The Tea: Beacons Magazine Fall 2023

The namesakes of the newly christened Dr. J. Keith and Angela Motley Residence Halls were honored for their steadfast commitment to UMass Boston at a dedication ceremony hosted by the University of Massachusetts and attended by more than 400 people. Chancellor Emeritus Dr. Motley and former first lady Angela Motley G'94 have been the driving force in expanding the on-campus residential experience for students. 

“It is an honor to pay tribute to two UMass Boston legends,” said UMass Boston Chancellor Marcelo Suárez-Orozco. “The incomparable Angela and Keith are tireless champions toward equity for students, staff, and the UMass community. The naming of this building is a testament to their leadership, making their legacy a permanent honor of their forceful efforts to build our first on-campus living space.” 

“This is beyond our imagination,” said Dr. Motley. “When you walk onto this campus, you can see transformation everywhere. That should not be a surprise—excellence is what you should expect at an institution. And as a university built on love, we cannot move on without thanking all those who stood by our side to ensure our students’ success with the opening of the campus’ first residence halls. Let us continue to reach, inspire, and empower the next generation of leaders.”  

“The residence halls were a dream of ours realized and only complements the work of those around us. Thank you to everyone who made this possible,” said Angela Motley, who played a critical role during Dr. Motley’s tenure by supporting fundraising efforts and making service and student mentorship a hallmark of her time at the university. “We are truly humbled and forever grateful to be receiving an honor of this stature.” 

Built in 2018, the Dr. J. Keith and Angela Motley Residence Halls provide housing for first-year students, flexible living and learning spaces, and a venue for fostering a stronger on-campus educational experience. 

A visionary gift positions to lead in applied AI

UMass Boston recently announced the creation of the Paul English Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute, conceived and funded by tech entrepreneur and UMass Boston alumnus Paul English ’87, G’89, H’19. The new institute—created with a $4 million commitment and an additional $1 million in scholarship support from English—will be the first of its kind in the nation.

“I’ve had the privilege of visiting dozens of universities over my career,” said English.“ What stands out about UMass Boston is its pragmatism, grit, and diversity. It is these things that will propel UMB to lead on applied AI.

”The institute will be embedded in academic study across UMass Boston’s schools and colleges and will include a focus on the social, ethical, and diversity challenges associated with AI. It will also catalyze UMass Boston’s efforts to gather experts from the full spectrum of the university’s research and organize its activity and expertise around this ever-expanding technology. These combined emphases will allow the institute to give UMass Boston students in every field—who overwhelmingly join the Massachusetts workforce after graduation—the tools necessary to succeed in and shape the increasingly AI-powered world of work.

Driving Diversity in Nursing 

Mass General Brigham and UMass Boston’s Manning College of Nursing and Health Sciences (MCNHS) are partnering to expand the college’s Clinical Leadership Collaborative for Diversity in Nursing program, an initiative they launched together in 2008 to support diversity, practice-preparedness, and behavioral health competency. 

Since 2008, the program has provided hands-on hospital experience and career opportunities to 135 graduate and undergraduate students at MCNHS, which offers the only four-year public programs in nursing and exercise and health sciences in the Greater Boston area. Participating students achieved a 100 percent certification rate and a 92 percent placement rate at Mass General Brigham hospitals. The new $20 million investment—$10 million from Mass General Brigham and $10 million from UMass Boston—will support 400 additional students over five years. The funding will also underwrite the creation of a behavioral health equity certificate for program participants. 

“Nurses are fundamental to the delivery of high-quality, compassionate health care to our patients,” said Dr. Anne Klibanski, president and CEO of Mass General Brigham. “There is an immense need to increase the pipeline of trained nurses, with a concerted focus on increasing diversity among our trainees. This initiative is a powerful example of how collaboration can drive change to overcome monumental challenges in a meaningful way.” 

FY 2023 Gifts to UMass Boston 

Total Giving: $37,366,952

Donors: 13,816

New Endowments: $12,700,000

$100K+ Gifts: 28

Annual Fund Giving: 

36% Unrestricted

22% Scholarship Aid

17% Student Services

16% Academic Programs

9% Athletics

Jonathan Martin (third from left), CEO of the North American arm of the global real estate investment firm AEW Capital Management, visited the College of Management in March as the inaugural speaker in the college’s new Distinguished Speaker Series. While there, Martin and AEW Chief People Officer Piper Sheer (center) also celebrated this year’s recipient of the AEW Capital Management-Pamela Strout Herbst ’77 Legacy Scholarship, Tamar Tondreau ’23 (second from left), along with fellow management students. 

Increasing climate awareness through public art

Cool Science, an organization that uses youth art and science to deliver meaningful climate education, joined forces with Mario Umana Academy, a dual-language public K–8 school in EastBoston. Together they created the Sea LevelRise mural, an impressive bilingual mural with 600-plus tiles that celebrates the community’s strengths, while also depicting the urgent climate issues facing the area alongBoston Harbor, where the school is situated.

Throughout the 2022–2023 school year, Umana’s third- through eighth-grade students and the school community organized mural tiles into nine themed panels. The panels display the role of biodiversity in sustainable and resilient ecological communities, the students’ values, such as inclusivity and respect, and the school’s vulnerability to flooding. The mural—made possible through funding from the National ScienceFoundation—serves as a powerful tool for educating the community and reinforcing the pressing issue of climate change and ways to address it. In a panel titled “We Can Adapt!” the tiles illustrate three key strategies the students learned for mitigating flooding: 1) absorb (such as creating marshes); 2) elevate (such as putting structures on stilts or floats); and 3) construct (such as building nature-based berms and living seawalls).

“The first step to understanding the impact and urgency of climate change is awareness, and a critical element of developing approaches to address climate change is hope,” said Bob Chen, Cool Science’s lead science expert and a professor and the interim dean at the UMass Boston School for the Environment. “This mural project does both and is an example of how Cool Science engages and educates children through art and science. And the benefits extend to the broader community.”

BEST Boston Program

UMass Boston’s College of Management has launched a new program to connect small Boston area businesses with College of Management students. Named BEST (Business Engagement for Students) Boston, this new initiative gives UMass Boston business students the ability to participate in 10-week consulting engagements to solve real-world problems. The pilot launched this past summer with four participating businesses. 

This impactful program aims to develop a pipeline of talented and diverse business professionals for careers in Greater Boston. Students get an exceptional learning experience with a rigorous curriculum, have access to cutting-edge technology, and are mentored by faculty as they prepare to pursue careers in business. 

“BEST Boston is a strategic priority for the UMass Boston College of Management toward its commitment for the economic development of the Boston region,” said Venky Venkatachalam, dean of the College of Management. “It is a win-win for both the businesses and the students participating.” 

Roxbury Youth Explore Urban-Planning Solutions to Extreme Heat 

This summer, 25 high school students from Roxbury studied how extreme heat affects their communities and the city, and what role urban planning and design have in mitigating it. The program, which ran for the month of July, was offered by UMass Boston’s Department of Urban Planning and Community Development and its Sustainable Solutions Lab in partnership with the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), Boston Public Schools, and Roxbury Community College. 

The 2023 Summer Program in Urban Planning, now in its second year, introduces youth of color from environmental justice communities to careers in urban planning, design, and development. It is part of 2023 Expanding Boston’s Pipeline for Youth of Color in Urban Planning, a citywide project launched by the BPDA, Boston Public Schools, UMass Boston, and Boston Architectural College that is aimed at increasing the percentage of non-white urban planners in Boston from 5 to 25 percent over the next 20 years. The BPDA supported this program with an award of $100,000. The program also received generous support from the Conatus Foundation. 

As part of the program, students toured Roxbury’s historic Wakullah Dale neighborhood, used temperature sensors to record air temperatures at various public sites, conducted interviews with residents to understand how they cope with increasing temperatures, and researched design practices that alleviate urban heat islands. The high school students found that the air temperatures were, on average, 10 degrees warmer in Roxbury than the temperatures recorded at Logan Airport, which is where Boston’s official temperature is measured. A subgroup of the students also worked with local urban designers to come up with guidelines and proposals for a new children’s playground to be constructed on the Roxbury Community College campus near historic Dudley House.  

The youth presented their extreme heat results, trends they found in their interviews, and their design ideas and guidelines at an event at Roxbury Community College on July 27. Their work will be compiled in a report that willbe publicly available this fall. 

For more information on the summer program, or to get a copy of the report when available, contact Ken Reardon at kenneth.reardon@umb.edu or email the Sustainable Solutions Lab at ssl@umb.edu. 

UMass Boston's Robotics and Engineering Club Wins NASA Competition

UMass Boston's Robotics and Engineering Club recently came out on top in NASA's MUREP Innovation Tech Transfer Idea Competition, winning $15,000 and mentorship from NASA experts. 

The competition challenges students to take one of NASA's many intellectual properties and expand it or improve upon it to create a product or service for everyday use, developing a marketable device and business plan. 

Team LazerSense Solutions, UMass Boston's team of seven students, utilized a laser diode sensor array to create a next-generation smoke, carbon monoxide, and air quality sensor. The device was multipurpose, used for smart, in-depth air quality monitoring to improve smoke detection—and even identified precursors to fire. 

In the final round, the team competed against seven other teams at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, this spring.

"We prepared a presentation where we pitched our technology idea and business plan for the product and presented in front of a panel of judges that was made up of engineers, entrepreneurs, and intellectual property lawyers," team member Olivia Moos '25 said. 

The team also included Jaryd Benson '24, Isaac Marzuca '24, Jack Welsh '24, Isabella Rasku-Casas '26, Aditya Ponde '26, and Richard Noel'23. The team was led by faculty advisor Tomas Materday, senior lecturer of engineering. 

The students also won a trip to Ames Research Center, or NASA Ames, in California's Silicon Valley. 

Alumni and Faculty Bookshelf 

Redeem the Lines 

Michael Patrick Murphy ’99 

Redeem the Lines follows the lives of protagonist Patrick and his best friend from high school, Nate. Patrick, an Irish-Catholic boxer fresh out of prison for something he didn’t do, returns to his old neighborhood, which he barely recognizes because of the widespread flooding of heroin and its zombie addicts. At the same time, Nate, a Black out-of-state college graduate, comes back to Boston to attend yet another funeral. Breaking down neighborhood boundaries and racial biases, Redeem the Lines will thrust readers through whiskey benders, bare-knuckle brawls, and midnight rendezvous to expose the true colors of prejudice and corruption and find the key to resolving both. 

Harlem World: How Hip Hop’s Super Showdown Changed Music Forever 

Jonathan Mael ’14, G’17 

Harlem World chronicles a fateful night of hip-hop rivalry between the Fantastic Romantic Five and the Cold Crush Brothers and shares a new look at how Harlem helped ignite a musical revolution. This is the first book of its kind to focus on 1979 to 1983 and the legendary battles at Harlem World while connecting the genre's formative years to its massive role in American society today.  

When All Else Fails 

Lana Ayers ’91 

When All Else Fails is a collection of poems that explores a rocky childhood, self-discoveries, 

losses of adulthood, and more. Ayers is a poet, novelist, publisher, and time-travel enthusiast. Her poems have appeared in such places as Rattle, The London Reader, Peregrine, MacGuffin, and Verse Daily. An author of seven full-length poetry collections, she has two more forthcoming: Overtures and The Autobiography of Rain.  

Africa’s New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations  

Rita “Kiki” Edozie, former Interim Dean, McCormack Graduate School (co-authored with Moses Khisa) 

Africa’s New Global Politics: Regionalism in International Relations is a culmination of six years of research and writing and offers important contributions to the field, not least of which is that Africa has much to offer international relations, even if scholars have minimized or overlooked its place in post-colonial international relations theories. Edozie’s eighth scholarly book, Africa’s New Global Politics has been well-received since its publication, earning a spot on the prestigious Choice Outstanding Academic Titles list from the American Library Association, which noted it as a “well-constructed, thoughtful book [that] is highly recommended.” 

Correction: In the last issue of Beacons, we mistakenly printed outdated information on Stephen O’Connor’s G’89 publishing history. O’Connor is the author of three novels and two collections of short stories. For more information on his projects, visit lowellwriter.com.