4 November 2020

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Student Matters

Registration for spring 2021 courses begins the week of November 2nd. Note that the UMass Boston campus will continue to operate almost entirely remotely during the spring. Please refer to class numbers below for registration. Students who have requirements to take courses on campus should sign up section with that label when available; all others should register for the online section. All synchronous class meetings take place via web conference.

• CrCrTh 602, Creative Thinking; mostly asynchronous online, but with occasional synchronous meetings on a few Wednesdays (on campus: #12903, online: #12904)
• CrCrTh 616 Dialogue Processes; asynchronous online only (#12905)
• CrCrTh 670 Thinking, Learning, and Computers; Mondays, 7:00-9:45pm (on campus: #12906, online: #12907)
• CrCrTh 693 Action Research for Educational, Professional, and Personal Change; Thursdays, 4:00-6:45pm (on campus: #12908, online: #12909)
• CrCrTh 694 Synthesis of Theory and Practice; Mondays, 4:00-6:45pm, online only (#12910) [note: only open to CCT students or others finishing capstones toward a degree in spring 2021]

The UMB Registrar has announced that graduate students may request for course grading using a SAT/UNSAT denotation for up to two fall courses. Please contact your advisor with questions if you wish to consider this option and learn if it is appropriate for a given course.

CCT Community

Students should note that the deadline for applying for grant assistance under the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act) is Friday, November 13th, 2020. For more full details and to apply, please see the associated web page.

All in the university community are encouraged to continue to check the UMB Covid-19 web page for information about important updates, services, and events to support the community through the period of campus closing. The campus Resources4U portal also points to many university offices and programs that provide various services to students.

CCT Events

Friday, November 13, 12:00-1:00pm EDT: Reflective Practice for Challenging Our Discipline’s Conventions, Cliches, and Traditions (online)
RSVP here to receive Zoom details a few days in advance of the meeting.
Part of the CCT Fall 2020 Community Open House Events: Dialogues on Reflective Practice in a Changing World (online in Zoom). See the event page for more information and instructions for joining, and for links to optional pre-readings. During the session, we’ll use a structured dialogue format to help build our collective learning about what we are experiencing and wondering about as we engage in our work and life practices, and how this points toward the challenges and opportunities within conditions of uncertainty and distress.
These dialogues are free and open to the public. Reflective Practice is relevant to any field — education, health care, organizational leadership, arts, and sciences, activism, and many others. It refers to ways that we continually develop or change the practices that we use in their workplaces, schools, and lives. More…

Alum and CCT Associates Notes

CCT alums and associates are encouraged to send items of interest to the Critical and Creative Thinking community to be included in future newsletters. Please submit events, announcements, and opportunities here.

Events

All are invited to attend the online Sankofa Conversation Series, a fall 2020 series that is the beginning of a university-wide process committing UMass Boston to becoming a leading anti-racist and health-promoting public research university. Programming for the fall semester is intended to bring about a cultural transformation of our campus community. This series of conversations represents an important initial process for making manifest a democratic citizenship, civility, and open mindedness which is a point of departure for UMass Boston to lead on this existential topic of our times. The next event is Thursday, November 19th, from 6:30-8:30pm ET, with topic of “Black Lives Matter: Restorative Justice, Healing, and Transformational Change”: A discussion with social justice activist Fania Davis on race and restorative justice. See the web site for full schedule and details.

Virtual Federal Careers Forum
Thursday, November 19th, 2020
1:00-3:00pm EST
UMass Boston students are invited to attend this online forum with panelists who will speak about careers in the federal government. Register and see more information on the event web site.

Creative Coalition 2020 online festival
November 9-11, 2020.
This unique 3-day event brings together the UK’s finest creators, makers, leaders and innovators, at a time when we need it most, to reimagine, redefine and reignite our creative industries. Showcasing home-grown, world-class talent, Creative Coalition 2020 will be a blend of inspiring talks and panels, live performances, practical workshops and networking events – all streamed from venues across the country, directly to our audience at home. See the web site for information and registration.

UMB Graduate Studies and Information Technology, working closely with the Healey Library have subscribed to and made available a suite of academically robust online data science courses, specifically for social scientists – offered by Sage Campus. The courses are fully online and self-paced, and are designed to give practical skills that can be directly applied to social research. The courses are introductory, making them perfect for faculty, graduate students and early career researchers, to give them the skills to work with big data, new technologies and computational methods. During the next 12 months, you will have access to a suite of ten online data science courses. To get started, create an account on the SAGE Campus site: Go to https://umb.libguides.com/az.php?a=s and select ‘Sage Campus’. Use your umb.edu credentials to login. Click on ‘Institution’ and create a username, password and enter your details as instructed. Important: You must use your institution email address to create the account as this domain is what gives you access. A notification will appear saying an email was sent to the address provided with instructions to complete registration (check your spam folder if you do not see it after a short while).

The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) is seeking master’s and doctoral students to teach a 5-week, non-credit ONLINE Zoom course in your area of study or area of interest (1.5 hours per week). Whether you’re in the US or Bolivia or Russia (as some of our instructors were this semester), we’re excited to hear from you!  OLLI is a program of over 1,100 retired and semi-retired lifelong learners! Teaching with OLLI is an excellent way to develop your own course and engage with a friendly audience, receiving guidance and mentorship along the way. Upon completion of teaching the course with positive student evaluations, instructors will receive a $500 stipend. Deadline for proposal: November 9th. Please submit the proposal form (see this page) to proposalolli@gmail.com with the subject line: OLLI Spring 2021 Course Proposal – [Your Last Name].