UMass President Robert L. Caret, PhD
UMass President Robert L. Caret, PhD, will visit Worcester on Thursday, Oct. 4, as part of a four-day, 500-mile statewide bus tour aimed at highlighting the contributions that UMass makes to the state of Massachusetts and the contributions that public higher education has made to the nation.
“We live in a state rich in colleges and universities. Throughout the world, the name Massachusetts is synonymous with higher education excellence. While we have these many great schools, I would argue that the University of Massachusetts stands out in a particular way and has a singular importance to the state,” President Caret said.
“We are the research university that wakes up in the morning thinking about how to make Massachusetts a better place in which to live, raise a family, start a business, buy a house, build a career and educate one’s children,” he said. “For 150 years, the University of Massachusetts has been guided by its singular mission of serving the people of Massachusetts and building Massachusetts into the great state that it has become. The commonwealth’s cause has been—and always will be—our cause.”
The bus tour is President Caret’s second in as many years. Last year, as the newly arrived president of the five-campus, 71,000-student UMass system, he traveled the state asking regional leaders how UMass could increase its local and statewide impact and seeking support for the University and its mission of education, research and public service.
This year’s trip features stops in:
Springfield, Holyoke, Hadley and Lowell, on Monday, Oct. 1;
Gloucester and Boston, on Tuesday, Oct. 2;
Boston, Wareham, Cape Cod and Dartmouth, on Wednesday, Oct. 3
New Bedford, Fall River and Worcester, on Thursday, Oct. 4.
Expected to join President Caret during the tour are Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, House Speaker Robert A. DeLeo, Education Secretary Paul Reville and Henry M. Thomas III, the chairman of the UMass Board of Trustees. UMass campus chancellors also will participate.
President Caret said that UMass is a major engine for social and economic progress in Massachusetts, a status, he said, that befits it land-grant heritage.
“With a record 71,000 students enrolled on our five campuses, we are the largest university in the state—the largest university in New England. Eighty percent of our students come from Massachusetts, and most will remain here after they graduate. We award nearly 15,000 degrees every year, which means that 15 percent of the degrees minted in the commonwealth annually bear the name University of Massachusetts. Nearly 250,000 UMass graduates live in Massachusetts, which means that we have an enormous impact on the work force, on the economy and on society,” he noted.
President Caret added: “The University of Massachusetts attracts nearly $600 million a year in research funding, and the licensing income earned from faculty discoveries reached $54 million last year, making UMass a national leader in this area.”
The four-day, 500-mile bus tour includes visits to alumni start-up companies, business incubators, UMass research centers and other key university landmarks across the commonwealth. The tour, highlighting 150 years of UMass academic excellence and economic contributions, includes stops at the Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke, the UMass Gloucester Marine Research Station, the UMass Cranberry Station in Wareham and UMass Dartmouth’s MBA program at Cape Cod Community College.
