WSU Urban Studies Blog

The New (right foreground) and Old (back left) Union Stations in Washington Square.  CityLab has recently acquired a good number of research materials from a bulk purchase at an antiquarian book sale.  Among the new volumes are additional City Directories and House Directories, some institutional histories, and three years of the monthly Worcester Magazine (1912-1914). Of particular interest in the Worcester Magazines are the descriptive articles and images including the one on the right.  Below you can find a detailed list of the new materials.  You can also go to the developing CityLab webpage to explore an in-progress listing of the CityLab Collection. A Tribute to the Columbian Year by the City of Worcester, a graphic exhibit of a city of diversified industries Board of Trade Book 1893 Purchase, November 2013 Annual Report, No. 144, fiscal year ending June 30, 1990 City of Worcester Report 1990 Purchase, November 2

A group of Urban Studies students and Dr. Tom Conroy toured the inside of the Worcester Memorial Auditorium recently.  Traveling both deep and high into the building, they were able to explore many areas not generally seen by people even when the structure was open. How they got there has everything to do with the department capstone course.  One of the capstone students, Desiree Cunningham, has been researching the AUD's history and previous plans for its preservation as part of her project.  She is now putting together a preliminary study of the building and working on a proposal of her own.  But during one of the writing workshop days in which students commented on each other's draft papers, Desiree noted that she while she now knows all this information about the AUD, she has never been into the building.  At that point, we began to make some calls about gaining access. As befits the collaborative dynamic we like to build in the department, the other Public Admini

The department's ELL Tutoring programs are coming to an end as the semester winds down.  The participants and tutors received certificates this week for all their hard work.  Classes will resume again in February.  Have a good break!

Worcester's Abbie Hoffman was integral to the Civil Rights Movement beginning here. Urban Studies students in the Research Seminar/Capstone class continue to make their end-of-semester research presentations. Recently we heard about the following projects:    Christian Tsetsos is preparing an elementary-aged mentoring program proposal for Worcester schools based on a survey of best practices among national mentoring programs. . Katie Benoit is looking at the Civil Rights Movement in Worcester and how the city was racially, socially, and economically divided in the 1960s.  . Tia Spetaccino is exploring how foster children programs in the United States and what happens with the 20,000 children who annually "age out" of the system. Dannielle Morrow is examining transportation systems in Worcester and ways that mid-sized American cities can help their populations diminish their reliance on cars.  

Just before the weather turned cold, as the Urban Studies department was putting the WSU Community Garden to bed, students in the Research Seminar Capstone class joined the garden faithful from the IUI to plant 5 berry bushes.   The bushes were donated by Tree USA and the Worcester Tree Initiative, and students were helped by the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.  Dividing into groups, students learned the proper techniques for planting and, of course, turned it into a contest to see which could most quickly and correctly complete the task.  A couple of weeks later, these same students began to make their end-of-semester research project presentations.  All projects are interesting and show real promise.  Here are the first four:  Andrea Buffone is working on youth gangs in Worcester and the importance of early intervention; Megan Dealey is examining the increased need for regulation in a variety of areas surrounding artificial insemination; Rachel Pressey

A recent marketing piece for the university's Career Services office quite coincidentally featured a picture of last year's Urban Studies graduates.  Check it out!  Meanwhile, current department students (and soon to be grads) were featured on one of the new WSU homepage pictures.  Check this one out, too!

Students in this year's Research Seminar, the department's capstone course, are hard at work on their semester papers. At present, they are presenting drafts to each other in writing workshops. Below is a lost of their abstracts, even though some have changed since their initial creation. We look forward to posting some of the completed papers on the CityLab website. Marta Baclawska The population at and below the poverty line is at high risk for obesity, especially women and children, however the prevalence for obesity has increased in all adults at all levels of income and education. There is a lack of research on how the media influences obesity altogether. Past research focuses on the potential effects on females of unrealistically thin images, while obesity is the far more substantial problem in Western society. There is a large economic industry on dieting, yet we continue to have a growing obesity epidemic with all the knowledge easily available on how to lea

Louisville, KY, skyline at night Last week, Drs. Conroy and Campbell went to the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities Annual Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.  While there they offered a roundtable discussion session entitled "CityLabs & the Possibilities of Faculty-Student Research."  The roundtable came out of the department's current thinking about how to expand the operations of our Vincent "Jake" Powers CityLab by using it more as a research institute, archive, and the department's publishing wing.  This plan has been in the works for a while.  Earlier this year, for example, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette donated dozens of Worcester City and House Directories to CityLab.  Just this week, the university library donated some de-accessioned reference materials that are relevant to the study of Central Mass.  A list of these combined resources will be posted here soon.  Meanwhile, initiatives to coordinate and publish