The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Events

Ethics Day: Engaging Librarians in the Responsible Conduct of Research

The UMass Amherst Libraries will host “Ethics Day: Engaging Librarians in the Responsible Conduct of Research,” a professional development program for New England area librarians, on Friday, October 8, 2010, from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., on Floor 26, Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst.   For more information and to register for the free program by October 1, visit http://guides.library.umass.edu/ethicsday.  Lunch and other refreshments will be provided.

The Ethics Day program will include morning sessions, which will introduce research ethics and the responsible conduct of research, and afternoon sessions, which will explore some of the ethical concerns in the field of librarianship.

The keynote speaker, Sheila Bonde, is professor of art, architecture, and archeology at Brown University.  Bonde will give a talk, “Ethical Awareness in International Collaborations: A Contextual Approach.” Bonde is currently a Fellow at the Cogut Center for the Humanities. Formerly dean of the Brown graduate school, she led ethics training for graduate students for many years.  Her research and teaching on ethics in international collaborations is supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Elizabeth Buchanan, Ph.D., director of the Center for Information Policy Research and associate professor in the School of Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, will give a talk, “On the Internet, No One Knows You’re a Researcher.” Buchanan teaches and researches in the areas of information and research ethics, in particular internet research ethics. She is currently working on two National Science Foundation projects on research ethics 2.0, as well as studying the ethical issues involved in social science data banking.  Buchanan is the chair of the Association of Internet Researchers Ethics Working Group and co-director of the International Society of Ethics and Information Technology.

John DeSantis, cataloging and metadata services librarian at Dartmouth College Library since 1988, will be speaking on professional ethics in librarianship.  His previous experience includes work as a catalog librarian at Amherst College.  He served as a member of the American Library Association’s Committee on Professional Ethics from 2007 to 2009, and as a Councilor-at-Large from 2004 to 2010.

Jennifer Donais, associate director, Office of Grant & Contract Administration, UMass Amherst, will give a talk about funder requirements for ethics training.

Nancy Harger and Judy Norberg, education and clinical services librarians at Lamar Soutter Library, UMass Medical School, will give a talk, “Embedded in the IRB.” Harger and Norberg will discuss their experience serving on the UMass Medical School’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and describe how their roles have evolved over the years. They will give an overview of the IRB process and discuss their responsibilities in support of the reviewers.

Athanasia (Nancy) Pontika, adjunct faculty and doctoral student, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College; assistant editor, Open Access Directory; will speak on the ethics of open access and library publishing.  Pontika’s thesis, “Ethics, its codes and their application in Librarianship and Information Science,” was presented at the 14th Panhellenic Conference on Academic Libraries.

Hongjie Wang, head of Information and Education Services Department, Lyman Maynard Stowe Medical Library, University of Connecticut Health Center, will give a talk, “Mentoring Rocks!…..if done appropriately.” Wang is assistant professor in the Department of Community Medicine and Health Care at the UConn Health Center.  He is also a Distinguished Member of the Academy of Health Information Professionals.

Ethics Day is sponsored by the Science, Technology & Society Initiative, the UMass Amherst Libraries, the National Center for Digital Government, and the Ethics in Science and Engineering National Clearinghouse beta site. Funding is provided by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Jessica Adamick, Ethics Clearinghouse Librarian, 413-545-6898, jadamick@library.umass.edu.

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CPPA & university administration Faculty Research

Fountain receives Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research

Jane Fountain, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy, is one of eight nationally acclaimed faculty members at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who will be presented the annual Award for Outstanding Accomplishments in Research and Creative Activity at the Sixth Annual Faculty Convocation on Friday, October 1, 2010.

Professor Fountain is the founder and Director of the National Center for Digital Government which was established with support from the National Science Foundation to develop research and infrastructure for the emerging field information technology and governance. During the past decade, the National Center has sponsored research workshops, seminars, doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships and visiting faculty from throughout the world in addition to its active research programs.

She also directs the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Initiative, a campus-wide effort based at the Center for Public Policy and Administration at the University of Massachusetts. The STS Initiative is designed to build social science, policy, and cross-disciplinary research on a range of social, political, and economic challenges posed by science and technology. Fountain is the Principal Investigator of the Ethics in Science and Engineering Online Resource Beta Site project and of the International Dimensions of Ethics in Science and Engineering project (IDEESE).  She is a co-principal investigator of the Commonwealth Alliance for Information Technology Education (CAITE) and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing, a major nanoscience research center.  Fountain developed and directed the Women in the Information Age Project, which was established with a generous gift from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to conduct research on the participation of women in computing and information-technology related fields and, with its partner institutions, to increase the number of women experts in information and communication technologies.  She is an adjunct professor in the Department of Computer Science at UMass Amherst.

Fountain is the author of Building the Virtual State: Information Technology and Institutional Change (Brookings Institution Press, 2001), which was awarded an Outstanding Academic Title by Choice and has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Her articles have been published in scholarly journals including Governance, Technology in Society, Science and Public Policy, the National Civic Review, and the Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery.

Professor Fountain is currently a member of the World Economic Forum Global Advisory Council on the Future of Government. She served on the American Bar Association blue ribbon Commission on the Future of e-Rulemaking and has served on several advisory bodies for organizations including the Social Science Research Council, the Internet Policy Institute, and the National Science Foundation. She has delivered invited lectures and keynote addresses and has worked with governments and research institutions including the World Bank, the European Commission, Knowledge Management Asia Pacific, Japan, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Chile, Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

The complete list of faculty receiving awards at the Convocation includes:

Jeffrey M. Davis, Department of Chemical Engineering
Jane E. Fountain, Department of Political Science; Center for Public
Policy and Administration
Lixin Gao, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Alice C. Harris, Department of Linguistics
Sigrid Miller Pollin, Department of Art, Architecture, and Art History
Leon J. Osterweil, Department of Computer Science
Vincent M. Rotello, Department of Chemistry
Lynnette Leidy Sievert, Department of Anthropology

More: http://www.umass.edu/loop/weeklybulletin/articles/109445.php

Categories
Events

CPPA Celebrates Move with September 23 Gordon Hall Open House

The Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) is celebrating its move to Gordon Hall with an Open House from 3-5 p.m. on Thursday, September 23.  Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Ellen Story will make remarks at the event, along with UMass faculty and administrators.  All members of the UMass community are invited to the Open House, which will include a reception and tours of CPPA’s new space.

The move, which took place during the summer of 2010, enables CPPA to house student and staff offices in contiguous quarters, and also provides new office space for faculty. 

“We’re excited by our new home, and especially by its possibilities,” according to CPPA Director M.V. Lee Badgett.  “Gordon Hall is a beautiful building, both inside and out.  The additional space will also allow for CPPA’s continued growth in the years to come.”

CPPA offices are located on Gordon Hall’s first floor, while the National Center for Digital Government (NCDG) and the Science, Technology and Society Initiative (STS)—projects affiliated with CPPA—now has offices on the second floor.

Gordon Hall was completed in 2003 as the home of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI), housed on the second and third floors of the building.  The building was designed by noted architect Sigrid Miller Pollin, who also is a faculty member in Architectural Studies and Interior Design, a unit of the UMass Department of Art.

For additional information about the open house or CPPA’s recent move, please contact Kathy Colón (kcolon@pubpol.umass.edu or 413.545.3956) or Susan Newton (snewton@pubpol.umass.edu or 413.577.0478).

Categories
Events

David Kassel to Speak on Managing Public Sector Projects

David Kassel will talk about his new book, Managing Public Sector Projects: A Strategic Framework for Success in an Era of Downsized Government, on Monday, September 27, from 12-1 p.m., in Room 903 of the UMass Campus Center.  The talk is sponsored by the UMass Amherst Center for Public Policy and Administration.

Kassel is principal of Accountable Strategies Consulting, LLC, in Harvard, MA, and former Chief of the Management Division of the Massachusetts Office of the Inspector General.  He holds a Masters Degree in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

The stakes for public projects are high because of their lasting impact on communities and the economic health of our nation.  Yet projects ranging from the Big Dig in Boston to the reconstruction of Iraq often result in cost overruns, missed deadlines, and poor production outcomes.  Kassel examines the causes underlying these problems and uses case studies, many of which are Massachusetts-based, to present effective practices for managers at all levels of government.

Kassel’s book has been praised as “an important volume, not only for public sector project management, but for the much broader field of public management.”  The book is published by the American Society for Public Administration as part of its Public Administration and Public Policy series.

Brownbag lunches are welcome at the talk.

Categories
Faculty Research Science, technology & society

Fountain gives invited presentation at “CI Days”

Jane Fountain, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the National Center for Digital Government was an invited speaker at North Carolina State University’s “CI Days at NCSU: The Excitement and Future of Cyberinfrastructure,”  which took place September 7 and 8 at NC State.

CI Days explored how “some of the top minds in the world wrestle with how CI can be used to reach technological, organizational and intellectual goals.” Fountain’s presentation, “Cyberinfrastructure and Networked Governance,”  explored the Obama campaign — the first to use social media extensively — and the administration’s Open Government Initiative. Her presentation was part of a panel of experts who discussed how cyberinfrastructure can help institutions reach their organizational potential.

“Understanding cyberinfrastructure,” said Fountain “is important for understanding innovation, progress, and institutional change.” According to Fountain, typically slow-changing bureaucracies are using technology to improve business processes and increase transparency and accountability. Implementing these new technologies, however, does not create an immediate transformation.  In the case of government, “civil servants and organizational cultures play critical roles in allowing organizational change. These and other institutional characteristics of organizations must be fully examined before we can understand the true impact or potential of a new technology.”

CI Days was sponsored by Sponsored by Internet2 through a grant from the National Science Foundation, the NC State Office of Information Technology, and NC State’s Institute for Computational Science and Engineering.

Categories
Faculty Research

Badgett discusses impact of gay marriage in the Netherlands

M.V. Lee Badgett, Director of CPPA and author of When Gay People Get Married: What Happens When Societies Legalize Same-Sex Marriage, discussed the effects of same-sex marriage in The Netherlands in an August 18 radio conversation on the Takeaway. Much of Badgett’s work is now being cited as US states like California examine the legality of bans on same-sex marriage.

In 2001, the Netherlands was the first country to legalize gay marriage. Badgett spent time in the Netherlands in the years after that legalization documenting the impact of same-sex marriage on Dutch society. Of interest, she found no evidence that legalizing same-sex marriage in the Netherlands harmed the institution of marriage or changed heterosexuals’ opinions about marriage.  It did, however, change how gay people saw their role in society.  An complete online podcast of Badgett’s discussion is available at the Takeaway’s website.

The Takeaway is a national morning news program produced in partnership with The New York Times, the BBC World Service, WNYC, Public Radio International and WGBH Boston.

Categories
Events

Jarice Hanson Opens Fall 2010 CPPA Faculty Colloquium

The Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) will kick off its Fall 2010 Faculty Colloquium on Monday, September 20, with a talk by Professor of Communication Jarice Hanson. The presentation will take place from 12-1 p.m. in Thompson 620. CPPA’s Colloquia are held monthly each semester and enable members of the UMass community to discuss ongoing research projects that have significant policy implications.

Hanson’s presentation, “The Digitally Divided: The New Minority and Willful Retreat from the Information Society,” is co-sponsored by the National Center for Digital Government (NCDG), a CPPA affiliate.

Hanson’s talk will investigate the growing movement of people who have withdrawn from Internet and cell phone use and their reasons for opting out of the “information society.” Her research draws from interviews with the “unconnected” and examines reasons for their choices along three dimensions related to economic principles, social choices, and perceptions of happiness.

Professor Hanson is the author, co-author, editor or co-editor of 21 books, including 24/7: How Cell Phones and the Internet Change the Way We Live, Work and Play (2007). Along with her UMass position, Hanson holds the Verizon Chair in Telecommunications at Temple University and is also a CPPA faculty associate. In addition to her research on cell phone and Internet usage, she is conducting research on the social and behavioral aspects of the emerging field of nanotechnology and the impact of media coverage of the war in Iraq on the rhetorical dimensions of democratic practice. Hanson received an Outstanding Teaching Award from the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2008-2009. She has been at UMass Amherst since 1985 and holds a doctorate from Northwestern University.

Three additional speakers will participate in CPPA’s Faculty Colloquium this fall: Kathryn McDermott, associate professor of education and public policy (October 4,); Jeffrey Thompson, assistant research professor at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) (November 1); and Amy Schalet, assistant professor of sociology (December 7).

All talks in the CPPA Faculty Colloquium are free and open to the public. Brownbag lunches are welcome. For additional information, go to www.masspolicy.org or contact Kathy Colón (kcolon@pubpol.umass.edu).

Categories
Faculty Research

Creative economy grant to spur CPPA Springfield initiatives

Center for Public Policy and Administration (CPPA) has been awarded $40,000 by the UMass President’s Creative Economy Initiative to help create a center dedicated to alleviating poverty and inequality in Springfield and other western Massachusetts cities.

“CPPA is delighted by this award,” according to M.V. Lee Badgett, professor of economics and CPPA director. “It not only provides support for an important CPPA initiative, it signals the President Office’s commitment to developing strong cooperative relationships with the people of Springfield.”

Fred Rose, a lecturer at CPPA whose doctorate from Cornell University is in city and regional planning, developed the proposal that garnered the award. Previously, Rose was a lead organizer for the Pioneer Valley Project, a coalition of labor groups and religious organizations that works for social change in Springfield.

“Springfield is the sixth poorest city in the nation, which obviously hinders its development” notes Rose. “In addition, Springfield lacks the kind of community-based development agencies that have played leading roles in other communities.”

“At the same time,” Rose adds, “Springfield has many assets–including its incredible diversity, reforms promoted by the Finance Control Board, and a renewed commitment at the state level.”

The goal of CPPA’s new center is to “fill gaps in the existing economic development landscape of Springfield,” explains Rose. “UMass has the potential to play a positive role in the city’s revitalization.”

CPPA’s grant will enable it to explore the best strategies for organizing the new center this year, as well as identify other potential funding sources and formulate new projects and research that respond to authentic community needs and opportunities.

Contact: Susan Newton (snewton@pubpol.umass.edu or 413.577.0478)

Categories
Student news

Smith ’12 Selected as Point Foundation Scholar

Incoming CPPA graduate student Jenni Smith is one of twenty five students nationally selected to become a 2010 Point Foundation Scholar.  Point scholars are offered academic scholarships and chosen to participate in leadership programs and professional conferences throughout the year.

“The financial portion of the award is really secondary to the leadership trainings, opportunities in networking, and mentoring,” says Smith, who will work toward a certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies in addition to her Master of Public Policy.

Besides the scholarship and leadership training offered through the Point program, Point Scholars are also assigned mentors who offer guidance on service projects and academic and career goals.  M.V.  Lee Badgett, Professor of Economics and Director of CPPA at UMass, will serve as Smith’s mentor.

“I am honored to have been chosen as a 2010 Point Scholar,” Smith says. ” I am looking forward to the trainings and events and to meeting others involved with Point. The Point Foundation offers opportunities for leadership and involvement with community leaders that is often not available to certain students, and I am excited to be a part of this select group.”

The Point Foundation is a national organization that provides financial support, leadership training, mentoring, and hope to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals who are marginalized because of their sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression. Visit the Point website for more information.

Click here to read a complete press release about the 2010 Point Scholars.

Photo credit: Point Foundation

Categories
Events Science, technology & society

STS/CPPA Workshop Explores Nanotechnology Policy

National and international policy experts will converge at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Friday, September 24, 2010, for the third annual Nanotechnology and Society Workshop, “Nanotechnology & Society: Emerging Organizations, Oversight, and Public Policy Systems.” The workshop will be convened by the Science, Technology and Society (STS) Initiative, part of the Center for Public Policy and Administration at UMass, in collaboration with the Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing.

“After more than a decade of research on and commercialization of nanotechnology and nanoscience, policies governing emerging technologies remain in their infancy,” notes Jane Fountain, UMass professor of political science and public policy and STS director. “UMass Amherst is a long-time leader in nanotechnology research, and this day-long workshop brings together top voices in the field to discuss the regulation and oversight of nanoscience.”

Workshop participants will examine frameworks for policymaking amid high uncertainty, including the role of national, international, and non-governmental organizations and actors, and will discuss the challenges involved in balancing effective public governance, rapid innovation, and intensifying global competition.

The workshop will feature presentations from top leaders at US federal agencies including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH); the MA Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs; DuPont; Resources for the Future; and the Loka Institute, as well as some of the nation’s foremost academic researchers engaged in research on nanotechnology policy.

The workshop on September 24 will take place from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the Amherst Room, located on the 10th floor of the UMass Campus Center. It is open to the public, but advanced registration is required.  Visit www.umass.edu/sts/nanoworkshop for more information and to register. The workshop is funded by the National Science Foundation through the Center for Hierarchical Manufacturing.