Dear BDIC Student,

I became interim director of BDIC in February, 2008.  Since then, I have developed great pride in this program.  Above all, pride in the independence and creativity of the BDIC students.  

All of you should be aware that BDIC has a track record of producing strong, inventive, and successful leaders.  Not everyone knows that Senator Stanley Rosenberg was in BDIC.  So was Jan Schlichtman, the unstoppable attorney portrayed by John Travolta in the movie “A Civil Action.”

How about Steven Willis, a pioneer in the creation of the internet?

Tom Benedek, who wrote the screenplay for “Cocoon” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles”?

Robin DiGiammarino, the founder of Lodestar Mediation?

Nancy O’Hare, Director of Strategy at the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation in the Massachusetts General Hospital?

All of them were BDIC students.

BDIC students do experience some frustrations in getting into classes or getting people to understand what BDIC is.  It has always been this way, ever since BDIC was founded in 1970.  Nevertheless, BDIC is widely known and respected on campus, and we are on a roll in terms of gaining even wider recognition.

I encourage you to be outgoing and vocal when it comes to BDIC.  Wear a BDIC t-shirt (available in 608 Goodell).  Tell your friends and professors that you enjoy the opportunity to design your own major, to design your own future.  Take pride in being a BDIC student! 

You have embarked on what Robert Frost called “The Road Less Traveled.”  But your adventure is paralleled by 3000 prior graduates of BDIC, each of whom designed an individual concentration and whose collective success can only assure you that have chosen the correct road.

Sincerely,

Dan Gordon
(dgordon@history.umass.edu)