The gift will help financially at-risk doctoral candidates complete their studies here. It's not that UMass or the School of Education lack commitment to minorities. On the contrary, the school has worked hard to realize its goals. It has nothing to do with political correctness. We need people who have walked in different shoes, people who can provide some checks and balances to the hegemony of white middle-class America.
Teaching is the one profession that touches all professions.
In sharing thoughts from the front of the classroom or scratching out ideas on the blackboard, teachers not only transfer knowledge but pass on values. Their academic offspring become role models in turn in the ongoing process of teaching and learning. To lose diversity in one generation of educators is to risk losing it for the generation that follows. The sobering implications of that prospect have long been of concern at the School of Education. We felt it was important to support those commitments, for us to do that as faculty members and to do it together.