AI institute to be set up at UMass Boston
Neural net completion for "artificial intelligence", as done by DALL-E mini hosted on HuggingFace, 4 June 2022 (code under Apache 2.0 license). Upscaled with Real-ESRGAN "Anime" upscaling version (under [https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN/blob/master/LICENSE
At UMass Boston, University Hall, the Campus Center and Wheatley Hall
— Photo by Sintakso
Edited from a New England Council report.
The University of Massachusetts at Boston has announced that Paul English has donated $5 million to the university, with the intention of creating an Artificial Intelligence Institute. The Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence Institute will give students on campus from all fields of study the tools that they’ll need for working in a world where AI is expected to rapidly play a bigger role. UMass said that the institute will “include faculty from across various departments and incorporate AI into a broad range of curricula,” including social, ethical and other challenges that are a byproduct of AI technology. The institute will open in the 2023-2024 school year.
Paul English is an American tech entrepreneur, computer scientist and philanthropist. He is the founder of Boston Venture Studio.
“‘We are at the dawn of a new era,’ said UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. ‘Like the agricultural revolution, the development of the steam engine, the invention of the computer and the introduction of the smartphone, the birth of artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing how we live and work.’
#Artificial Intelligence #Paul English #University of Massachusetts
Amy Collinsworth: Amid attacks on Critical Race Theory, UMass Boston launches new institute
The UMass Boston campus from Squantum Point Park, in Quincy.The brick building in the foreground is Wheatley Hall and the white building to its right is the Campus Center.
— Photo by Fullobeans
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
BOSTON
Since the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and Tony McDade in 2020, among countless others, the leadership of the University of Massachusetts at Boston has publicly committed itself to becoming an antiracist and health-promoting university. The university’s stated institutional values and commitments are also intricately tied to an academic freedom that wholly defends the right to teach about race, gender and other equity issues—matters that speak directly to the lived experiences of those in our university and Boston communities.
Currently, more than 30 states have enacted bans or have bans pending related to teaching about Critical Race Theory (CRT), equity and race and gender justice. Additionally, more than 100 organizations have signed the Joint Statement on Legislative Efforts to Restrict Education about Racism and American History, a statement by the American Association of University Professors, PEN America, the American Historical Association and the Association of American Colleges & Universities, which expresses opposition to these legislative bans and emphasizes a commitment to academic freedom that includes teaching about racism in U.S. history.
While anti-CRT legislation is not currently pending in Massachusetts, there have been and remain real threats to racial justice in Boston by entities other than the state. The recent contention in Boston Public Schools about exam school admission and the defunding of Africana Studies at UMass Boston, for example, demonstrate the need for individuals, departments and organizations to commit to racial justice.
For more than 30 years, the Leadership in Education Department at UMass Boston has demonstrated its commitment to social justice in education, in part, by supporting educators for leadership roles in education, policy and community organizations. Our academic programs include Educational Administration (MEd and Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study), Higher Education (PhD and EdD) and Urban Education, Leadership and Policy Studies (PhD and EdD). As a collective, our community of faculty, students, staff and alumni is committed to research and practice that is grounded in equity, organizational change for racial justice and collaborative leadership.
Launching a new institute
As our department reflects on the changes we want to make in relation to community and racial justice, we are excited to start a new initiative that opens our department community beyond the structures of our academic programs: the Educational Leadership and Transformation Institute for Racial Justice. The institute will focus on building capacity and sustainability to transform schools, colleges and universities for racial equity.
This institute aligns with a resolution recently approved at UMass Boston to defend academic freedom to teach about race and gender justice. The institute’s programs and workshops will address issues of racial justice in education, including in teaching, learning, administration and policy. This institute makes actionable our department’s commitment to building capacity for addressing racism, whiteness and racial equity in educational institutions.
The Educational Leadership and Transformation Institute for Racial Justice is an extension of our department’s social and racial justice commitments, responding to the political and policy context in the U.S., our state and our own institution. This context includes attacks on CRT and ethnic studies at all levels and, in our own UMass Boston community, public charges of racism, defunding of our ethnic institutes and disagreement over mission and vision statement drafts on the university’s commitment to becoming an antiracist and health-promoting institution.
In the Leadership in Education Department at UMass Boston, where people of color comprise the majority of students and faculty, academic freedom is understood as central to a racial justice commitment. This is why we recently brought a resolution to our faculty governance process. The resolution, “Defending Academic Freedom to Teach About Race and Gender Justice and Critical Race Theory,’’ received a favorable vote from the UMass Boston Faculty Council. In addition to other efforts to advance racial justice within our department, throughout UMass Boston and in our professional and personal lives, we now turn to what we can do to uphold this resolution as a department through this institute.
Commitment to racial justice
With hundreds of graduates from our programs, many of whom continue to work and live in New England, our students, alumni and faculty truly lead education throughout this region. Many hold roles across public and private education, including as principals, college presidents, deans, consultants, teacher leaders, faculty members, teachers, board of trustee members, directors, elected officials and district and university administrators. As scholar-practitioners, our students explore dissertation topics that center on issues of educational equity.
The same is true of the research and scholarship that our faculty members pursue. Our members conduct research on a variety of equity-focused topics in K-12, higher education and public policy, such as African-centered education; the schooling experiences and educational and life outcomes of Black women and girls; power dynamics and conflict in the academic workplace; how students pay for college; faculty members’ work-life experiences; the design and implementation of equity reforms; critical race theory in higher education; community-engaged teaching, learning and research; developmental education; and identity-conscious leadership. We are a community committed to leadership for change.
In recent years, our department has collaborated in new ways to examine how we want to live in congruence with our social and racial justice values. Since June 2020 and the murder of George Floyd, many members of our department community have gathered as The Cypher. The Cypher is a group of students, staff and faculty who support each other in their work to advance racial justice. In our organic gatherings, we focus on healing, wholeness and taking action against racism and whiteness at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
We continue to engage in activism on our own campus, including building capacity for promoting racial justice by strengthening coalitions with other groups at UMass Boston who are also promoting racial justice. This includes several of the ethnic institutes at UMass Boston and the Undoing Racism Assembly, a university-wide group of students, staff, faculty and administrators who address different racial justice concerns on campus. We also host events for our community, like the recent “Cypher Presents” dialogue between education scholars and policymakers about current matters of educational equity impacting area educational institutions and communities.
The Cypher
We began our work in The Cypher with a document, authored by 70 people, The Cypher Report. In alignment with our administration’s commitment to antiracism and health promotion, this report calls on UMass Boston administration to take specific steps to address institutionalized inequities within our organization. In addition to supporting the restorative justice framework put forth by Africana Studies, The Cypher Report made more than 20 demands, including:
Restoring funding for the Institute for Asian American Studies (IAAS), the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS), the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy, and the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black History and Culture and rescinding the glide path toward requiring the institutes to be “self-sufficient.”
Hiring an external consultant to meet individually with each senior level administrator, dean, and department chair to assess their current understanding of the ways racism and whiteness are perpetuated at UMass Boston.
Developing a racial-equity dashboard and report card to monitor and identify inequities to improve campus racial climate and equitable educational/work experiences for the university community.
Restore the Leadership in Education Department to its full-time faculty baseline (specifically, fill the seven faculty vacancies in the department).
Our efforts to institutionalize change for racial equity as a Cypher and department—in response to the larger context highlighted above—are evident through the recent resolution we brought to the UMass Boston Faculty Council, “Defending Academic Freedom to Teach About Race and Gender Justice and Critical Race Theory’’.
Attacks on CRT have been waged through state legislation and the former federal Equity Gag Order that banned federal employees, contractors and grant recipients from addressing concepts including racism, sexism and white supremacy. In the past year, the African American Policy Forum, led by Kimberlé Crenshaw, has asked faculty councils across the U.S. to unite with those affected by this legislation. After presentations from several members of The Cypher and me, the UMass Boston Faculty Council voted to pass this resolution that rejects “any attempts by bodies external to the faculty to restrict or dictate university curriculum on any matter, including matters related to racial and social justice.” (For the full resolution, see the December 2021 Faculty Council meeting minutes.)
The resolution calls us to question what racial and gender justice mean in education, and our institute is one response to that call. Through our programs and workshops in the Educational Leadership and Transformation Institute for Racial Justice, we especially look forward to conversations among and beyond our campus community to explore the ways we engage in this work. For example, how do students feel when their cultures, histories and experiences are represented within courses taught by faculty who use a CRT lens or focus on highlighting matters of racial justice and gender justice in their classrooms? What are the implications for tenure and promotion when faculty do or do not center racial justice, gender justice and intersectionality in their scholarship? For staff members who participate in professional development related to racial and gender justice, how is participation perceived in relation to professional advancement? How often are budget decisions called into question when their focus is on initiatives of racial and gender justice? As educators and community members, we must use critical questions such as these to consider the meaning of our work beyond symbolic or performative actions if we believe equity matters.
Amy E. Collinsworth is graduate program manager and assistant to the department chair in the Leadership in Education Department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she is also a doctoral candidate in the Higher Education Program.
At the UMass Boston Campus Center.
Marcelo Suarez-Orozco: My plan for UMass Boston
The UMass Boston campus, dramatically situated on Boston Harbor.
— Photo by bostonphotosphere
From The New England Journal of Higher Education, a service of The New England Board of Higher Education (nebhe.org)
BOSTON
Becoming chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston is a humbling experience and a great responsibility for me—it is indeed the opportunity of a lifetime. As a kid who emigrated from Argentina to the U.S. to escape political unrest at age 17, with just a few dollars in my pocket, I was one of millions of Americans by-choice arriving over the years, searching for a better life. Settling in California, I was incredibly fortunate to be able to access the public higher-education system.
My life journey embodies America’s great public university system and its transformative power.
As a young immigrant I worked my way up from the very bottom, doing all kinds of jobs—painting apartments, cleaning offices and pumping gas while taking night classes to learn English in our local high school. I am a product of former University of California President Clark Kerr’s great Master Plan for Higher Education. I started my studies in the California Community College System, transferring to the University of California at Berkeley, where I received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s and doctoral degrees in anthropology. That extraordinary public education was the foundation for my scholarly career at universities around the world, including tenure at Harvard, a University Professorship at New York University and, eventually, as the inaugural Wasserman Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the University of California at Los Angeles.
My experience distills the power of education as a public good, essential for all human beings to flourish and for the formation of engaged and independent citizens capable of self-governance and giving back. Education must also prepare our workforce to thrive in the labor market of the 21st Century. At its best, education nourishes the brain, heart and hand, helping to create a dignified and purposeful life. In my case, these were not simply worthy abstract principles. For me, education was a transformational life force. The brilliant scholars at Berkeley who became my mentors (early on I learned how to avoid the tormentors in the faculty!) taught me how to write for a scholarly audience (often inviting me to publish with them), hands-on scaffolded my teaching as I started work as a teaching assistant, and above all, they taught me how to think in the tradition of the great social science disciplines.
But the system that provided opportunity to me and millions of others faces grave threats—from a ravaging pandemic, particularly devastating to communities of color, to unchecked climate change extracting untold suffering in the world’s poorest regions, to the structural racialization of inequality and the intergenerational persistence of anti-blackness, to xenophobia and exclusionary anti-immigrant policies. We must harness the power of higher education to address the growing inequities in our world. These forces work to undermine the principles and practice of democracy in the U.S. and around the world.
In my view, public higher education is the indispensable tool for disrupting and overcoming the malaise of growing inequality, an ominous threat to the practice of democratic citizenship. These times call for an education to nurture what is true (logic), that which is good (justice/ethics), and that which is beautiful (aesthetics). Creating a more inclusive, just and sustainable world is education’s urgent challenge.
As the head of an institution dedicated to upward mobility—where a majority of students are people of color, where many are the first in their family to attend college, where the number of Pell-eligible students is among the highest anywhere in New England—I have a special responsibility to create the conditions, on and off campus, under which our students can flourish.
Indeed, all of us must extend ourselves to nurture a greater ethic of care and solidarity, an ethic of preference to the least empowered among us, an ethic of dignity and human rights, and an ethic of engagement and service to others. In practice, I endeavor to embody these principles in quotidian practice. Mind what I do, not just what I say. What I learned from Pierre Bourdieu, who was teaching at Berkeley in my graduate student days, is that the habitus comes to define us—how successful we are and how others come to view us: the competencies, sensibilities, skills and dispositions that guide the ethos and eidos in our comportment.
Excellence, equity, diversity and relevance are the four cardinal points to navigate today’s rough waters and unprecedented undertow. To that end, I have established and endowed the George Floyd Honorary Scholarship Fund at UMass Boston to provide financial support to our talented students who otherwise may find it difficult or impossible to pay for a college education. My wife, Carola, and I have seeded this with funds in the amount of $50,000. I am happy to report the fund has already exceeded $100,000 in commitments from generous and visionary members and supporters of the UMass Boston family.
UMass Boston’s students of color—like their peers across the nation—face economic and social barriers to their education exacerbated by COVID-19’s malignancy, placing too many of our students at an educational disadvantage. I firmly believe that equitable access to quality education is a foundational step we must take to see systemic racism dismantled in our country.
This fund is also an investment in future leaders who will fight for social, political and economic justice, drawing from their lived experience as I did, and using the tools forged by the invigorating ideas and experiences shared by students of every age and background in our classrooms.
In addition, as one of my first acts, I intend to appoint a faculty member as special adviser to the chancellor for Black life at UMass Boston. This person will advise me on matters of importance to our Black faculty, students and staff. The adviser will work with me and my leadership team as we commit to create new structures and to develop new codified and customary practices purposefully designed to put our university at the forefront of excellence, engagement and relevance on racial justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
As scholars in education dedicated to the practice of democratic citizenship and committed to social justice, we must reflect on our privileges and act in all that we do against the systemic racism that impacts our community and the children and families and communities who we serve.
Marcelo Suárez-Orozco became the ninth chancellor of UMass Boston on Aug. 1, 2020.
His research focuses on cultural psychology and psychological anthropology, with an emphasis on education, globalization and migration.
More of New England's urgent medical, business response to pandemic
A respiratory therapist (RT) examines a mechanically ventilated patient on an intensive care unit. RTs are responsible for optimizing ventilation management, adjustment and weaning. See Southern Maine Community College item below.
From The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
BOSTON
As our region and our nation continue to grapple with the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, The New England Council is using our blog as a platform to highlight some of the incredible work our members have undertaken to respond to the outbreak. Each day, we’ll post a round-up of updates on some of the initiatives underway among Council members throughout the region. We are also sharing these updates via our social media, and encourage our members to share with us any information on their efforts so that we can be sure to include them in these daily round-ups.
You can find all the Council’s information and resources related to the crisis in the special COVID-19 section of our Web site. This includes our COVID-19 Virtual Events Calendar, which provides information on upcoming COVID-19 Congressional town halls and webinars presented by NEC members, as well as our newly-released Federal Agency COVID-19 Guidance for Businesses page.
Here is the April 8 roundup:
Medical Response
Southern Maine Community College Students Learn on Front Lines of Pandemic – Students studying respiratory therapy at Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) are gaining important and meaningful experience working alongside therapists in local hospitals treating COVID-19 patients. The students are performing breathing treatments and administering medication that will alleviate the strain on the state’s medical providers. The Bangor Daily News has more.
Brigham and Women’s Hospital to Begin New Plasma-Based Therapy Clinical Trial – At Brigham and Women’s Hospital, researchers are turning to a promising potential treatment from a Chinese study for the novel coronavirus. The therapy, which utilizes plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients, is entering clinical trials after the FDA gave the hospital a green light to test it. Boston 25 News
Boston University Scientists See Breakthrough in COVID-19 Research – The National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) at Boston University has successfully utilized glowing antibodies to illuminate the virus that causes COVID-19 infections. Now that NEIDL has the ability to “see” the virus, the team can test its inventory of thousands of drugs to detect which are most effective at reducing or stopping the spread of infection. Read more in The Brink.
Endicott College Creates Protective Equipment – Endicott College is now using its 3-D printing equipment, as well as its existing supplies, to create and donate protective equipment to healthcare workers. While the equipment is considered “homemade” and cannot be accepted by hospitals, the supplies produced at Endicott is being donated to non-front line workers such as oncology clinics and funeral home, freeing up the supply of professional, medical-grade equipment for front-line workers. More information here.
UMass Boston Labs Donate Protective Equipment – Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Boston (UMass Boston) School for the Environment are donating their unused personal protective equipment (PPE) to Boston hospitals. The school hopes this practice will spread to other labs whose research has been suspended. Read more here.
Economic/Business Continuity Response
UMaine Converts Planetarium into Supercomputer for Research –With its campus currently closed to students, the University of Maine (UMaine) has transformed its planetarium into a supercomputer to run visualization programs for researchers across the country. The data from the use of the planetarium’s conversion could be used to develop new diagnostic tests or even potential therapies. The Bangor Daily News
UPS Dedicates Facilities and Operations to Equipment Delivery – In partnership with FEMA, shipping company UPS has committed a 450,000 square-foot facility to the agency, along with 25 chartered flights, to expedite delivery of necessary medical and protective equipment to U.S. hospitals. The effort, named Project Airbridge, is expected to deliver over three million pounds of materials. GlobeNewswire has more.
Community Response
Easterseals Rehabilitation Services Transitions to Virtual Therapy – Easterseals Massachusetts is offering three virtual therapy sessions to patients who make a one-time donation of any amount. The sessions aim to assist children who are missing occupational or speech-language therapy due a switch to remote learning. Read more.
Boston Celtics Forward Pledges to Match $250,000 in Donations to Greater Boston Food Bank – Despite being sidelined by quarantine for the remainder of his season, forward Jayson Tatum of the Boston Celtics has committed to match up to $250,000 to support the Greater Boston Food Bank. Tatum, a Missouri native, has also partnered with the St. Louis Area Foodbank to contribute another $250,000. com reports.
UnitedHealth Group Provides $2 Billion in Financial Support to Healthcare Providers – UnitedHealth Group is accelerating almost $2 billion in financial support and payments to its care network. The funds will be distributed to healthcare systems in the group’s network, and builds upon the company’s earlier action to expand access to care and accreditation. Read the press release here.
Stay tuned for more updates each day, and follow us on Twitter for more frequent updates on how Council members are contributing to the response to this global health crisis.
UMass Boston to lease Accordia space for mixed-use development
View of part of the UMass Boston campus, which is on Boston Harbor.
This is from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)
“UMass Boston announced that its board of trustees and building authority have unanimously agreed to lease the Bayside Expo Center site to Accordia Partners. This deal will see the 20-acre site developed into 3.5 million square feet of mixed-use space.
“At $235 million, the partnership between UMass Boston and Accordia Partners will provide funding for the school as well as the opportunity to develop the space. The university will engage its community to determine the priorities for the development of the site. The space will include academic, life-science, residential, and retail space, and will create public access to the waterfront.
“Interim Chancellor Katherine Newton said, ‘Part of what I hope we can do is to see what kinds of industries arrive at Bayside and then build academically toward them, so that there’s a natural bridge between our students, faculty and those industries. . . We’re not going to make any decisions right now about what’s going to be teed up.”’