Left In Lowell

The university as seen through the eyes of the “museum”

15 Responses to “The university as seen through the eyes of the “museum””

1. Lynne Says:
   December 26th, 2007 at 4:57 pm

   This favorable coverage has nothing to do with the fact that the editor is good enough friends to have purchased Meehan’s house, of course. (Not that Murphy or any other Sun reporter would compromise themselves if it were in their control.)

   I don’t know anyone at UML personally who’s had a real issue with Meehan as yet…but the holding pattern had a lot of people very nervous. Though I don’t have experience enough to really make a determination, I thought that “interim” process where Meehan spent all this time settling in took a bit too long, but that’s just my perception. I’d rather he go cautiously than quick if it meant hasty decisions.

2. Prince Charming Says:
   December 26th, 2007 at 5:29 pm

   I wonder how much money UML has in its advertising budget? I wonder who might be the printer of the annoying UML flyer that I seem to receive in the mail 4 or 5 times a year? The Chancellor may be notoriously cheap with his own money but seems to have the knack for spending someone else’s.

3. Bob F Says:
   December 26th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

   Not everyone is all smiles and dancing in the aisles - trust me.

4. Prince Charming Says:
   December 26th, 2007 at 10:14 pm

   Must we call it a “museum”? You can actually learn something at a museum.

5. Michael in NH and Pawtucketville Says:
   December 27th, 2007 at 2:41 am

   > I wonder who might be the printer of the annoying UML flyer that I seem to receive in the
   > mail 4 or 5 times a year?

   I’m guessing that you’re talking about the Continuing Ed flyer. We get that in NH too along with flyers from several other colleges and universities. Continuing Ed is usually pretty cheap to run using empty buildings and existing parking lots at night.

6. Robby Says:
   December 27th, 2007 at 9:06 am

   As far as the new dormitories on the river are concerned, which buidling do they want to build these in? The mill thats right across the street from the baseball park? If so, a better idea would be to turn the empty, abandoned mill in between the river condos and the Brewery into dorms. Parking might be a problem; but it may not be because that building isn’t really that large, so not too many dorms could be put it anyway.

   Does U-Lowell really even need new dorms? If anyone has more info on this matter I would appreciate in knowing about it.

7. Michael in NH and Pawtucket Says:
   December 27th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

   > Does U-Lowell really even need new dorms? If anyone has more info on
   > this matter I would appreciate in knowing about it.

   UML needs more dorm space for the North Campus. I suspect that it needs space for the South
   Campus as well but I don’t have direct experience with the South Campus.

   There’s a long waiting list for dorm space on the NC and I’ve heard that dorms are tripled.
   The crunch in space basically means that UML is a commuter college and the huge parking lots
   on North and South campus attest to that. I think that I’d prefer more dorm space on the North
   and South campuses to decrease time to drop off books and pick up another set or just to go to the library from the dorm. But it appears that adding dorm space to the NC is difficult. There are plans to do that by taking up some of the green space on the western part of NC.

   I think that Meehan would like more dorm space to promote more of a sense of community and to try to improve the graduation rate and the problem with freshman dropouts (mentioned in the article). More dorms might actually reduce traffic in the area too.

   UML appears to me to be two universities instead of one, where you can take courses at the other campuses by hopping on a bus. I think that unifying the two campuses will be very difficult to do because of the distance between the two. East Campus is a bit of an oddball being fairly close to the North Campus. I think that students in general would rather be relatively close to their dorms and dorms further from where students need to study are a negative.

8. joe Says:
   December 27th, 2007 at 2:34 pm

   UML needs dorms in order to get college students out of the apartment houses in Pawtucketville. This would also free up desperately needed low-cost rental housing.

   In addition, there is also the potential to turn some segment of the commuter-student population into city residents, adding to the vitality of our city on evenings and weekends.

9. Bob F Says:
   December 27th, 2007 at 3:00 pm

   1. North and South campuses do relate to one another quite easily in terms of studenta and faculty moving back and forth to teach, for classes, and for meetings. Engineering and science students need a number of social sciences and humanities courses and these are mostly offered on south. A better and ‘green’ transportation system between north and south and possibly some sort of river walk between the two campuses to encourage folks to make the 10-15 minute walk would help.

   2. if the university is serious about developing its research capacity it needs to attract more and more graduate students and visiting research faculty and they all need places to live. Right now this is a large problem as there is almost no such housing and grad students end up in apartment blocks scattered around North and South campuses. This puts pressure on apartment space and also escalates rents because building owners can charge more for students who split the cost than they can for a family of five. It also means in too many cases that the landlords let the exterior of the buildings go. This can be seen right around Broadway and Wilder, though there has been some improvement there lately.

   3. the university ought to think long and hard about buildings other than typical dorms and consider buying and redoing several two and three family homes in and around the campus like Clark University did in Worcester. This mixed housing, students and neighborhood folks, has acted as a good break on ‘crazy’ student behavior, linked Clark to its neighborhood more directly, and made affordable housing accessible to the many low and moderate wage workers on the campus. UML could very easily do the same with a bit of creativity and some outside-the-box thinking from the new leadership team the Sun praises.

   4. dorms for first and second year students do make some sense in that there is evidence that getting students into living in an academic community helps with retention, a big problem for UML right now. creating some teaching space in the dorms and rteally developing ways to get students engaged in their education and in their neighborhood could work and work very well.

10. inside/outside Says:
    December 27th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

    Robby -

    Plan would be for new building at corner of Perkins and Aiken I think. Mill you identify is already under construction for housing by a private builder.

11. Michael in NH and Pawtucket Says:
    December 27th, 2007 at 5:09 pm

    > North and South campuses do relate to one another quite easily in
    > terms of studenta and faculty moving back and forth to teach, for
    > classes, and for meetings. Engineering and science students need a
    > number of social sciences and humanities courses and these are mostly
    > offered on south.

    Many of the humanities and social sciences are available on North Campus
    too so that engineering and science students don’t have to travel back
    and forth between campuses.

    My son told me that taking the bus can take about twenty minutes and
    the amount of traffic on Pawtucket St can be rather discouraging for
    pedestrians.

    Do faculty walk from campus to campus right now or do they drive?

    > A better and ‘green’ transportation system between north and south
    > and possibly some sort of river walk between the two campuses to
    > encourage folks to make the 10-15 minute walk would help.

    Perhaps electric vehicles would do a better job shuttling kids around.
    Perhaps a walkway above Pawtucket would help. But it’s still quite a
    hike over to the classrooms on Broadway.

    > if the university is serious about developing its research capacity it
    > needs to attract more and more graduate students and visiting research
    > faculty and they all need places to live. Right now this is a large
    > problem as there is almost no such housing and grad students end up in
    > apartment blocks scattered around North and South campuses. This puts
    > pressure on apartment space and also escalates rents because building
    > owners can charge more for students who split the cost than they can
    > for a family of five. It also means in too many cases that the
    > landlords let the exterior of the buildings go. This can be seen right
    > around Broadway and Wilder, though there has been some improvement
    > there lately.

    How much pressure is there on rental space in Pawtucketville? When we
    were looking, there were a fair number of places for rent with
    landlords willing to deal. My guess is that more students are looking
    for dorms given the economic downturn.

    > the university ought to think long and hard about buildings other than
    > typical dorms and consider buying and redoing several two and three
    > family homes in and around the campus like Clark University did in
    > Worcester. This mixed housing, students and neighborhood folks, has
    > acted as a good break on ‘crazy’ student behavior, linked Clark to its
    > neighborhood more directly, and made affordable housing accessible to
    > the many low and moderate wage workers on the campus. UML could very
    > easily do the same with a bit of creativity and some outside-the-box
    > thinking from the new leadership team the Sun praises.

    I mentioned this before but there are security issues in large numbers
    of small blocks and buildings that don’t have somewhat centralized
    security systems. The recent killings at LSU have had an impact on
    international students considering studies in the US.

12. Bob F Says:
    December 27th, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    Not so many ss/humanities on North, but yes there are a few. But the vast majority of history, sociology, pol science, music and art course and writing courses are indeed on south, where I teach.

    Some faculty walk - some ride bicycles when the weather is better - this is an area where the university can apply its green technology expertise and come up with far better ways to move people and yes at certain times of the day the traffice can be intense. I teach on south and if I leave my office at 5:00 it can sometimes take 25-30 minutes to get over the bridge near south.

    I’ve tried to get specific info on where students live off campus and right now can not ans. the question of what pressures student put on rents - But from talking to students who do live off campus, they also live in Chelmsford and Dracut apartments too. It can be cheaper for students to live three or four in an off campus apartment; my own son did this in Providence when he went to school there.

    There are also security issues in dorms - so there is no one solution to having students ‘behave’ or be safe, for after all they are students. But, there are many urban campuses who have developed neighborhood housing and from everything I read and from what I have seen first hand it does work. This is especially true for grad students with children - they do not want to live on top of undergraduates with different ideas about study. There is also upset in neighborhoods with dorms because on weekends student tend to roam their neighborhood and be loud! There is evidence that actually havinh studentsco-live in neighborhoods, instead of in cloistered dorms, leads to more respect for the neighborhood over time. This is a problem, for example around Boston College.

    UML now attracts large numbers of international students - many from Asian countries - and these numbers are growing and will grow even more when the science building is ready. But, it is difficult for them to find places to live near campus which is impt since most international students do not have cars. That said, a series of triple deckers along Broadway near South campus would be ideal for a number of such students.

    Again, to resolve many of the neighborhoods issues that result when an urban campus grows there needs to be a serious and consistent commitment by all parties to meet, discuss, investigate, experiment. There is no single answer to the growing pains UML and its neighbors will confront in the next few years and at least right now some of the faculty doing the thinking about this are not in the loop when the new management team makes decisions like locating a dorm near the condos by the ball field, absent discussions with the potential neighbors.

13. waittilnextyr Says:
    December 28th, 2007 at 10:43 am

    Developing student housing near the ballfield would likely be a lot more acceptable to the current condo residents if the new housing was limited to grad students, an approach that may be especially advantageous to the students using the research facilities in the immediate area.

14. Robby Says:
    December 28th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Thank you all for the info. This is an interesting problem that Im sure well be hearing about more in the future.

15. Michael in NH and Pawtucketville Says:
    December 28th, 2007 at 7:55 pm

    > Not so many ss/humanities on North, but yes there are a few. But the
    > vast majority of history, sociology, pol science, music and art course
    > and writing courses are indeed on south, where I teach.

    It appears to me that one can get a science or engineering degree
    without taking any courses on the South campus. A look at the
    Registrar’s Spring course list shows lots of lower level humanities on
    the North Campus though certain areas appear to be exclusively on
    South Campus (music). Most other areas only offer upper-level courses
    on the South Campus.

    > I’ve tried to get specific info on where students live off campus and
    > right now can not ans. the question of what pressures student put on
    > rents - But from talking to students who do live off campus, they also
    > live in Chelmsford and Dracut apartments too. It can be cheaper for
    > students to live three or four in an off campus apartment; my own son
    > did this in Providence when he went to school there.

    I’m only familiar with properties and landlords in the Pawtucketville
    within a half-mile of the North Campus. I think that housing for three
    to four would run from $800 to $1200 not including utilities. And of
    course the tenants would have to provide furnishings. We ran into
    several landlords that would not rent to undergraduate students and
    this made it harder for us to secure a quality rental. After looking
    at a few student rentals, it was easy to understand their concerns.

    > There are also security issues in dorms - so there is no one solution
    > to having students ‘behave’ or be safe, for after all they are
    > students.

    There is a difference between petty theft, targetted crime and armed
    robbery. UML has a petty theft problem based on what I’ve read in the
    paper. Part of the reason is that students aren’t careful with their
    property leaving doors open so that they don’t have to carry keys or
    keycards. I think that the problem is student-on-student and maybe
    outsiders tailgating.

    On the other hand, there was an armed robbery on Gershom and
    University this past semester, right across the street from the
    satellite police station. There wasn’t an indication on whether the
    victim was a student or not. But having security guard and keycard
    access probably does a better job at discouraging robbery by those
    unaffiliated with the university.

    > But, there are many urban campuses who have developed neighborhood
    > housing and from everything I read and from what I have seen first
    > hand it does work. This is especially true for grad students with
    > children - they do not want to live on top of undergraduates with
    > different ideas about study.

    We have a lot of Phds where I work with and without kids and their
    concerns in choosing a place to live center around the quality of the
    school district. In general, Lowell is not a district that I’ve heard
    mentioned in young couples looking for a place to raise a current or
    future family. I’ve seen more interest in places like Acton, Bedford,
    Newton, Arlington, Lexington, etc. I don’t know that much about the
    Lowell school system other than it seems to have problems - this from
    the scattered articles that I read in the Sun.

    Another calculus with young couples is paying for private schools in a
    weak district vs paying for a more expensive house with better
    schools. And I’ve seen both approaches.

    > There is also upset in neighborhoods with dorms because on weekends
    > student tend to roam their neighborhood and be loud! There is evidence
    > that actually havinh studentsco-live in neighborhoods, instead of in
    > cloistered dorms, leads to more respect for the neighborhood over
    > time.

    On North Campus, students do live in the neighborhoods in rental
    apartments and sometimes in condos that parents have purchased. I’ve
    talked to one older lady that lives in the area and she has told me
    about the noise. I’ve hard a loud radio late at night from one
    residence. I also see many students walking to and from the dorms to
    off-campus residences, presumably to party with return trips to the
    dorms very late at night or in the wee hours of the morning.

    Perhaps that’s kids spreading their wings a bit but it may have
    something to do with that 50% graduation rate after six years.

    > This is a problem, for example around Boston College.

    Boston College is in Chestnut Hill which is a megabuck residential
    area except for the Allston/Brighton to the northeast. When I went
    there, there were students living in residences surrounding the campus
    though I don’t know how they afforded the rents as a lot of the
    buildings seemed like mansions to me. I did know two guys from Vietnam
    that rented a house on Beacon St that would easily fetch at least
    million today.

    I assume some students lived in the Brownstones on Commonwealth Ave in
    Allston Brighton and some to the northeast in neighborhoods that were
    fairly rundown. I was a commuter so I didn’t see what happened at
    night but BC has had a reputation as a party school for quite some
    time.

    I’m unsure about which neighborhoods surrounding Boston College are
    reporting a lot of problems with students at night.

    > Developing student housing near the ballfield would likely be a lot
    > more acceptable to the current condo residents if the new housing was
    > limited to grad students, an approach that may be especially
    > advantageous to the students using the research facilities in the
    > immediate area.

    My son was disappointed at landlords that only wanted grad students,
    professionals and scientists. In some cases, for some pretty rundown
    properties.

    The hard-partying undergraduate seems to be a fixture of American
    culture.

Leave a Reply