WSU Urban Studies Blog

On October 10, WSU students in the Urban Art class, a first-year seminar, toured the Worcester Art Museum .      They first went through the new " Remastered " gallery, led by senior and junior students from the university's Visual and Performing Arts department.  Then they explored on their own, making their ways through the modern art galleries, pre-Columbian exhibits, and the many other galleries holding centuries of art.       

 This semester, the Department of Urban Studies has added a location to its successful ELL (English Language Learner) Program: the Worcester Senior Center at 128 Providence Street.  This site has been opened through a partnership with Lutheran Social Services, which has a new population of English Language Leaners in Iraqi refugees. As the program's faculty coordinator, Dr. Madeline Campbell (Urban Studies) notes, "these are refugees of the ongoing civil conflict in Iraq who have received asylum in the U.S. and settled in the Worcester area."  This section of the program runs concurrently with the department's ELL commitment at 425 Pleasant Street, home of the Worcester Elder Affairs Office; the department is still running ELL programs at two other sites on different days. Dr. Campbell reports "our students are working with recently resettled refugees to work on conversational and written English skills. They are a very jubilant bunch--very

Worcester State University Senior Capping Ceremony, 2013 Introduction of Keynote Speaker by Thomas E. Conroy, Ph.D. Good afternoon. I am Tom Conroy; I am Assistant Professor and Chair of Urban Studies here at Worcester State University. It is an honor for me to be here today. I get to introduce you, a room full of soon-to-be graduates, to Kate Audette, a 2006 graduate from my department of whom we are particularly proud.    I knew of Kate long before I met her. Her name came up at department meetings often enough because our faculty closely followed her career as we do with many grads. But when my colleagues talked about her, it was with a sort of reverential informality, and almost always with simply a reference to her first name. “Kate just got a new job”… “I talked to Kate yesterday.” It was seldom “Kate Audette got a new job."  There seemed to be no need to use her last name. Everyone (but me) understood who “Kate” meant.       As a result of this, I got