 Weekly News for Faculty, Staff and Friends of the Worcester State College Community |
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NEWS WSC Students Meet with Congressman McGovern in D.C. Annual Conference
Celebrates International
Over 100 Displays of Scholarship and Creativity Faculty to Publish Urban History Book Together Colleges of the Worcester Consortium Career Fair Center for Community Media Newsletter Retirement and Employee Service Recognition Program Borders Bookstore Education Appreciation Week
Corey Dolgon has just completed his speaking tour in New Jersey and New York. Professor Dolgon gave two singing lectures on folk songs and the U.S. labor movement titled In Search of One Big Union at the College of St. Elizabeth in Morristown, NJ and at William Patterson University in Wayne, NJ. He also presented a workshop on service learning and civic engagement titled "From Service to Community-Based Learning: Critiques and Approaches," at Wagner College in Staten Island, NY.
AROUND CAMPUS
WSC Students Meet with Congressman McGovern
Emily Dennstedt
(Biology ’10), Mike Procacini (Geography ’11) and
Michael Rosati (Sociology ’10) spent the weekend learning from experts
about climate change solutions, marching with 2,500 other students to the
coal-powered plant that serves the capital in the hope of shutting it down, and
meeting with Rep. James McGovern to discuss their concerns about green jobs. “I’ve never had an
opportunity to make my voice heard like that,” Procacini said of their sit-down
visit with the Congressman. “He wants Worcester to be a green city and he really
listened to us.” “He told us that
Worcester led the Industrial Revolution, so why can’t it lead the Green
Revolution?” Rosati added. “Rep. McGovern told us to come home and start the
green revolution, and he’d back us.” The three split up and
participated in as many workshops as they could fit in. The highlights? “Getting
to the Truth: Pulling the Curtain Back on False Solutions to our Energy Crisis,”
“Cap Carbon and Trade? Invest? Auction? Dividend? A Conversation that Explores
All the Options” and “The Road to Copenhagen: The Future of International
Climate Legislation.” The last workshop
included actions students could take before the December international climate
summit in Copenhagen. “We’d like America to be
a leader this time,” Procacini said. “and not repeat our past failure with the
Kyoto Protocol.” Rosati, who participated
in Power Shift 2007, said he was impressed with the workshop “Greening the
Curriculum: Climate Action Perspectives for High School Students.”
He brought home ideas for greening the college and the city. “We need to make WSC
students aware of how much they waste and get them to recycle more,” he said.
“We’re also planning a clean-up of University Park on March 28. Before we can
make it green, we’ve got to make it clean.” They’ll also contact
their fellow Power Shift participants at Worcester Consortium colleges to
sponsor a green jobs fair later this spring. “For every $1 million
invested in coal, five jobs are created,” Dennstedt said. “That same investment
in green jobs creates 17 jobs.” The three were
practically strangers until Friday morning when they hopped in Procacini’s car
for the drive to Washington. Dennstedt and Rosati run WSC campaigns on global
warming solutions and recycling as members of MassPIRG. Procacini recently
joined the organization. “We didn’t know we were
going until Thursday night,” Dennstedt explained. They’d tried to get funding
from the college, but they’d been unsuccessful. No funds are available to
support such student activities. Ten WSC faculty and two
staff members chipped in about $350 to support the students’ trip. When that
money ran out, they slept on the floor of the hotel rooms of other Power Shift
participants. “A lot of schools sent a
lot of students,” Rosati said. “Our professors contributed to make it possible
for us to go.” Dr. Patricia Benjamin
(Geography) said it was important for WSC students to participate in Power Shift
because the campus had been a participant in the national teach-in on global
warming solutions on Feb. 5. “This was the next step,” she said. Such experience is
invaluable as students learn to take action on the values they’re developing at
the college. “Being part of a larger movement makes you feel empowered and less
isolated,” she said. Empowered is a word the
students used often to describe their Power Shift experiences. “There were holes in my
understanding of climate change,” Dennstedt said. “I work at Tufts in infectious
diseases on tick research. Already we’re starting to see in ticks an effect of
the climate changes in central Massachusetts.” She wanted to learn
about policy solutions and strategies to achieve them.
“Our generation won’t
stand for piecemeal solutions,” she said. “The climate change situation connects
everything---from the economy to the international situation. We want to tackle
it all.” If you’re interested in
having one or all of these students speak to your classes, just ask them. They
learned a lot and have plenty to share.
Annual Conference Celebrates International
Dr. K. Soysa, director of Women’s Studies, welcomed the
audience, and thanked her predecessors for paving the way for Women’s Studies at
Worcester State College. Last year, at the inaugural conference, there were six
presenters. This year, there were 11 presenters across five departments, namely
Urban Studies, Languages and Literature, Philosophy, History, and Psychology.
The speakers this year were Dr. Lisa Krissoff-Boehm, Dr. Lori Dawson,
Dr. Kristin Waters, Dr. Judy Jeon-Chapman, Dr. Karen Woods Weierman, Dr. Josna
Rege, Dr. Aldo Garcia Guevara, Dr. Andrea Dottolo, Dr. Sandra McEvoy, Dr. Barry
DeCoster and Dr. Champika K. Soysa. The event was very well attended
throughout the day by students, faculty, and staff, and members of the The Women’s Studies Program is interdisciplinary, and its faculty members represent many departments, including Biology, Business Administration, Communications, Criminal Justice, Health, History, Languages & Literature, Music, Nursing, Philosophy, Physical and Earth Sciences, Psychology, Sociology, Urban Studies, and Visual and Performing Arts. The program offers about 25 classes every semester, and students can complete the Women’s Studies Concentration by taking just five classes. Many of these classes also count towards distribution requirements, so students can add a concentration without having to take extra courses.
As
pre-registration for Fall 2009 approaches, the Women’s Studies Advisory Board
will call on advisors to recruit students to the concentration.
Please address your questions about the program to K. Soysa, at x8703 or
csoysa@worcester.edu. The student
organization, the Women’s Forum, welcomes new members.
Please contact Valerie Goguen
vgoguen@worcester.edu or Mary
Jane Rosati
mrosati@worcester.edu for more
information. The Women’s Studies Program thanks the campus community for their
support of this event.
Over 100 Displays of Scholarship and Creativity If you’re at all curious about the work faculty and students have been doing this academic year, then put the April 29 Celebration of Scholarship and Creativity on your calendar. More than 100 posters of student and faculty research, and two dozen books, book chapters and published articles will be on display from 3:30-5:30 p.m. Musical and theatrical performances, DVDs and other media presentations round out the offerings. “We’re attracting a wide variety of scholarship and creative work from the college’s departments and programs,” said Maureen Shamgochian, interim Vice President for Academic Affairs. “I’m looking forward to seeing all this work.” The Student Center’s Blue Lounge, North/South Auditorium and exhibit area will be the venues. The annual student art show, which will be open then, will be in the first floor gallery of the Science and Technology building. Invitations to this event are being extended to the college’s trustees, foundation and alumni board members, and Worcester State’s neighbors. A reception for faculty, trustees, and board members will be from 5-6 p.m. in the Foster Room. “This is an opportunity for our faculty to meet the college’s trustees and board members,” Shamgochian said. “And for those people to meet faculty.” Direct questions about the event to Barbara Zang, bzang@worcester.edu, who is coordinating the event for the Office of Academic Affairs.
Faculty to Publish Urban History Book Together
Just below the site’s little “Add to Cart” button is the publication date: August 1, 2010, which is about a year and a half from now. If you’re Steven Corey or Lisa Krissoff Boehm of the Urban Studies department, that date seems as close as tomorrow. They’re the editors of this volume, and since they got the Routledge contract for it, they’ve been plowing ahead on the 594-page collection. “Lisa and I always wanted to write a US-based text together,” Corey said. “We’re both urban historians and between us, we have more than 35 years of teaching experience. We have a good feeling for what’s needed in the field.” The road from idea to contract was relatively swift, as these things go. Publishers had been seeking ideas for texts from both professors. Last January, the pair appeared on a panel at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting. Their topic was “teaching urban history.” “It’s rare to have people from the same institution on a panel together,” Corey said. “Afterward, the editor of the Journal of Urban History asked us to turn the panel presentations into an entire journal issue.” The November 2009 edition of the Journal of Urban History will be the first-ever issue devoted to teaching. Krissoff Boehm is that volume’s editor. Both professors contributed articles. “We’re thrilled to be part of this,” she said. Meanwhile, they decided to pitch a joint book project to the publishers seeking manuscript ideas from them separately. “This was a much stronger book proposal because we’re drawing on our collective teaching experience,” Krissoff Boehm said. “Each of us regularly teaches about a dozen different Urban Studies courses, so we’ve read widely in the field,” she added. “We’re in a great position to select material for the book.” A 2008-09 mini-grant allowed the two to do preliminary research for the book proposal. It paid for their travel to the Urban History Association conference in Houston in November. There, they talked about their book idea and asked professors their needs for the courses they teach. Many professors of urban history, Corey and Krissoff Boehm included, use “The City Reader,” a collection of readings that spans the globe temporally and topically. “It’s a classic,” Corey said. The Corey-Krissoff Boehm collection will focus American urban scholarship from colonial times to the present. “There’s enough interdisciplinary that we don’t have to stray hard from the field of history,” Corey said. “We’re identifying dynamically written essays that are accessible to our projected audience, which ranges from advanced high school students to academic scholars.” The project is moving along. “We have a pretty complete table of contents now,” Krissoff Boehm said. The volume will contain 35 essays, primary documents and a bibliography. “The American Urban Reader” will also have a companion website, which is unusual for such a book. The two have split up the work, dividing the projected 10 chapters of the book between them. Each will edit five chapters then they’ll swap chapters and do the editing again. Together they’ll write an introduction to the book and to each chapter. “Right now we’re in this tedious process of getting approvals to use previously published work,” Corey said. They’ll work throughout this summer on the project and will use the remaining funds in their mini-grant to travel to conferences in Chicago and New York in search of additional material. Corey has a sabbatical in the fall 2009 semester, so he’ll devote that period to polishing the manuscript. Worcester State colleagues have been helpful. “Don Vescio set up a sharepoint site for our use,” Corey said. “My jump drive is chock full, so this is extremely helpful as a place to store data.” They also may include the work of Corey Dolgon of WSC’s sociology department. “We hope to have him in it,” Corey said. “His work on the Hamptons is awesome.” Dolgon’s book is “The End of the Hamptons: Scenes from the Class Struggle in America’s Paradise.” The chair of the Urban Studies department, Corey came to the college in 1995. Krissoff Boehm joined the department five years later. “We see this book as an important contribution to the field of urban history,” she said. “We’re delighted to finally have a chance to do it.” The mini-grant was essential. “There’s no other way to fund this preliminary work,” Corey said. “We’re grateful for the assistance. It’s been critical to our project.”
COLLEGES OF WORCESTER CONSORTIUM CAREER FAIR
QCC
DENTAL CLINIC CENTER FOR COMMUNITY MEDIA NEWSLETTER The Communication Department's Center for Community Media Spring newsletter is now available. The faculty and students of the center welcome the WSC community to support the center's mission and participate in the program. http://www.worcester.edu/CCM/newsletter Once you click the link, you will need Adobe reader
to access the newsletter.
For more information, contact Julie Frechette:
jfrechette@worcester.edu GRANT LUNCH WORKSHOPS
March 10, 2009 “Research Compliance” We will discuss how human subjects, hazardous materials and other compliance issues relate to grants and what you need to do. This is a series of brown bag lunches. All workshops will take place on Tuesdays from 11:30 to 12:30 at the Center for Teaching and Learning (Sullivan Room 117). The Center for Teaching and Learning will be providing coffee, tea, and water. Please pre-register with Andrea Bilics at: Andrea.Bilics@worcester.edu or cteachlearn@worcester.edu
RETIRMENT AND
EMPLOYEE SERVICE RECOGNITION PROGRAM
BORDERS BOOKSTORE EDUCATORS APPRECIATION WEEK
Worcester State College offers sincere condolences to the family of Vera Dowden Baldwin.
Vera Dowden Baldwin, 96, died of
pneumonia March 3, 2009 at St. Mary Health Care Center in Worcester, MA. She was
the wife of the Reverend Langford Baldwin, to whom she was married for 27 years,
and who predeceased her in August 2008.
WSC IN THE NEWS
New principal of Cashman School introduces herself
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Monday, March 9,
2009
THIS WEEK Mon., Mar. 9
BBC History of WWII Film
Music and Social Change featuring Jim Scott
COMING UP
Spring Break Sat. Mar. 21
Women's Lacrosse vs. Mon., Mar. 23
BBC History of WWII Film
Music and Social Change:
Tues, Mar. 24
Diversity Lecture Series: Wed., Mar. 25
WSC Baseball vs. Thurs., Mar. 26
SGA Auction
WSC Women's Lacrosse
WSC Night at Hanover
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Three
Worcester State students were among some 12,000 college and high school students
from every state and 120 other countries who converged in Washington the weekend
of Feb. 27 to March 2 for Power Shift, an event that offered workshops on
climate change, lobbying, civil disobedience and more.
The
Women’s Studies Program at Worcester State College hosted its second annual
conference on Thursday, March 5, 2009. The event was organized to celebrate
International Women’s Day (March 8), which is celebrated around the world, and
Women’s History Month (March), observed in the United States. The event was
advertised locally at WSC and the Consortium through fliers and posters designed
by Lilly Ditto, the Women’s Studies graduate assistant. For the
first time this year, the WSC Women’s Studies conference was highlighted on
Routledge, a publisher of academic books, lists on its website
a compelling title, “The American Urban Reader: History and Theory.”