Coronavirus update and Mt Ida

2/3/2020

Dear Colleague,

►Coronavirus update: At faculty council, we received a detailed update of this case.  A student came home on a late flight from China to Boston.  He came to the University Health Services the next day by car.  Health clinicians wore protective gear to assess him and collected samples.  He was immediately isolated in his home, and his roommates are housed in a hotel.  His symptoms were mild and have improved to asymptomatic.  He never came to the cafeteria at UMass, to any classes, or to other areas on campus .  Everyone with contact with him has been identified and is being monitored.  The areas he passed through were thoroughly disinfected.  If he had attended classes, the faculty and students would have been contacted.  If students or others suspect they were on the same flight, or are otherwise concerned, they should contact the University Health Services at  https://www.umb.edu/healthservices. 

► Mt. Ida:  If you have not yet done so, please sign and circulate the petition about Mt Ida here.  We hope to present this to legislators who will be on campus this Friday.   UMass Amherst is now offering a Business and Analytics master’s program that directly competes with offerings at UMass Boston, and it wants to offer 35 other programs, including a master’s degree in Accounting and one in Computer Science (for a list of course offerings, see the attached), and will offer Geographical Information Science courses. Stop this competition among UMass campuses and let’s have the UMass system operate as a system, not as competing campuses. 

Already signed?  Circulate on your social media and now tell your State Representatives about this problem.  Find your state Rep here. 

Contact the heads of the Joint Committee on Higher Education, Anne Gobi and Jeffrey Roy https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Detail/J29

And if you have time, email or contact other members of this committee (see the previous link). 

Sample email is here:

At the hearing on Mt Ida on May 16, 2018, UMass Amherst and the UMass System said that there would be no competition with UMass Boston.  The Joint Committee on Higher Education that investigated this said that Mt Ida should be available and benefit all campuses in their report. (See here for this report.)

But instead, the Mt. Ida campus is competing with UMB with a master’s in accounting and computer science and other course offerings.  This should be stopped.  There needs to be a better process so that UMB has more say in the programs offered at the Mt Ida campus so that there is no competition with the Boston campus.  (As they have for new programs in the UMass System).  We request that that Joint Committee on Higher Education hold hearings on the use of this property and meet with faculty who are concerned about this issue. 

Marlene Kim

FSU President

Professor, Economics

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