Updates

NERCHE co-sponsors International Research Conference on Service Learning.

NERCHE is a sponsor of the 7th International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Community Engagement held on October 6-9, 2007 in Tampa, Florida. The conference is focused on the theme of "Sustainability and Scholarship: Research and the K-20 Continuum." The conference is presented by the International Association for Research on Service-Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE). As part of its sponsorship, NERCHE is hosting a reception for graduate students on Sunday, October 7. The reception offers an opportunity for graduate students to network among themselves and for graduate students to meet senior researchers in the field. NERCHE's Director, John Saltmarsh, is a member of the Board of the IARSLCE. For more information about the IARSLCE go to http://www.researchslce.org ; for more information about the conference, go to http://www.floridacompact.org

Former Lynton Award recipient delivers prestigious Lecture at UMass Boston

On Wednesday, May 3, 2007, Peter Kiang, Professor of Education and Asian American Studies and former Lynton Award recipient, delivered the first annual “Last Lecture” at UMass Boston. The Last Lecture is a newly instituted annual event at UMass Boston and is delivered by the recipient of the Chancellor’s Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Peter’s talk, “Crouching Teachers, Hidden Curricula: Classroom-Community Stories with Vi, Katrina, Tiger, and other Pedagogies of Promise and Persistence,” wove matters of racial
identity, newly recalled history, personal testimony, and values that underlie engaged pedagogies, and presented a model for recruitment, retention, and success of disenfranchised groups that links community and university pedagogically, socially, and with integrity. He argued that “under-resourced institutions like UMass Boston—and others such as community colleges that have even less prestige and flexibility—are critical sites for powerfully engaged and generative scholarship, teaching, and learning. Though these institutions lack the resources and status of either private liberal arts colleges or public and private Research I universities, they nevertheless represent the primary sites in higher education where the community invasion proposed by the Ford Foundation’s Alison Bernstein has already taken place.”

After the lecture, audience members joined Peter at a reception.

NERCHE Brief: “Graduate Education and Civic Engagement”

KerryAnn O’Meara, Professor of Higher Education Policy, Research and Administration at UMass Amherst, has authored NERCHE’s latest Brief, which explores the importance and challenges of integrating civic engagement into graduate education, and offers several key questions that might help guide campus efforts to prepare future academics and professionals for effective civic engagement. Click here to view this and other Briefs

Save the Date: NERCHE Spring Colloquium, June 19, 2007

A leadership colloquium and dinner with Dr. Jon Wergin, author of the newly released Leadership in Place. Tuesday, June 19, 2007 (rescheduled from March 13), Hoagland-Pincus Conference Center, Shrewsbury, MA. Pre-Colloquium Virtual Think Tank on “Leadership in Place”: June 4 – 15, 2007. In Leadership in Place, Jon Wergin takes an innovative look at academic leadership and argues that it's time to rethink how our colleges and universities are organized and led. The concept of leadership in place calls for a shift in attitude about leaders and leadership—from a hierarchical view that academic leadership flows from a leadership position, to a more lateral view that leadership roles are available to everyone. Click here for more information.

NERCHE sponsors special session at 2007 AACU Annual Meeting

On January 18, 2007, NERCHE sponsored a panel at the 2007 AACU Annual Meeting in New Orleans focusing on “Post-Katrina Refugee Rebuilding and the Role of Asian American Studies Praxis: Lessons from Student Engagement with New Orleans’ Vietnamese Community.” The panel highlighted the importance of ethnic studies models of service learning praxis, while offering a critique of post-Katrina Black-White race relations discourse. The session also included discussion of how issues of language, culture, race, and spiritual identity for Vietnamese American college students intersect meaningfully with the community-based rebuilding process of Vietnamese in New Orleans who are seeking to (re)claim home, voice, and justice. The panel was led by Peter Nien-chu Kiang, Professor of Education and Director, Asian American Studies Program, UMass Boston; Jennifer Nguyen, Graduate Student, American Studies Program, UMass Boston; James Dien Bui, Gulf Coast Regional Director, National Association of Vietnamese American Service Agencies (NAVASA). Click here to read more.

Working Paper on Student Debt

In November The Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS) published A Research Agenda for the Study of the Effects of Borrowing and the Prospects of Indebtedness on Students’ College-Going Choices, a working paper prepared by NERCHE for the Project on Student Debt. The paper, written by NERCHE Visiting Fellow Alicia Dowd, is one of the outcomes of NERCHE’s grant from TICAS to investigate research and policy implications concerning college student debt. The paper proposes a broad-based, multidisciplinary research agenda to inform financial aid policies and student advising.

Boston Globe op-ed piece: "Campus partners for better communities”

NERCHE director John Saltmarsh and Armand Carriere, executive director of Worcester UniverCity Partnership, co-authored an op-ed piece which appeared in the November 18, 2006, edition of the Boston Globe: “What can colleges and universities do to improve communities across the Commonwealth? A campus-community partnership in Worcester could be a catalyst for creative public policy that encourages community engagement as a core mission of higher education...” Read more...