Bill Berkowitz, Program Director
(978) 934-3655 phone
bill-berkowitz@uml.edu e-mail
(978) 934-3074 fax

Many factors give our program special appeal. Here are a few: We have a strong applied emphasis. Specially, we teach students how to plan, create, and evaluate change in a wide variety of community and organizational settings. The skills we teach are practical, how-to-do-it skills. They have been tested, and they work. For a student wanting to become an effective community change agent, our program is an excellent place to learn. We attract students of a particularly diverse range of cultures, ages, and previous backgrounds. We provide a close learning community, where we all learn from one another. Our classes are small, rarely larger than 15-20 in size, and usually smaller. Student-faculty relations are close. A student receives plenty of individual attention. Our program is flexible, with multiple opportunities to pursue individual student interests. Students have considerable choice in course, fieldwork, and in project or thesis selection. We have strong connections to and active partnerships with the Lowell Community. Lowell is and especially diverse and dynamic city, it serves as a laboratory for fieldwork, interviews, and projects benefiting both the student, the University and the community. The training students receive translates into jobs. The placement record of our students, in both public and private sector settings, is particularly strong. We welcome student inquiries about our program, and will be glad to respond to questions. For further details, please contact the Graduate Program Coordinator.

Our graduate program is based in a city which is 60% nonwhite. Attention to diversity therefore becomes a practical as well as a moral imperative. Some specific diversity-related activities are noted. We teach a regular graduate course called Ethnic and Racial Factors in the Community. A frequently taught graduate seminar focuses on Workplace Diversity. One faculty member has received corporate grants to develop workplace-based diversity practices and research programs. Several graduate students are active in this area. Another faculty member has received funding from the University's Diversity Task Force to conduct a series of cultural programs in downtown Lowell to link the University and community members. The primary research interests of a third faculty member involve ethnic differences in parenting skills. A downtown center affiliated with our graduate program conducts ongoing leadership training for recent immigrants to the community. A recently- opened Center for Women and Work will engage in research and action programs with emphasis on diversity issues. We expect that our program's attention to diversity will increase as it continues to expand. We seek out, and we strongly value, contributions in this area from students, from faculty, and from the community at large.