News Coverage
On the move at UMass-Boston
Boston Globe Editorial (December 17, 2007) - News
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After taking the helm as chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Boston earlier this year, J. Keith Motley is talking to as many people as he can about the campus's future. And he is now the champion of a 25-year master plan to turn the school into a powerhouse. Motley says the campus already has a lot to be proud of. But he's right to take up a herald's trumpet. Noting that the school hasn't taken a long, hard look at itself since the 1970s, Motley argues that it's time for UMass-Boston to fulfill its potential.
The master plan calls for a renaissance: new academic buildings, garages, and green space. More faculty would be hired. Over time, there would be dormitories for 1,000 students, who would make up a modest 7 percent of a student body that's expected to grow from 13,400 to 15,000 by 2010. The master plan will undoubtedly change with the times. But its lasting value is its vision of offering students a vibrant, 21st-century education.
Facelift for UMass Boston
Boston Herald Editorial (December 17, 2007) - News
Office Assistance
Led by Chancellor J. Keith Motley, officials are focused on the first 10 years of the plan to improve the site, hoping to transform it into a more pedestrian-friendly campus with new academic buildings, making better use of its waterside location. About $125 million of the Phase I cost would come from state borrowing. Private fundraising and additional borrowing by UMass would help finance the rest.
The plan is ambitious - perhaps even too ambitious - and officials ought to proceed with caution. Especially with the introduction of residence life, there are concerns about whether the traditional commuter school might outgrow its urban mission. And goodness knows there is a shameful history of horrid planning and shoddy work that brought UMass to where it is today.
UMass Boston plans dorms, more traditional campus
Boston Globe (December 14, 2007)
The University of Massachusetts at Boston plans to dramatically overhaul its crumbling campus by adding academic buildings and reviving a controversial proposal to build the school's first dormitories, part of a large-scale campaign to transform the Columbia Point college into a waterfront showcase. The preliminary, 25-year plan, which will be presented to the UMass Board of Trustees this morning, would redesign the layout to capitalize on its Dorchester Bay location and replace the university's vast brick plazas with a series of grassy quads linked by pedestrian walkways. In the first phase of the blueprint, university officials are proposing to spend $750 million over the next decade to build three academic buildings along a central walkway bisecting the campus, two dormitories for 1,000 students, and a 1,000-space above-ground parking garage. The dormitory proposal, which has drawn surprising support from Mayor Thomas M. Menino, promises to again raise the ire of Savin Hill and Columbia Point residents who have consistently opposed similar proposals in the past.
UMass harbors hopes
Boston Herald (December 14, 2007)
J. Keith Motley, the new chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Boston, yesterday unveiled a sweeping, $700 million-plus plan to revamp the school's harborside campus. The proposal, which Motley is now preparing to present to the university's board of trustees, envisions a total remake of the university's brick-and-concrete campus, built in the early 1970s.
New academic buildings and student dorms, as well as a series of walkways, green parks and athletic fields would replace the hardtop plaza and surface parking lots that now dominate the campus.
UMass-Boston proposes transformation of campus
WHDH-TV (December 17, 2007)
Officials at the University of Massachusetts-Boston are presenting a plan to transform the commuter school into a more traditional campus. A preliminary proposal being presented to the UMass Board of Trustees Friday would include construction of the school's first dormitories, an idea that in the past has met from opposition from residents of Boston's Dorchester neighborhood. The first phase of the plan calls for spending $750 million over the next decade to build three new academic buildings, two dormitories and an above-ground parking garage at the waterfront campus.
New mission for UMass-Boston?
Boston Globe – Letters to the Editor (December 19, 2007)
David Soo, a Boston Globe reader who is a doctoral student in higher education at UPenn writes that he shares UMass Boston student trustee Jason Pramas's concern over the threat to UMass Boston's traditional mission that could come from building dorms and spending millions to "raise its profile." Soo said that, this country, and especially Massachusetts, has a diversity of higher-education institutions, each with a distinct mission. UMass-Boston has a proud tradition of educating Boston's working-class, minority, and immigrant students, and using its institutional resources to serve the urban community. Administrators should resist mission drift by honoring UMass-Boston's historic and vital mission, he added.
A principal with Chan Krieger Sieniewicz - master planner for the UMass-Boston campus, Lawrence Chan, also write to the editor of the Globe and notes that it is a disservice to all working-class, minority, and immigrant students to imply that they would not seek out or need student housing if residence halls were provided at UMass-Boston…
Schools ready building boom
Boston Herald (December 17, 2007)
America's college town is becoming a boom town. Hub universities and colleges are poised to spend billions on everything from state-of-the-art academic buildings to new dorms in an expansion of historic proportions. It's a trend, experts say, fueled by rich and growing endowments and fierce competition for students. BC, Suffolk University and UMass Boston have each put forth sweeping plans to revamp or expand their campuses in recent weeks. The BC and UMass plans alone represent a combined $1.5 billion in proposed spending. UMass Boston is proposing a radical makeover to its fast-deteriorating, brick-and-concrete complex on the harbor in Dorchester. New academic buildings, green parks and walkways and the university's first-ever dorms are in the works.
UMass campus 'concepts' depict dramatic changes (PDF 6.4 MB)
Dorchester Reporter (October 4, 2007)
Dorchester and UMass Boston students, staff, and faculty are "kicking the tires" of potential plans for a sweeping overhaul of the university aimed at modernizing its bayside campus and expanding its footprint to accommodate roughly 3,000 more students. The first glimpses of what the Columbia Point campus may look like over the next ten to twenty-five years are three potential layouts and PowerPoint presentations being given at campus meetings.
"One of the things we're doing through the master planning is kicking the tires," said Ellen O'Connor, vice chancellor for administration and finance. "We can't go forward by ourselves." Components of each plan could be combined and rearranged for the final preferred plan, which will go to the university system's board of trustees in December, campus officials said. The plans, based on a strategic planning effort undertaken earlier this year that canvassed various campus constituencies, include options like taking down the plaza outside Healey Library, ripping down the campus's science building, installing a glass façade in the library and opening up Mt. Vernon Street.
25 Years and Beyond
UMass Media (October 1, 2007)
Under the guise of the UMass Boston's Master Plan, plenty of changes will be taking place on the campus over the next 10 to 25 years. The Master Plan is designed to be a tool for decision-making used to provide long-term, physical development ideas and also to provide a framework for coordinating work done on campus as well as identifying opportunities for growth in the future. It has been discussed in a few workshops held on campus, and more are continuing to be held as to get student input on the direction of the university.