News

Homecoming 2011: See photos

Alumnus Carlton E. Brown talks about investing in financial literacy.
Read The Chronicle’s interview

Zito’s ( Ed.D. 2011) school district named 7th “Top Workplace” in Hartford region

Mark Zito, (Ed.D. 2011), superintendent of the East Hartford Public Schools, announced that his school district is being recognized as one of the Top Workplaces 2011 in the greater Hartford region by The Hartford Courant and FOXCT. The district was ranked #7 in the large business division. Zito said that 793 employers in the greater Hartford region were invited to participate in the program, and 45 were designated Top Workplaces. The rankings were based on feedback from employee surveys.

“The designation as a Top Workplace serves as a testament to the quality and dedication of our employees, our consistent focus on providing our students with outstanding educational opportunities, and a high overall level of employee morale,” Zito said. “We are certainly honored to be included in this list, particularly because the judges are the hardworking employees of the East Hartford Public Schools.”

Mitchell receives early career award

Tania Mitchell, Ed.D. 2005, will receive the Early career Award from the international Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement at the association’s conference in November. Mitchell is a critical service learning scholar. She currently serves as the associate director for undergraduate studies and as director of service learning at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University.

Zangmo talks about women’s education

Asia Society, NYC, Sept. 19

Tashi Zangmo, (M.Ed. 2004, Ed. D. 2009) Executive Director of the Bhutan Nuns Foundation, a will be introduced by His Excellency Lyonchhen Jigmie Thinley, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Bhutan, following his presentaion about Bhutan’s role in promoting peace and prosperity in South Asia on Monday, Sept. 19 at The Asia Society, New York. Zangmo will talk about her work in women’s education in her home country of Bhutan. The Bhutanese Nuns' Foundation was established in 2006 under the patronage of Her Majesty Ashi Tshering Yangdon Wangchuck to help improve the well-being and education of nuns in Bhutan.

Lateef receives Achievement Award

Yusef A. Lateef, Ed.D. 1975, received a Distinguished Achievement Award at UMass Amherst Graduate Commencement 2011. Lateef, a multi-instrumentalist, educator, composer and author has a career that has “defied categories.” Lateef says that his music “comes from one’s physical, mental and spiritual self” and combines theoretical knowledge and a direct expression of life experience. He is a master of the alto and tenor saxophone, flute, oboe and bassoon as well as the bamboo flute, rehad, shehnai, shofar, arghul, sarewa and koto.

Grad student Vacchi runs for returning veterans

David Vacchi, SOE graduate student, veteran and former manager of the Army ROTC program at UMass Amherst, will be among the runners in the Run to Home Base fundraiser held in Boston on May 22. Proceeds from the event go to program to help veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Read the story.

Our 2011 Scholarship Donors & Recipients Reception

Always an inspiring event, this reception provides an opportunity for our scholarship donors and recipients to meet.

Thank you, donors, for your generosity, and congratulations to our recipients. See some of the photos.

Charles Desmond receives Distinguished Alumni Award

Heriberto Flores (M.Ed. 1991) believes in Springfield

Springfield’s Heriberto “Herbie” Flores, son of Puerto Rican farm workers, is passionate about the city - and he just might be “the right man at the right time” to spearhead the next wave of downtown revival.

Earlier this month, the nonprofit agency Flores leads - the New England Farm Workers Council - purchased the historic former Paramount Theater for $1.725 million with plans to develop the former Main Street movie palace into a multi-cultural center that celebrates the city’s diversity.

The ebullient Flores, who counts the late Peter Pan bus magnate and entrepreneur Peter Picknelly as one of his role models, is full of development ideas for the century-old building. Those ideas include a high-end restaurant with a Spanish flavor, a Starbucks coffee shop that would serve as a daily meeting place for downtown workers and an entertainment venue that would complement Symphony Hall and other downtown arts organizations.

Those who know Flores are confident he’ll achieve his vision for the building.

Russell Omer, executive vice president at Chicopee Savings Bank - the lead lender on the project - is one of those believers. “You’ve got to know Herbie and the way he does business,” Omer said. “He’ll develop it. It’s not going to be risky.”

Read the full story here.

Bemak wins humanitarian award from American Counseling Association

Dr. Fred Bemak, (Ed.D. 1975), professor in the College of Education and Human Development at George Mason University, has been honored by the American Counseling Association as winner of the Gilbert and Kathleen Wrenn Award for a Humanitarian and Caring Person. The Wrenn Award honors an ACA member who gives to others without fanfare or expectation of reward other than the personal satisfaction of seeing other people made happier.

Bemak is the founder and director of the Diversity Research Action Center. He has directed federal, state, and privately funded human services programs and has provided consultation, training, and research with culturally diverse populations and public and private human services organizations locally, nationally, and internationally. Bemak has published extensively in the fields of cross-cultural and multicultural psychology and counseling, social justice, working with at-risk youth, and immigrant and refugee mental health and psychosocial adjustment. He co-authored “Social Justice Counseling: The Next Steps Beyond Multiculturalism in Application, Theory, with Dr. Rita Chi-Ying Chung, and “Counseling Refugees: A Psychosocial Approach to Innovative Multicultural Interventions” with Chi-Ying Chung and Paul Pedersen.

Bemak was the program evaluator for a six-country cross-border child trafficking program in Asia, consultant for several years with Save the Children, UK, in Burma, and currently is doing ongoing consultation and training with Invisible Children in Uganda. He founded Counselors Without Borders to respond to worldwide disasters and has brought teams to provide counseling, training, and consultation following Hurricane Katrina, the San Diego wildfires, and the Haiti earthquake. He has been a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil, a Fulbright Specialist in Scotland, a World Rehabilitation Fund International Fellow in India, a Kellogg International Fellow in Latin America and the Caribbean, and has held faculty appointments at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil and the University of Queensland in Australia.

He is active in ACA and the American Psychological Association. Founded in 1952 and headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia, the American Counseling Association is the world’s largest private, not-for-profit organization for professional counselors.

School of Education’s Center for International Education Receives $9.9 Million Grant for Higher Education Work in Afghanistan

The School of Education’s Center for International Education (CIE) has been awarded a one-year, $9.9-million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to continue its work to improve access to higher education in Afghanistan.

This project is part of an overall program to rehabilitate and strengthen the education system throughout Afghanistan. Since 2006, CIE has worked as a partner in a consortium with the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and education faculty who offer four-year teacher education programs in that country. The Higher Education Project (HEP) built on initial successes with education faculty and worked with Kabul Medical University and six other medical institutions to enhance medical education.

For this grant UMass Amherst was asked to assume primary responsibility for overseeing the entire project. Indiana University, another member of the original consortium, will also participate. The collaborators will work with the higher education ministry and 18 Afghan institutions of higher education with a focus on improving their ability to train secondary school teachers.

During the past five years, the CIE has worked in Afghanistan with other institutions in a group led by the Academy for Educational Development. The consortium recently completed a successful project to revitalize teacher training and establish the first functioning master’s degree program in Afghanistan in at least 30 years.

The same UMass team that has been involved in the Higher Education Project over the past five years will continue in this new venture. The initiative is led by David R. Evans, CIE director, and Joseph B. Berger, chair of the department of educational policy, research and administration in the School of Education. Berger and Evans stressed that the HEP has been a team effort that includes CIE faculty, staff and graduate students. Notable for their contributions are Barbara Gravin Wilbur, fiscal administrator, and graduate student Mindy Eichhorn, who serves as the project coordinator.

Christine B. McCormick, dean of the School of Education, praised the ongoing effort. “CIE has a 40-year history of highly effective work with developing nations,” she says. “We are very proud that the center has been selected to work with Afghan institutions to build educational capacity in the essential areas of training teachers and improving access to quality education.”

Evans and Berger also noted that the UMass Amherst administration has been consistently supportive of their efforts to secure this most recent grant. “The university has stepped up to the plate to make this happen,” Evans says. Berger added, “The level of support has been remarkable.”

The current project has several major components. The CIE staff will continue to work on developing and sustaining the very successful master’s degree program in teacher education at Kabul Education University. It has already graduated two cohorts of students, with a third cohort half-way through the program. A fourth cohort will be admitted in the coming months. This program is notable because half of the graduates are women, which is highly unusual in Afghanistan. In addition, a large number of students are from provincial centers outside of Kabul, which allows the program to have a significant impact in underserved areas throughout the country.

CIE will also oversee continued development of 11 Professional Development Centers located in universities throughout Afghanistan. These centers provide access to technology and offer training in teaching, subject areas, and English. Another aspect of the program is the development of degree programs in public policy, including a master’s degree program based at Kabul University and a bachelor’s program that will be offered at four or five provincial universities.

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