I was thrilled to attend last week’s convocation. The day preceding it, Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren had declared she was running and this was her first official speech on the campaign trail. And her speech was indeed a good one. I was honored that she kept to the purpose of using the occasion to truly communicate to our students by stepping into their shoes at the beginning of an academic year.

Her advice to them, “When someone says to you, ‘ You can’t do something,’ if you believe in it, do it anyway. When someone says, ‘You’re going to get beat even before the game begins, quit,’ then get in there and fight harder. Stand up for what you believe in, because sometimes, sometimes, you can win.”

Very good advice. But I listened to that advice with the powerful backdrop of an earlier part of the program, really one of those “throw away” parts, the introduction by a student of a university administrator.

Well. You read it. And see what I’m talking about. This remarkably articulate graduate student started out by relaying his humble origins. His very humble origins. And then he proceeded to wow the audience with how far education had brought him, and the bold confidence he exhibited for how far he will still go.

Good Morning students, faculty, and friends.

My name is Robert Goodwin and I am the new President of the Graduate Student Assembly.

Twenty-two years ago, I stood across from this campus, hungry, homeless, penniless, and a high school dropout. Today, I stand before you, confident, happy, having just finished a Master’s degree in history from this great institution.

Umass Boston students: back to work outside the Advancement Office

What does UMass Boston mean to me?

In a word, opportunity. Opportunity allows a person to grow and become something special. Opportunity means giving someone a chance when no one else will. And opportunity is the embodiment of what this institution stands for.

Many times in the past, I was told I could not achieve my dreams; that because of my past, I was not worthy of the opportunities that others received. It is here, under the watchful guidance of UMass Boston’s faculty, that I have been given the tools and positive response which has allowed me to truly take flight. Here at UMass Boston, individualism is nurtured, all cultures are welcomed, and harmonious relationships are created.

I love this institution with all my heart and I am honored for the opportunity to be the new President of the GSA. My goal is to eventually continue my studies here in a doctoral program while serving the students of UMass Boston, giving back to an institution that has given me so much, and helping to prepare it for the 21st century.

Well, I know one person who has already followed Elizabeth Warren’s advice –  in spades. It is Robert Goodwin. And believe me, there are many, many more Goodwins at Boston’s remarkable public university.

People can make charitable gifts anywhere:
here’s why your investment to public higher education “reaches  higher.”

Nan Cormier is director of advancement communications

www.umb.edu/giving

That’s Noelia Lugo, a Dorchester 5th grader, and Michelle Obama. It happened yesterday when UMass Boston’s Project ALERTA was awarded the 2010 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award at the White House.

This is the nation’s highest honor for after-school and out of school arts and humanities programs, particularly those that reach underserved children and youth.

University Advancement had worked with the project secretly for months, once we learned last summer that the award was within the program’s reach. We developed a “We’re the Best in the U.S.” website and had the pleasure of letting the program’s private donors know that the program they had believed in through their financial investment was to share the national spotlight.

ALERTA was selected as one of 15 programs from more than 400 nominations for its excellence in developing new pathways to creativity, expression, and achievement outside of the regular school day.

Founded in 1988 at UMass Boston, this academic enrichment program has provided more than 3,000 struggling Latino students and English Language Learners in the Boston Public Schools with the skills, confidence, and motivation to achieve academic success in high school and beyond.

With high school dropout rates for Latinos in Boston — and the nation — approaching 50 percent, the program’s engaging curriculum, child development focus, and supportive learning environment have inspired 3rd through 5th graders to develop a passion for learning and realize the importance of education.

After months of getting to know ALERTA’s directors, teachers, and students we fell in love with them and the hope they represent for America’s future. People like Lucia Mayerson-David ’71 a UMass Boston alumna who is a paragon of the university’s approach of using knowledge to enrich the community. Our hard work (a privilege, really) made our brief mid-morning huddle around a computer watching the White House Ceremony exceptionally sweet.

Our video shows Noelia and Lucia talking about ALERTA and its companion program, Talented and Gifted (TAG). I’ll bet you’ll fall in love with them too. If you do, you can meet them and others like them at an upcoming celebration of 25 Years of Transforming Lives, an anniversary celebration being hosted by the programs on December 4, 2010.Learn more

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2010/08/31/a_crisis_of_spiraling_tuition/

A Crisis of Spiraling Tuition

Colleges must volunteer — or be forced — to address rising costs

By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist  |  August 31, 2010

THE COST of college has become unpatriotic.

In a speech to the Urban League in July, President Obama bemoaned the nation’s drop from first in the world to 12th in measures of college completion. This situation is “economically indefensible’’ and “morally inexcusable,’’ he said, and “all of us are going to have to roll up our sleeves to change it.’’

Graduation rates aside, the most morally inexcusable aspect of college is the unbridled cost of getting in. It is clear who should be first to roll up their sleeves: college presidents. Obama should declare their tuitions and fees a state of emergency and call a national summit to hold these institutions accountable.

At this very moment, loaded minivans and U-Haul trucks are crisscrossing America in the transport of the nation’s 23.7 million undergraduate college students. They are arriving with dreams no less lofty than students of previous generations. A record 74 percent of female high school graduates and 66 percent of male high school graduates enrolled in college in 2009. While these high numbers might seem encouraging, the problem is that most of these students are also guaranteed unprecedented debt burdens no matter their final GPA.

Since 1990, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the price of tuition, fees, room, and board at private and public four-year colleges has risen between three and four and a half times the increase in average family income. At least 58 colleges, including many New England schools, now charge between $200,000 to $225,000 for four years. Mark Taylor, the chair of Columbia University’s religion department and author of a forthcoming book on college reform, recently estimated in The New York Times that at current trends, those costs will zoom to $330,000 in 2020 and $525,000 in 2028.

For most families, it is impossible to put away enough money to prepare for such a burden. Last week, a Fidelity Investments survey found that 67 percent of parents have begun saving for college, compared with 58 percent in 2007. But the savings is only expected to cover 16 percent of college costs.

Obama, to his credit, has enacted major student loan reforms and boosted the Pell Grant program. But these steps will never keep up with rises in tuition, which have created one of the world’s worst gaps between tuition rates and available subsidies.

Even in the worst economic times since the Great Depression, universities behave with no conscience. Since the 2007-08 school year, according to the Department of Education, private not-for-profit colleges have raised tuition and fees 6.6 percent — well beyond the rate of inflation. State schools — fighting budget cuts from their state legislatures — raised them 9.1 percent. We just had a fractious national debate on health care, but the growth of college tuition rivals that of hospital costs.

College presidents have plenty of excuses. To hear many tell it, rising tuition is like a Cold War arms race, in which each school must build fancy new structures or prop up the football team to maintain competitive advantage over one another. No one has called them on their excuses. It will be interesting to see if Obama can, since he received $23 million from education interests in his election, compared to $1.7 million for rival John McCain. Employees of Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, and the University of California alone gave nearly $7 million to Obama, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

To be sure, some cost critics blame the federal government for providing too much aid, which seduces colleges to be lazy with costs. Parents also bear tremendous responsibility, so caught up in the arms race that too few stop to ask, “Is that $50,000-a-year school really going to make my kid three times happier than that $17,000 state school?’’

The reasons are complex, but the outcome is simple. Soon, not only the so-called “best’’ colleges but also state schools will be beyond the reach of the middle class. Obama should use the full power of his office to make clear that colleges cannot keep pushing up the cost of the American Dream.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.

People can make charitable gifts anywhere:
here’s why your investment to public higher education “reaches  higher.”

A couple years ago, at a scholarship reception which brought together donors and their scholarship recipients, this is what Chancellor Motley said, leaving the script we had prepared for him on the lectern and speaking straight from the heart. Well, that sentiment is what motivated the members of UMass Boston’s champion baseball team, an institution which believed in their futures with unmitigated hope.

That’s the same hope the “Motley Crew” of ”misfits” that Globe writer Brian McGrory dubbed them, are being powered by as they play a dream game in Wisconsin. I haven’t looked into it yet, but I’d not be a bit surprised to see that the members of the team, at least some of them, are scholarship recipients.

So UMass Boston’s donors have very likely had a key role in cultivating the university’s “field of dreams.” Thank you.

People can make charitable gifts anywhere:
here’s why your investment to public higher education “reaches  higher.”

Nan Cormier is director of advancement communications