Robert Forrant

Dr. Forrant has been a consultant to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and the International Labour Organization.  He has engaged in program evaluation activities for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations International Development Organization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Massachusetts Department of Education and the Massachusetts Manufacturing Partnership.  

Professor Forrant is the editor of two volumes on sustainable regional development, the author of numerous published articles on industrial development and decline in the Connecticut River Valley and New England, and recently completed a manuscript history of the river valley.  

He serves as a regional economy analyst for the journal Massachusetts Benchmarks and is on the editorial boards of the academic journals New Solutions and Labor Studies.  Professor Forrant serves as a faculty historian to the “Communities of Scholars—Communities as Classrooms,” teaching American History project directed by the Tsongas Industrial History Center and funded by the United States Department of Education working with Lowell and Worcester, Massachusetts social studies teachers.  At the university he teaches courses in U.S. history (US History Since 1877 43.112), labor studies (Work and Society 43.380), (Work and Technology 57.503) and global development (Development Principals for Developing Countries 57.537) and supervises numerous Master’s Degree thesis students and serves on several Work Environment Department doctoral dissertation committees. He is the recipient of the University of Massachusetts President’s Award for Public Service, 1998 and the UMass Lowell Department of Regional Economic and Social Development Teaching Award, 2003, 1998.  Before completing his graduate education, he worked for many years as a machinist and union business agent at the now closed American Bosch plant in Springfield, Massachusetts.