Partnerships

As noted in last year’s annual report, “successful realization of the UTC mission depends upon the creation of a working network of educators, transportation professionals and environmentalists that serves as a resource for curricular and research projects and programs.”(p. 5) The Center’s network of partners has expanded over the course of this year to include

Office of Career and Technical Education, Worcester Public Schools
Massachusetts Department of Highways
Massachusetts Port Authority
Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA)
Rhode Island Heritage Harbor Museum
School-to-Career Program, Rhode Island Department of Labor

In its first year the Center launched a series of six initiatives in order to provide a variety of opportunities for students in the undergraduate college, in continuing education and in the graduate program to explore the relationship between transportation and the environment in their academic programs. During the past year college faculty have begun to embrace the Center’s mission and instituted the following:

1. Advisory activities were begun in the Department of Education to encourage prospective K-12 teachers to explore the Center’s theme in their course work in education, social science and natural science with the result that

• Professor Danker in her courses, EDU 323, History and the Social Sciences in the Elementary Curriculum, and EDU 344, Secondary Curriculum and Methods in History and the Social Sciences encouraged students to consider the UTC theme in their class projects. One student chose the Industrial Revolution within the Blackstone River Corridor as her focus
• Professor Gold in her course EDU 345, Secondary Curriculum and Methods in Math, encouraged her students to consider the UTC theme for class projects. None did so.

2. Presentation of appropriate research and independent study projects were made to student organizations on campus with the result that

• Four undergraduate students were accepted as residents of the Living/Learning Center with a year-long series of programs entitled, “Environmental Protection,” Transportation & Pollution,” “Water Conservation,” “Energy and Electricity Conservation,” and “Littering Effects on the Environment and Its Future.”
• An economics project undertaken with three faculty in the undergraduate Research Club investigating “the commoditization of time in priority based traffic.”

3. A College Management Group of selected faculty and administrators initiated exploration and encouraged appropriation of the Center’s theme in academic offerings with the following results:

• The Center for Continuing and Professional Education offered both HIS 274.E1, History of U.S. Transportation, and ECO 235 E1, Environmental Economics
• The Undergraduate Department of History offered Independent Study of the U.S. History of Transportation
• The Undergraduate Department of Natural Science offered Independent Study of Water Quality resulting in research presentations from students at the annual Research Club seminar and provided the prototype for much of the material used in the development of the summer institute on water quality.
• Faculty members from the Departments of Education and Natural Science prepared a summer institute, EDU 600A, Roads, Runoff, and Water Quality: Calculator Based Assessment, to be offered to middle school science teachers in June, 2001

4. The acquisition of theme-based materials for the Department of Education’s Resource Room was initiated and some eighty new titles have been added to those acquired in our first year including

• Ballard, Robert D. and Glenn S. Johnson (eds). Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility
• Collier, Christopher. Rise of Industry
• Drury, George H. Historical Guide to North American Railroads
• Goddard, Stephen B. Getting There: The Epic Struggle Between Road and Rail in the American Century
• Levinson, Nancy Smiler. She's Been Working on the Railroad
• McGlothin, Bruce. Choosing a Career in Transportation
• Milani, Brian. Designing the Green Economy: The Post-Industrial Alternative to Corporate Globalization
• Oum, T. H. and W. G. Waters II (eds). Transport Economics
• Seymour, Dale (pub). Caring for Our Planet
• Teacher Created Materials, Inc. (pub). Internet Quests: Native Americans
• Teacher Created Materials, Inc. (pub). Integrating Technology into the Curriculum

5. On-going roundtable discussions between environmentalists, transportation professionals and teachers resulted in a major in-service program for Worcester Public School Teachers on 16 March 2001. Sponsored by the Center, the Providence & Worcester Railroad, and The Blackstone Valley Educational Network, teachers explored the educational resources in the river valley with workshops aboard the train as well as with exhibits and presentations in Woonsocket, RI, including a tour of the Museum of Work and Culture.

6. Modification of offerings to incorporate issues relating to the Center’s theme was initiated with the following results:
• HIS 261, 20th-Century America, was modified to include US transportation choices.
• HIS 276, Science and Technology in American History, was modified to include developments in transportation infrastructure
• GEO 251, Economic Geography, was modified to include a major section on transportation