Graduate Excellence

Report of the UMass Amherst Graduate School

In this Issue:

• Message from the Dean

• Staff Spotlight

• Graduate School by the Numbers

• The Graduate School Creates

Innovative Funding Opportunities

• Office of Inclusion & Engagement News

• OIE Hosts McNair Scholars to Support Graduate Recruitment

• Three Spaulding-Smith Fellows

Selected for Scientist Mentoring & Diversity Program

• UMass to Track Career Paths in the Humanities

• Careers in Teaching

• Support the Graduate School

It gives me great pleasure to extend a warm welcome to our extended network of graduate alumni and friends of the Graduate School. We are launching a newsletter as a way of staying in touch with you and sharing news about the Graduate School. In these pages we hope to share with you some of the programming we are doing, our fundraising efforts, and most especially, celebrate the achievements of our graduate students across campus.

I began serving as Dean in January 2021, as our former Dean, Barbara Krauthamer, moved just a few hundred yards away to South College where she is now serving as Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. The University was in full pandemic lockdown, operating almost exclusively online as we all joined together to protect the health and safety of our students, faculty and staff. As I write this now, we are back on campus and enjoying seeing each other and students once again.

It has been an exceptional two years of challenges and resilience. We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the amazing staff in all the units of the Graduate School that persevered, taking home their computers, and setting up remote work stations so our work could continue. We have also had quite a few changes in our staff, with retirements and departures in virtually every unit of the Graduate School.

I appreciate the service and dedication of everyone that makes the Graduate School an exceptional place to work and I am confident that with the new excellent hires we have made, the Graduate School will continue full steam ahead on its mission of innovation and excellence.

COVID placed serious obstacles to our students’ progress, closing labs and preventing travel to research and conferences. Racial tensions across the country brought a reckoning with systemic inequality and prompted task forces to ask how we can do better. Here at the Graduate School, we have tried to be a beacon of support in all these changes, looking to find meaningful ways to provide the support students needed to get back on track and feel connected to our campus. I hope you will enjoy learning more about the Graduate School and our initiatives for supporting excellence, diversity and equity in graduate education.

Warmly,

Jacqueline Urla Professor of Anthropology Dean, Graduate School

Joyce is one of our longest serving staff members at the Graduate School where she is the Supervisor of Records. She was born in Woburn, Massachusetts. She knows well the struggle and determination it takes to get an education. As a single parent, she decided to pursue a college degree, going first to Holyoke Community College. While there, she found a wonderful mentor who told her about the Ada Comstock Program at Smith College for older returning students. She applied and spent the next 7 and a half years earning her bachelor’s degree in Psychology, while also working various jobs to support herself and her daughter. She has lived many places --Vermont, Newport, Rhode Island, before settling in Granby 26 years ago with her husband Bob.

“I started working at the Graduate School in September 1997. UMass gave me a fulltime job when I really needed it. Good Lord – I started my UMass tenure here and never left – that must say something!! I deeply enjoy assisting graduate students in their academic endeavors and the ‘hiccups’ that life presents along the way. I like to think we are successful most of the time. Like any area – there is always work to do and improvements to be made – yet I believe we strive to establish a welcoming and caring and ‘we will work with you’ reputation. Our ultimate goal is to help our students graduate – and to assist in paving a helpful path along the way.”

Joyce describes herself as a “pay it forward kind of gal.” “I personally strive to be an empathetic voice/shoulder – to be honest and to always be kind.” And she truly is all of that and more.

Grad School By The Numbers

27% International Representing 107 Countries

52% Female 31% African American Latinx American Asian American & Native American

7,838 STUDENTS

1,752 Masters Degrees &

395 Doctoral Degrees

Awarded May 2022