Laurel Smith in a Senior Voice Recital

This is the program for the senior voice recital of mezzo-soprano Laurel Smith. Aaron Wilson accompanied on piano. The recital took place on October 31, 1988, in the Mabee Fine Arts Recital Hall

Immigrant Entrepreneurs in the Massachusetts Biotechnology Industry (2007)

Immigrant entrepreneurs are co-founders in 25.7 percent of Massachusetts Biotechnology firms. In 2006, these immigrant-founded biotechnology companies produced over $7.6 billion dollars in sales and employed over 4,000 workers. The foreign-born founders came from across the globe but in larger numbers from Europe, Canada or Asia. Their firms specialize in the most complex, risky, life science-intensive aspects of biotechnology to seek knowledge directly applicable to human health. Biotechnology is a crucial industry for Massachhusetts and the evidence strongly suggests that immigrants have been key contributors to this industry by establishing new businesses as well as bringing intellectual capital and thereby contributing significantly to the overall economic growth of the Commonwealth

Decolonizing hybridity: indigenous video, knowledge, and diffraction

This article examines the hybrid cultural geographies of indigenous video with Donna Haraway’s visual strategy of diffraction. Drawing on ethnographic inquiry, one particular video is explored from three different perspectives. First, a festival audience celebrates how the video represents place-based belonging, the joys of collective labor, and indigeneity. Second, a geographical analysis articulates the transnational circuits of advocacy and collaborative practices of knowledge production that shaped this video and its subsequent travels. Third, an extended conversation with the video maker about his target audience reveals a political intervention not visible from the first two angles of analysis. When diffracted, this thrice-told story about one video provides lessons about the potential for indigenous video to decolonize scholarly authority.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Subsistence and economic adaptation in the Onion Lake Agency, 1876-1920

This study gives an historical summary of Cree and Chipewyan Indians who resided in the Fort Pitt District from 1876 to 1885 and in the Onion Lake Agency from 1885 to 1920, and examines their adaptation to reservation life, with emphasis on reserve settlement and subsistence activities. Four main topics are discussed: the historical position of the Cree and Chipewyan prior to 1876; ident­ification of Indian bands who signed Treaty Six at Fort Pitt in 1876 and movement to their reservations; the physical environment exploited by these Indians; and, government policies and programs which influenced subsistence activities pursued by Indians in the study area. The study concludes that Indian adaptation to reservation life involved a change in subsistence activities and settlement pattern which maintained a continuity with former lifeways and adopted certain introduced Euro-Canadian values and practices; policies and programs implemented by the government were guided by a desire for economy and exhibited a protectionist attitude; the attitude of the Indians was not always conciliatory towards government programs, and Indians chose certain aspects of these programs which were to their economic and material advantage; and, the pattern of reserve live which developed was closely related to the annual cycle of subsistence activities

Collaborative group work and increased diversity through Wikipedia editing

This paper details how a collaborative assignment to edit Wikipedia entries on linguistic topics can help students practice and improve their research skills and navigate group work through an engaged learning task. It describes strategies for group formation, types of cognitive skills that were deployed in the task, equitable distribution of workload and ways that individual student contributions to the project were tracked and assessed, along with project feedback from student reflections. The editing task is also shown as a way to increase gender diversity and widen the language background of the site’s editors

MEDIATING INDIGENOUS IDENTITY: VIDEO, ADVOCACY, AND KNOWLEDGE IN OAXACA, MEXICO

In the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, many indigenous communities further their struggles for greater political and cultural autonomy by working with transnational non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Communication technology (what I call comtech) is increasingly vital to these intersecting socio-spatial relations of activism and advocacy. In this dissertation, I examine how comtech offer indigenous individuals and organizations with the means for visualizing their political-cultural agendas. Approaching the access and use of comtech, especially video technologies, as a partial and situated technoscience, I inquire into how and why these activities reconfigure the production and evaluation of authoritative knowledge about indigenous peoples, places, and practices. More specifically, I undertook an organizational ethnography of a small intermediary NGO comprised of individuals who self-identify as indigenous and others who do not, Ojo de Agua Comunicacin Indgena, which endeavors to place communication technologies (especially video equipment) at the disposal of indigenous communities. Through participation-observation and interviews, I explored this groups everyday strategies of networking in the name of assisting indigenous actors access and appropriation of visual technologies. I also pursued interpretive analyses of video-mediated articulations of indigenous knowledge and identity that were enabled by Ojo de Agua. My research indicates that Ojo de Agua has selectively built upon the ambitions and the socio-spatial connections of a government program that emerged from the initiatives of academic advocates, who sought to open new spaces of participation for indigenous peoples. Members of Ojo de Agua have, however, found their goal of service somewhat stymied by a situation that positions them within a flexible labor force of knowledge workers. Their livelihoods as media makers did not allow them (the time or money) to pursue as much altruism and advocacy as they would have liked. Nonetheless, Ojo de Aguas corpus of videos established the group as an alternative and yet authoritative source of visual knowledge of indigenous peoples, places, and practices. This relocation of advocacy is symptomatic of the creative destruction fueled by the neo-liberal economic policies that, for the last thirty years, have been reconfiguring spaces of cooperation and conflict in Latin America

How Diversity Matters in the U.S. Science and Engineering Workforce: Integration and Inclusion in Teams and Departments

This document summarizes the proceedings of the Scientific Workforce Diversity Seminar Series (SWDSS) virtual seminar “How Does Diversity Impact Science?” The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Chief Officer for Science Workforce Diversity (COSWD) office hosted the seminar on May 17, 2022. Approximately 675 people from NIH and other organizations attended. Marie A. Bernard, M.D., COSWD, moderated a panel discussion on the evidence regarding the impact of diverse, inclusive teams on creativity, innovation, and productivity in science. Six invited speakers with workforce diversity expertise shared perspectives and presented their research, including how to measure the impact of diversity and potential areas for future study. Presentations by the panelists were followed by a question-and-answer session moderated by Dr. Bernard. This document details the main points from the invited speakers’ presentations and the ensuing discussion on what diversity brings to the scientific endeavor. The seminar recording and panelists’ presentation materials are on the COSWD website

Collaboration and Gender Equity among Academic Scientists

Universities were established as hierarchical bureaucracies that reward individual attainment in evaluating success. Yet collaboration is crucial both to 21st century science and, we argue, to advancing equity for women academic scientists. We draw from research on gender equity and on collaboration in higher education, and report on data collected on one campus. Sixteen focus group meetings were held with 85 faculty members from STEM departments, separated by faculty rank and gender (i.e., assistant professor men, full professor women). Participants were asked structured questions about the role of collaboration in research, career development, and departmental decision-making. Inductive analyses of focus group data led to the development of a theoretical model in which resources, recognition, and relationships create conditions under which collaboration is likely to produce more gender equitable outcomes for STEM faculty. Ensuring women faculty have equal access to resources is central to safeguarding their success; relationships, including mutual mentoring, inclusion and collegiality, facilitate women’s careers in academia; and recognition of collaborative work bolsters women’s professional advancement. We further propose that gender equity will be stronger in STEM where resources, relationships, and recognition intersect—having multiplicative rather than additive effects

UMass ADVANCE STEM Race and Gender Findings 2022

The UMass ADVANCE program is working to ensure greater equity among faculty through the power of collaboration. In the 2022 ADVANCE survey, 273 UMass faculty from 32 STEM departments in CICS, CNS, College of Engineering, and SBS responded. In this research brief, we describe some of the key findings from this survey, focusing on patterns among STEM faculty by gender and race. We explore whether and how the intersection of gender and race affect STEM faculty inclusion, shared decision-making, and research collaboration