A bachelor’s degree in industrial management from UMass Lowell in 1992 helped Bill Lovely launch his career as an environmental scientist. For the past 13 years, he has been working for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the Boston office overseeing the cleanup of hazardous waste sites in the federal Superfund program. Prior to this, Bill worked as an environmental project manager at Gulf Oil, overseeing the underground storage tank program in four Northeastern states.
Now he’s back at UMass Lowell pursuing a master’s degree in work environment with a concentration in cleaner production and pollution prevention. His goal? To move from cleanup to prevention.
“I am hopeful that with this degree I will have additional skills to grow with the emerging fields of sustainable materials management and green chemistry that try to avoid or minimize the reliance on hazardous materials in the production process,” said Lovely.
He came to the right place. UMass Lowell’s Work Environment program is considered to be the nation’s leading graduate program in designing safe and healthy work standards.
Lovely has found that the coursework is directly related to his work, particularly in the areas of chemical use, risk assessment and toxicology.
“The coursework has helped me stay current on approaches that I can use to implement the principles of sustainability into my work,” said Lovely.
Lovely faced financial challenges to gain the skills to keep him current in his job, but he received significant support from the W. Hardie Shepard Memorial Endowed Prize. This scholarship is offered to engineering and science students with a financial need who have demonstrated service to the public good.
“As a divorced father with two children, I am trying to balance my financial responsibilities as a father with my academic and career goals, particularly in light of the fact that I must bear complete financial responsibility for funding my professional development,” said Lovely. “The Hardie Shepard award has allowed me to continue my education and avoid making the difficult decision to leave the program.”