PLYMOUTH

Cordage Park to get UMass campus

Courses target local professionals

By Robert Knox, Globe Correspondent, 12/2/2001

LYMOUTH - The University of Massachusetts at Boston is opening a satellite campus in Cordage Park in February, but college is not what it used to be. The first phase of the university's presence in the former rope factory will focus on professional training for the town's working population. Courses were planned in partnership with local businesses and schools.

Dirk Messelaar, dean of corporate, continuing, and distance education at UMass-Boston, said the new campus will offer courses to public school teachers on teaching writing, and programs in instructional design, project management, human resources, and high-tech skills to local business people and professionals. Its ''high-end computer lab'' will teach vendor certification programs such as Microsoft Oracle and Web Master.

The first semester will begin in early February.

''We're looking to get business and information constituencies to be partners so they help us to identify and market these courses,'' Messelaar said last week. ''We don't just hang up a sign and see who shows. Different constituencies help us design and deliver the courses.''

The satellite campus will offer certification programs in professional training. The writing program will give teachers of grades K to 12 a certificate in teaching writing. In addition to consulting with local schools, the university consulted with the police department, the chamber of commerce, and local human resource directors, Messelaar said.

Messelaar said that after discussions with various groups, UMass put together an offering of classes related to certificate-granting programs. Construction is underway at Cordage Park of two multimedia classrooms, a television studio, and a computer lab.

Tom O'Rourke, Plymouth Area Chamber of Commerce president, said the chamber began talking to UMass a year ago. The chamber and the Town of Plymouth joined UMass in commissioning a feasibility study by Education Alliance. ''We felt we had a strong need,'' O'Rourke said, ''but naturally they wanted to have some data.''

The chamber hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for UMass on Tuesday at Cordage Park's Building 3.

''We spent quite a bit of time with them,'' said Steve Hiersche, superintendent of Plymouth Public Schools, ''and have been having ongoing discussions.'' Talks with the school department's academic coordinators are expected to result in ''targeting some real specific course areas around the [curriculum] frameworks and specific needs,'' he said. ''Cordage Park is nice and convenient. We want to take advantage of it.''

Hiersche said local teachers have been traveling to UMass-Boston to take advantage of courses offered there, particularly onteaching writing. Plymouth teachers are reimbursed for 80 percent of tuition.

''They will do contract work for us if we request it,'' Hiersche said. The school department is considering contracting for a course on the Baldrige Initiative, a data driven system for analyzing school quality.

Police Chief Robert Pomeroy said officers take courses toward bachelor's and master's degrees at a couple of local sites. ''I think it gives another opportunity, depending on the time and what the officer needs at that time,'' Pomeroy said.

Contracting with area businesses to provide training in desired areas is basic to the university's continuing education program, Messelaar said.

The public is invited to enroll in whatever classes are offered, but the demand is built-in through contracts. Students earn credit toward degrees, but ''the intention of the first phase is not the degree seeker, but to serve Greater Plymouth professionals,'' Messelaar said.

''The superintendent of the local schools wants to attract more teachers into the system coming from other careers,'' he said. UMass courses at Cordage will allow professionals to get certification as secondary teachers and teachers to become administrators, he said, and a leadership academy will provide master's degrees in counseling.

This story ran on page 1 of the Boston Globe's South Weekly section on 12/2/2001.
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company.