Our Students
RESD Students Launch News Monitoring Website
RESD Alumna to Publish Book on Irish Immigrant Struggles
RESD Graduate Hits the Airwaves
Don Leonard '03 Reports from the Peace Corps in Bolivia
RESD Students and Department Chair at 2004 Year-End Celebration
Our 2001 Graduates
Our First Three Graduates
Completed Theses
Student Spotlights
- Susan Dempsey
- Cathy Ferreira
- Jennifer Gaudet
- Joe Meagher
- Xiaodong Pu
- Erin Sheehan
- Carlha Vickers
- Karen Zerby
RESD Students Launch News Monitoring Website
Three Regional Economic and Social Development (RESD) graduate students have launched a news monitoring website news monitoring website aimed at providing locals with relevant news.
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RESD alumna to publish book on Irish immigrant struggles
An alumna has adapted her RESD master?s thesis as a book that has been accepted for publication by the University of Massachusetts Press . Its working title is Ballykilcline Rising / From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America .
Mary Lee Dunn (MA, 2003) has been notified that her study of Irish Famine farmers from County Roscommon who mounted a rent strike for more than twelve years against Crown authorities and then were evicted because of it and sent to America has been accepted by UMASS Press for publication after peer review and consideration by its board of directors. Her work traced dozens of evicted farmers to Rutland, Vermont where they joined the marble industry work force as it boomed after railroad construction. She examined the context of their strike in Ireland and traced their efforts to re-build community and gain a foothold in industrializing immigrant America.
Using multiple sources, including Irish estate, newspaper, and police records and American census records along with some genealogical techniques, she showed that some Ballykilcline farmers joined marble strikes in Rutland between 1859 and 1868 and likely lost their homes a second time due to protest actions. She looked at their literacy, networking, acquisition of assets, and roles in the Civil War and Fenianism as indicators of agency. As historian Tyler Anbinder found studying other famine immigrants, some of her subjects built surprising assets despite their onerous personal histories and their lack of job skills when they entered the U.S.
Dunn?s study is a follow-up to New York University historian Robert Scally?s book The End of Hidden Ireland/Rebellion, Famine, & Emigration (Oxford, 1995), which ended when the strikers arrived in New York City in 1847 and 1848.
Dunn followed a history track in RESD. Robert Forrant was her thesis advisor and her committee members were John Wooding and Laurence Gross. She also thanks Charles Levenstein of Work Environment, and RESD?s Phil Moss, and Chris Tilly for leads and guidance.
The book is expected to be published by late 2007.
RESD Graduate Hits the Airwaves
RESD's M.A. graduate Isa Bauer Cann has ventured to help create awareness around
the multi-faceted topic of sustainable development (SD) within the Northeastern MA community through her WUML radio news segment, "The Long View". It broadcasts on Thursday mornings just after 10 am during "Thinking Out Loud", produced by another RESD student who has since graduated, Dan Toomey.
Visit the show's website The Long View. The site provides a variety of complementary topical information and links to resources that enable listeners to get involved with advancing SD in their personal lives and communities (e.g., "look up" tools for State policy-makers). The site also features links to previously broadcasted audio interviews with UMass Lowell professors, staff and other outstanding contributors to SD. Check it out to see what's coming up (and to offer suggestions for improvements).
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Don Leonard '03 Reports from the Peace Corps in Bolivia
"The past year has been marked with difficult learning experiences and rewarding moments of understanding between my Bolivian neighbors and me. It continues to be difficult to be so far away from the country and the people that I care about so much, all the while coping with barriers of language, culture, and the adjustments of ?third world? living. But as I recently told a group of arriving volunteers, for me the opportunity to observe and be a part of such a unique and culturally rich community makes my Peace Corps service by far the most selfish thing I've ever done."
Recent Article: Reflections on a Small Country in Turmoil
RESD Students and Department Chair at 2004 year-end celebration
Some of our 2001 graduates: Jenn Gaudet, Radha Biswas, Cathy Ferreira, Karen Zerby, Anthon Gunawan, and Xiaodong Pu.
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From left: Kimberly Rauscher, Shiri Breznitz, and Sue Dempsey at the 2000 Commencement
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While studying in the RESD department, I had the opportunity to work closely with faculty and students on a wide range of projects. Since RESD is an interdisciplinary program, the research projects are quite diverse and therefore provide students an opportunity to work on a project that meets their interests and goals. Prior to attending RESD, I approached social issues from a strictly political science background, however now I am aware that social policy cannot be addressed without considering the economics and history of the issue. This has helped me enormously in my position as an analyst for the state government. RESD has given me a solid foundation in which to build a career in public service.
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Two years after graduating with a Bachelors degree in Community Planning I came across a brochure describing the graduate program in the department of Regional Economics and Social Development at UMass Lowell. I was immediately drawn to it because of the inter-discipline, action orientated, approach to development. As a community activist on issues of poverty and homelessness I believe that social ills in society will not be eradicated if we continue to ignore the social aspects of economic development. So I applied.
I enrolled as a full-time student in the fall of 1999. I also have a Research Assistant position in the department. On top of that I'm raising four children on my own. Believe me it has been trying. Sometimes when I'm going crazy juggling school, work, and my family, I feel like throwing in the towel. I turn to faculty and students for support when I feel this way. I think about how much I am learning and how much I like all the interesting class projects that I have worked on. Above all I try to remember it's only a couple of years. I can do it I made it this far. When everything is said and done I'll have a wide range of career possibilities to continue my work on improving and developing communities.
I received my BLA from UMass Lowell in 1998, focusing in Sociology and Psychology. After graduation I worked for a national, political, non-profit, The Green Party, out of Lawrence, MA. I also worked part-time for another non-profit, Lawrence Grassroots Initiative, which worked on environmental and social justice issues.
I decided to go back to school for my Masters to further my knowledge in community development. I chose to apply to RESD mainly because they approach economic and social development from multiple angles, which I consider necessary to understanding issues and working for change. Having taken several classes in the department as an undergraduate, I was also impressed with the dedication and approachability of the faculty. For me, it was a perfect fit. top
My experience here at RESD has been very rewarding both personally and academically. A key factor in that experience has been the strong relationship between faculty and the students. The faculty has been very supportive and responsive to student needs and concerns. I think the faculty has gone out of their way to create a comfortable, non-competitive environment that is conducive to graduate education.
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I?m an international student in RESD at UMass Lowell. I came from China. I got my BA and MA degree from Zhongshan University in China. After graduation, I worked full-time as a teacher and administrator in Zhongshan University. Meanwhile, I also was a part-time social activist, advertiser and businessman. I have been very interested in social and economic issues both in China and the world. I?m also very interested in information technology.
I like RESD because the campus is ethnically diverse; the courses are usually interesting and interdisciplinary; the research projects are exciting; the classmates are very friendly and knowledgeable. More importantly, the professors in RESD not only are elites in their teaching and research field, but also very enthusiastic to help the students. Even though I?m a foreigner, I still feel like I?m around with old friends. After about one year in RESD, I find I like it more.
I plan to pursue an advanced degree in a related field after graduation from RESD.
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This is a picture of one of our students: Erin Sheehan, who is in the BA/MA program. Her project "Socio-Economic Analysis of the Republic of Burundi" was selected for the Fourth Annual Student Research Symposium held April 26, 2001 at UMass Lowell. Her project was also chosen for display at the Seventh Annual Undergraduate Conference on Research, Scholarly, Creative, and Public Service Activities held April 27, 2001 in Sturbridge, MA for the entire University of Massachusetts system. Erin was also awarded a grant from the Honors Professional Development Grant Committee at UMass Lowell. It will provide partial funding for her research trip to Cambodia.
I graduated in September 2002 after attending on a part-time basis, and am currently working at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study on a project funded by the Ford Foundation. This project looks at community based organizations (CBOs) who run temporary staffing agencies; a recently new phenomenon. The original assignment was half-time for three months and was then extended to six months. Upon completion of my degree I was asked if I would like to stay until the completion of the project in June 2003. The opportunity to join the team came about through networking that the RESD professors do for the students.
The purpose of the study is to see what qualitative and quantitative difference these agencies make to peoples lives over the traditional staffing agencies. Do they offer higher wages? Better types of jobs? Career progression? The first part of the project entailed locating the agencies, interviewing them via telephone, and writing a detailed analysis on each of the interviews - a more comprehensive analysis looking at how they compared to other like agencies and factoring in demographic data that I had collected. We then selected nine of the 29 organizations interviewed to visit so that we could get a first-hand look at what they do and how they do it. The visits to the organizations started in October 2002 and were completed at the end of January 2003. Two researchers went on each site visit, one experienced interviewer and one less so. Focus groups were held involving 7-10 workers for each organization visited to obtain their point of view. At the end of June 2003 we give the Ford Foundation our report.
The first site visit that I did was to Chrysalis in LA which is located in skid row. It is one of the largest organizations of its type and was an extremely positive experience.
The team consisted of the principal investigator; Francoise Carre, Dorie Seavey, a consultant in the field of labor studies; Joaquin Herranz, a doctoral candidate at MIT?s urban studies program, and myself.
In conjunction with this position I started working as a researcher at the National Alliance for Fair Employment (NAFFE) in late September 2002. NAFFE is a network of grassroots organizations, labor unions, advocates, and academics. In particular they focus on the problems associated with nonstandard work, such as part-time, temporary and contract employment which is part of the broader fight to ensure that working people have the right and opportunity to provide for themselves, their families and their communities.
My position here is very complementary to my position in Radcliffe. My primary role is to spearhead the hiring hall research project that involves generating a comprehensive list of day hiring centers, and mapping these centers using GIS using some hypothetic testing of the relationships of the hiring halls to economic patterns. This is part of an ongoing NAFFE project that is dealing with workers centers and the strategic issues they confront.
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I have an undergraduate degree from Hampshire College where I studied issues of race, gender, and class in the United States. I spent four years in Mexico and was involved in both rural and urban community development projects. Most recently, I have been working as a Community Organizer for a small Community Based Organization that is promoting economic development and neighborhood revitalization in Dorchester.
Through my work I have gained a greater understanding of the complicated issues surrounding development, motivating me to seek the relevant knowledge and skills I need to continue in this area of social change. I was drawn to the RESD program, in particular, because of its interdisciplinary and
progressive approach to looking at communities and economic development. Taking one course before becoming a full-time student, I was impressed with the knowledge and commitment of both the students and faculty. Through this degree, I am looking forward to acquiring the tools I need to be more effective in my work.
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