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July 01, 2003

thanks Mitt Romney and thanks Monkey Man

Today I got an email from the head of the Critical and Creative Thinking Program at UMass.

Dear CCT community:
As some of you might know, after the very positive 7-year AQUAD review the College of Ed. Dean, Jonathan Chu, and the Provost's office decided not to continue to fund Nina Greenwald's 50% position. The Graduate Dean, Emily McDermott, then imposed a moratorium on admissions to the CCT Program. (The Deans' responses to the AQUAD review provide further detail; see CCT website, http://www.cct.umb.edu) I regret to inform you that the Provost, Paul Fonteyn, has now endorsed the moratorium. If there is any reconsideration, we will let you know immediately. Courses will continue to be offered so that students already matriculated will be seen through to graduation, but current
students should read and respond to the email to follow.

There is some good news -- the incoming dean of the Graduate College of Education, Lester Goodchild, is interested in incorporating research on cognition and learning into the training of our teachers and educational administrators and wants to continue CCT under some intercollege arrangement. Details of this proposal and its implications will be posted as soon as they are known, probably not till the fall.

The letter continues, but that is the meat of it, except that we have to matriculate by the Spring '05. Cuts to UMass have forced the closure of some of the smaller programs, regardless of their success. And Nina...she is one of the most amazing people that I have had a chance to study with. It's not bad enough that the program was cut, but it's ten times worse that for the last four semesters that they won't even allow her to teach.

I'm fortunate only in that I managed to get into the program in time for me to finish up. Still, I worry...will the electives I had hoped for get cut? Will the core classes I need to take end up being at 4PM and throw a loop into the schedule that I'm bound to (understandably, my boss wigs out when I leave at 2:30PM to get to class on time)?

Funny how that both times my schooling became messed up have been when the Bushes were in office. Both times finding a job was near impossible has been when a Bush has been in office.

I'm not sure that Bulger should be head of UMass, but I think that Romney's personal vendetta against him shouldn't punish the students who are trying to move ahead to be better for the big business that Romney's such a proponent of...

Posted by crystallyn at July 1, 2003 06:53 AM

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Posted by: Ancarett at July 2, 2003 04:26 PM