TYPICALLY BELEAGUERED IN the two-day reading
period before the onslaught of finals last May and December,
UMass students were surprised by a "random act of kindness"
at the doors of the Du Bois Library: free chocolates and spring
water handed out by staff and alumni volunteers.
"The fun part was the students couldn't believe it was free," says Arnette Nelson, library development director and secretary-treasurer of the Friends of the Library. Nelson was one of a cadre of volunteers countering the initial skepticism of students with some 5,000 candy bars and 2,000 bottles of water before final exam periods last spring and fall. "It looks like the beginning of a tradition," says Nelson.
Nelson points out that the brains behind the operation, as well as its bankroller, is indefatigable UMass booster Elaine Barker '63, `69G. Owner of the Amherst needlework shop Creative Needle, Barker is also treasurer of the UMass Alumni Association, which paid for the chocolates and water. She says the caffeinated and rehydrating "Study Break" is one of the ways the 125-year-old association is trying to get the word out to alumni, present and future, that it exists. On the days volunteers were posted at the library, "We kept saying `Alumni Association and Friends of the Library,' so maybe in the future students would remember and want to join."
In fact, the board of the association, which is 10,000-dues-paying members strong now, has resolved to enlist another 20,000 in the next three years a goal well beyond the one it set for itself just a year ago. The organization has also expanded its focus over the last few years, according to Susan Mattei `84G, director of alumni relations and acting executive director of the association.
"We started with the idea of membership in the association as something where we would give you all these great benefits," says Mattei. "Now we're saying the primary reason to join is to support the university." Barker says that's the reason she joined up: "I feel I owe the university a great deal," she says. "I would not have been able to get a college education otherwise, because the family had no money." Other members she's talked to including one who travels from New Orleans to attend board meetings feel the same. "It's a different feeling than going to an Ivy League college. You know that if this weren't available, you wouldn't be where you are."
MATTEI SAYS the "Life Network" concept is really a
formalization of what the alumni office and association have
always done: reaching out to alumni and offering ways for them
to reach back. As the lists of reunion-goers in this issue's
Class Notes show, traditional on-campus gatherings continue apace.
As the list of regional clubs on page 46 indicates, that way
of linking alumni is also on the upswing. Association membership
also continues to bring with it such benefits as affinity credit
cards and discounts.
More and more, though, UMass alumni programs are offering services. Permanent UMass e-mail addresses and an on-line alumni directory will be available by September. Career services workshops for alumni are already up and running, and this fall, in conjunction with the clubs program, career center staffer Karen Knight will be taking workshops on the road. The Alumni Career Services Guide, written by Knight and funded by the association, is already available, and an on-line "alumni yellow pages" is planned.
"So you can see that, for alumni interested in career transitioning and networking as well as for alumni just wanting to stay in touch with the campus and each other we're offering very real and tangible services," Mattei says.
The association is also a nimble vehicle for alumni wanting to make tangible contributions to campus life, its leaders say. Last year the association's grant program directed over $100,000 to thirty campus organizations, from the Black Student Union to the UMass cheerleaders. It targeted $31,000 and $25,000 for new computer equipment for student athletes and The Daily Collegian, respectively.
The donation to the Collegian ensured that New England's largest daily college newspaper would continue to publish beyond January 1, 2000, when its non-Y2K compliant computer system was destined to crash. Founded in 1890, the Collegian has been publishing daily since 1967 and been self-supporting for the past ten years. "But this bill was just something we couldn't have absorbed," says advertising manager John Bajoras '99. "We would have taken money from the school but we felt that would have compromised our integrity. So the alumni kind of gave us our independence back."
That's the idea, says association president John Goodrich Jr. '65. As he said in a recent letter to the membership, "Each year presents new opportunities," to give the campus, its organizations, and alumni themselves greater independence, opportunity, and communal clout.
Mary Carey
"THERE HAS BEEN A WIDE GULF between our
communities and the university," says Sonia Nieto. "That's
changing," adds the professor of education, who completed
her doctorate at UMass in 1979. "But it hasn't changed enough,
especially for communities in distress."
The gulf that most concerns Nieto is the one separating the poor, especially poor minority groups, from the economic advantages offered by a college education. In a society where college is more vital than ever to securing a satisfying occupation, Nieto sees a large portion of the population remaining in economic distress as long as their own learning environments keep them from being academically qualified for college.
She points to an obvious example: inner-city schools in Spring-field, twenty miles from the Amherst campus, where the Hispanic minority includes a disproportionate number of youths for whom higher education is not even a dream.
The solution seems clear: teach these students better. Find someone who speaks their language, literally and culturally. Last year Nieto secured a $12,500 grant to hire a bilingual teacher Felix Margolin, a UMass graduate student from Spain to teach Hispanic students in Springfield what they needed to know to pass the GED exam and thereby qualify for application to college.
Right away, assessment tests revealed that most of these students' academic needs were greater than anyone had assumed. Nevertheless, observed Nieto, "Felix was immensely impressed by these students. He says they are so determined it's incredible."
While the grant enabled Nieto to reach out to minority groups in Springfield, some of her students have conducted outreach right here in Amherst. Graduate students in education or in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, tutor children at Crocker Farm Elementary School. What's interesting about this project is that it involves teaching Spanish to the entire class, Hispanic and non-Hispanic alike. As Nieto explains, the purpose is at once to support Latino students' own culture and to show native English-speakers what the process of language-learning is like.
The challenge in all these efforts, says Nieto, is sustainability. "The university expects the communities to come up with the resources to continue the programs we've started," she says. "But these communities are so poor!"
Poverty itself, says Nieto, can compromise the university's outreach mission especially its commitment to affirmative action. "Unless we have a cadre of qualified high school students from which to draw, there's no way we can increase minority representation in the academy and the professional community," she says.
"These kids' needs are so great. But even if one benefits, the outreach is worthwhile, because it increases that person's skills, and its influence spreads." John Stifler '92G
"WHAT'S UNIQUE ABOUT US," says Tom
Juravich, director of the UMass Labor Relations and Research
Center (LRRC), "is that we're a labor-sided program."
Most labor studies courses, he notes, are taught in business
schools.
At the same time, says Juravich, "We're not biased. Our intellectual background forces us to be critical of both sides. Our outreach doesn't mean we're so bound up in our constituency that we can't be objective."
The labor movement, as its students and its members know, lost strength in the '70s and '80s as pro-business governments appeared to put corporate profits ahead of workers' interests, and as American manufacturing jobs moved overseas. "That upheaval has spurred interest on the part of workers in saving their ability to organize themselves," says Juravich, who completed his Ph.D. in sociology at UMass in 1984.
Given that interest, the LRRC has "a natural niche," he says. That niche is teaching current and aspiring organizers about their movement's history and processes, in what the center's website calls "the premier graduate program in the country" for those who want to work in the labor movement. "If workers better understand their rights and responsibilities," says Juravich, "there'll be less industrial strife."
Juravich has often lent his personal support to organized labor. A photo in his office in Draper Hall shows him being arrested on a picket line. A poster shows the cover of one of the CDs of labor songs he has recorded, which include both traditional folk songs and tunes he's written himself. He has a magnificent bass voice, and was the first musician ever to have an album produced by the United Auto Workers.
As for more scholarly work, labor studies is as fertile an area as any other. In fact, "Some other departments are envious of our access to our subjects," Juravich observes. "They write papers using a database somewhere, without a practical context in which to evaluate what they've found." What the LRRC produces in the form of research can be reviewed by its board of advisors, which includes offices of the AFL-CIO. And the program's ultimate success is measured by what happens when its students enter, or return to, their jobs in the field.
UMass labor studies also reaches out to the next generation. In virtually any school library in Massachusetts you can find a copy of Commonwealth of Toil, a large-format book of photographs and text by Juravich and two colleagues. Funded by the Massachusetts Legislature, the book provides a general introduction to the labor movement for youngsters and workers alike.
A union, Juravich observes, "is volunteers. It has a high turnover. It depends on debate. The labor movement is at its best when it is bringing in more people from the rank and file." When it comes to motivating that rank and file to people standing up for themselves workplace militancy is necessary, but not sufficient, Juravich says. "You need a strategic vision too." John Stifler '92G
