President Wilson and Chancellor MacCormack speak to UMass Dartmouth students

President Jack Wilson and Chancellor Jean MacCormack cut the ribbon at the Spring 2007 opening of the Research Facility.

By Katie Bresnahan

Jack Wilson, president of the UMass System and UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Jean MacCormack spoke with campus community members on Wednesday, November 7, about different topics that matter to them.

The Torch was lucky enough to get a chance to meet with President Wilson and Chancellor MacCormack during this time. The most interesting things learned were information on parking and about what exactly the president and the chancellor do from day to day.

On parking:

A huge issue on campus this semester has been the new parking fees. Where is the money going? What will be the results of the fees? And when will students see these results? While students have not seen as many problems with finding parking spaces this year, there has been an enormous rise in larceny to vehicles, particularly the disappearances of numerous parking passes.

“What’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen depends upon negotiations. Those negotiations are ongoing as we speak,” Wilson said. “I can’t tell you exactly what will happen.”

Chancellor MacCormack said that the university is fixing broken lights, adding additional bus service and adding security cameras to parking lots. “Students will begin to see that stuff happening,” she said.

There are also plans to build a sidewalk from the East Residence Campus around Ring Road to the Tripp Athletic Center. “Now that we charge you to have your car in residence parking and you can’t drive it up, we have a lot more walking going on.”

“I think it’s reasonable policy to encourage walking,” said Wilson. “Frankly, it’s better for their health and it’s better for the environment.”

MacCormack added, “So you’ll see those bus changes, you’ll see lighting changes, you’ll see sidewalk and safety issues, security cameras, the things we know we’ve needed to do but we have not had the resources to do.”

Wilson said that he would like to see the university’s money go to students’ financial aid and the money from the parking passes go to making improvements to the parking lots and fixing other things on campus.

“All of the revenue will offset some of the expenses we spend now for snow-plowing and we will put that money back into programs and then the other money will do the enhancements that need to be done,” MacCormack said.

When it came to why students, faculty and staff use new parking passes, rather than the parking stickers used in the past, MacCormack stated, “Because we were trying to get everybody onboard and because we didn’t get the faculty and staff onboard before the fall semester we decided not to go out and spend all the money to print stickers.” She explained that the parking passes are only a temporary measure.

Unfortunately, many students have fallen victim to parking pass thefts, something that rarely, if ever, occurred in the past. MacCormack said to Wilson, “If you look in the log that ‘The Torch’ produces, we don’t have big crime, we have larceny.”

“So yes, we’re going back to stickers,” MacCormack stated. She hopes that this change will happen in the spring.

She also noted that beginning next year parking will become part of students’ bills. As a result, it will be eligible for financial aid. She added that the university plans to build a couple new parking lots over the summer. The university might also build a satellite lot, which will be less expensive for students to park in, but they will have to take a bus to campus.

What does the President do?

“My job entails that we create a great university system in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Wilson said.

He makes sure that each school has an outstanding chancellor. Wilson and the five chancellors meet regularly. “We are thrilled that Chancellor MacCormack is here,” he added, “She is now the Dean of our chancellor corps, as our longest standing [chancellor].”

Wilson’s appearance on campus last week was part of what he referred to as “Chancellor’s Day.” On Chancellor’s Days Wilson visits one of the five UMass campuses and does “anything [the respective chancellor] wants me to do, I do.”

In this case, Chancellor MacCormack asked him to hold office hours with her, during which time they met with students and other campus community members. He called this a “Grass Roots Day.” He enjoys this because “it is unfiltered. I don’t know what they’re going to talk about. They’re going to come in and talk about something they really, really care about. I really learn a lot from that.” He remarked that one group he spoke with were literacy volunteers.

Other activities typical of Chancellor’s Days include having lunch with major donors to help close major donations, talking with local political leadership and talk about what the University needs, speaking with faculty about research and what they need to continue their work and talking with the Universities’ Student Senates. He also joked, “If you want me to move furniture, I’ll move furniture.”

What does the Chancellor do?

“I tend the fire,” said MacCormack, “I want faculty lighting fires between students and themselves because they’re passionate about what they do. So that I make sure I create the right conditions for those fires to keep burning.”

Some of her duties include figuring out parking, getting people appointed to positions within the university, getting students fair bills, making sure programs are right and interactions in the classrooms are great, making sure that students can participate in faculty research and getting students involved in the community.

MacCormack says, “I represent the campus’s interests on the Chancellors Team. The president acts very much as a team member. We recognize that he’s the president, but we don’t really function in a hierarchical way. As the chancellor I try not to do that here on the campus.” She tries to get people to understand that they need to work together to get things done.

The chancellor helps the students, faculty and staff at UMass Dartmouth to do what they need to do. She also helps to create conditions for them to be successful.

UMass Dartmouth to host third annual Oxfam Hunger Banquet

By Katie Bresnahan

“[The] Oxfam Hunger Banquet is a unique, fun and memorable way to educate the UMass Dartmouth community about hunger issues around the world,” said co-coordinator of this year’s banquet, Viviana Vilacha,

This year’s Oxfam Hunger Banquet will take place tonight, at 6 p.m. in the Commuter Cafe. Vilacha expects to have over 100 attendants at this year’s event. Last year they had record participation with 116 people in attendance.

At the Oxfam Hunger Banquet people are assigned to social classes when they arrive. The three social classes included are low, middle and high. The people assigned to each class are then served as the people of that class are served. “Only some people leave with a full stomach, but hopefully this inspires students to make a difference in the world,” said Vilacha.

This year’s guest speaker will be David Biggs, Chair of the Dartmouth YMCA, involved with the Sharing the Harvest Project since its inception and a member of the New Bedford Rotary. He will explain and promote the significance of what the Share and Harvest committee is doing to serve the community. He says, “No one can do everything, yet everyone can do something.”

Vilacha said that the hunger banquet is a tradition at UMass Dartmouth. She added, “However, there’s also a much larger student body and that [many] more students who care about preserving the world harvest. Today the importance of being environmentally friendly, being green and ecological is becoming stronger and stronger.”

Many other schools around the world hold this same event, on the same day each year. Bristol Community College will hold its first annual Oxfam banquet tonight.

Rotaract Club and the Social Change Society are co-sponsoring this year’s banquet along with students Annie Willis and Rita Wang and campus community service director, Deirdre Healy. Social Change actually originated from this event in 2005.

Vilacha said that every year Oxfam America asks people to fast on the Thursday before Thanksgiving. This is why the event is held. Each year around this time, resident students are asked to donate a meal from their meal plans to Oxfam in order to help eliminate world hunger. “Last year, “ she said, “The total meal value donated was $916.50.”

Women’s studies major approved

By Shara Sarnelli

Controversial issues have risen in colleges around the world regarding women’s studies programs. Should programs attempt to incorporate themselves into the standard curriculum or should they remain as an independent program outside of the curriculum?

UMass Dartmouth has offered women’s studies (WMS) courses and a minor for a long time. Now, a women’s studies major has been approved to compliment the minor.

Dr. Juli Parker, director of the UMass Dartmouth Women’s Resource Center said that UMD’s WMS program will be 30 years old this spring. She and the rest of the department are very excited about the new major.

WMS can be a controversial issue when being considered as a major, which may be why it was not put forward in the past. Dr. Jeannette Riley, director of the Women’s Studies Program said she was “hired in 2002 to build the program into a major degree granting program.”

Many WMS minors and students who take WMS courses are glad that Riley helped build this program into what it is today. There are currently only thirty minors at UMD, but now that the program is getting more publicity, increased online learning and the offering new courses, the numbers may expand.

New courses that will be offered through the women’s studies program include, WMS 201: Introduction to Feminist Theory, WMS 306: Third Wave Feminism, WMS 309: Global Feminism and WMS 312: Feminist Research Methods. The major curriculum contains five required classes as well as other courses incorporating gender studies, politics, feminist theories and methodologies practices, cross cultural studies and more.

The WMS program “brings in a discipline that has become an established field of study over the last 40 years. Students are interested in issues of gender, race and class, which is at the core of WMS,” Riley said.

The WMS major offers more than interesting, new classes. “The new major combines a structured curriculum with student choice—thus, students gain the knowledge of the discipline and they also gain ownership over their education as they decide where to apply that knowledge in the concentration areas with the assistance of a WMS advisor,” said Riley.

The WMS department began considering the major in fall of 2005. Why has it taken two, whole years to get the major approved? According to Riley, “Developing a major is a time intensive process.” In 2005, the department met with the Dean and Provost to discuss how the WMS major would fit into the College of Arts and Sciences. They were told to move forward and write the proposal.

Riley said, “The proposal goes to the College of Arts and Sciences curriculum committee, then the University Curriculum committee, then to the Provost.” After being approved by these committees, the proposal goes to the Board of Trustees and then to the Board of Higher Education.

Online learning is a great help to many college students. Through the UMass system and UMassOnline, UMD received a Sloan Foundation grant which funds ideas to create and offer blended courses as part of the WMS program. Students can earn a portion of their required credits through courses where students communicate online most of the time, but meet with the instructor occasionally.

Riley anticipates students moving to the major or choosing to double major with WMS and another subject area. Three students are already waiting to sign up. In the past there were six self-designed WMS majors who graduated from UMD.

According to a University press release, past WMS “minor recipients have successfully entered fields including psychology, English, history, women’s studies, social work and law graduate programs. They hold jobs in education, the health sciences, social services, editing and law enforcement.

UMass Dartmouth now offers WMS as a major and students can get involved today! If WMS seems appealing or interesting, visit the department to discuss options in a minor, major or double major program.

Sodexho collects ‘Cans Across America’

By Stephanie Luz

Marketing Manager JenniferPacheco (left) and SAIL Assistant Director Chris Laib (right) numbered and recorded the weight of cans brought in by students and staff.

One of the largest nationwide can drives, “Cans across America,” took place last Wednesday, November 7.

Sodexho held its annual Cans across America can drive with the goal of collecting as much weight in cans as possible. The purpose of the can drive was to break a world record of 156,889.34 pounds worth of canned goods within a 24-hour period.

On November 7, UMass Dartmouth Sodexho representatives set up a table in the Resident Dining Room on which all cans were collected, numbered, and logged at the end of a 12-hour period. UMass Dartmouth senior Brandon Roberts and Sodexho Marketing Manager Jennifer Pacheco were seen at the table encouraging students to collect cans. Public Safety Officer Steven Mello and Assistant Director of SAIL, Chris Laib counted and recorded the weights of the cans.

Individuals and teams were offered three different prizes including a catered event with a value up to $500, a $500 snack allowance or a $100 gift certificate to the campus bookstore. In order to win any of these prizes, a minimum of 100 pounds in cans was required. All participants were also entered in a random drawing for a gourmet gift basket.

The winners of the grand prize brought in a large portion of all the cans collected. Together, Alex Moniz, Ana Branch, and Lakisha Jordan brought in 229 cans that weighed in at 171.275 pounds. Their remarkable efforts proved how just a few people can make a major difference.

At the end of the day, a total of 315 cans were collected for a total of 290.225 pounds. Pacheco will receive verification from the Boston Food Bank soon.

After the event, Pacheco said, “I’d like to thank everyone who has participated in this year’s Cans across America event. Your generosity is greatly appreciated by everyone involved.”