the University of Maryland Baltimore County!

 

This past week, I attended with my fellow Chancellors as well as Provost Karim, Senior Vice Chancellor Gerry Kavanaugh, Associate Provost Tesfay Meressi and Dean Angappa Gunasekaran the UMass System Board of Trustees meeting at UMass Amherst. Provost Karim did a remarkable job in presenting UMassD's proposed PhD Program in Business Administration at the Committee of Academic and Student Affairs the week before and shepherding the proposal effectively through the BOT process, responding to questions that surfaced during the deliberations that eventually led to a vote of approval. The next step will be to forward the proposal to the Board of Higher Education for the next stage of review in September. This was the last BOT meeting for President Robert Caret, who is transitioning to his new position at the University System of Maryland beginning on July 1. Thank you, President Caret, for all your stellar contributions to UMass in the last four years, and wishing you the best in Maryland.

 

Following our 32-year family tradition of two-week summer travel abroad, Joel and I have been partaking of Ernest Hemingway's Paris, "a moveable feast." Although this is our sixth trip to the City of Lights, what endless delights await us in rambling around the Jardin des Tuileries, created by Catherine de Medici and patterned after the elegant gardens of her native Florence; in enjoying a Vivaldi concert at the exquisite royal Gothic Saint Chapelle with its magnificent stained glass windows; in viewing the breathtaking collection of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, and antique furniture at the Musee Jacquemart-Andre; and in perusing the rooms of the Maison Victor Hugo in the Place des Vosges and truly appreciating one of the greatest French novelists and poets who famously authored Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

 

Have a good week, everyone!

Chancellor's Signature
UMass Dartmouth