From Promise to Pride:
UMass Dartmouth as an Intellectual Powerhouse

Chancellor Jean F. MacCormack Address to the UMass Dartmouth Campus Community
Dartmouth , Massachusetts
February 5, 2004

Because of what we've done together, some pretty extraordinary things have happened. Because of your commitment and passion for higher education, our cup is more than half full.

Ever since this campus made the decision to join the University of Massachusetts in 1991 - now a dozen years ago - it has been described as a place with "great potential" - "a place with real promise."

This language, while meant to be positive, also has communicated to us and to others a sense of "not quite ready for prime time," ... or "being on the way" but not quite there yet.

I am reminded of that line from the movie The Graduate-when Ben is asked by his dad's friend---Do you know what the future is---it's Plastics! For us the word has been---potential. While meant to be a compliment, it has felt like a limitation.So today I propose that we officially shed the moniker of potential...for our University...our region...and ourselves.

The fact is that UMass Dartmouth is no longer just potentially outstanding. It IS outstanding in many significant ways. It is time to recognize and celebrate what this University has achieved already and what we will achieve in the very near future, rather than just talk about vague potential.

40 Years of UMass Dartmouth: what was then, what's ahead?
By Donna Scaglione

Donald C. Howard, retired dean of students, recalls a phone conversation he had 38 years ago with Joseph L. Driscoll, then president of Southeastern Massachusetts Technological Institute.

Howard, in between jobs and enjoying a lengthy cross-country vacation, and Driscoll were discussing the opening for the school's dean of men, but the pair had never met. "He said, 'If you take us sight unseen, we'll take you sight unseen,' " recounted Howard, associate vice chancellor of alumni relations (retired) and dean of students emeritus.