College of Arts and Sciences Newsletter

Volume 3, Number 1, January 2015

The Over-scheduled Professor

There is an old saying that suggests the key to success lies in not biting off more than you can chew. But Professor Anna Klobucka admits she doesn't listen to the old saying. According to the UMass Dartmouth Portuguese and Women's and Gender Studies professor, she attempts to accomplish too much with too little time available. "I nearly always overschedule my summers and breaks research-wise," Klobucka said. "I also tend to be unrealistically optimistic with regard to the amount of research and writing I can get done during the semester."

Yet, overscheduling appears to be highly productive for Klobucka because she recently finished several projects. In September 2014, she co-edited

Gender, Empire, and Postcolony: Luso-Afro-Brazilian Intersections. Published by Palgrave-Macmillan, the book is a collection of essays that focuses on gender in Portuguese colonialism and Lusophone postcolonialism. More recently, Klobucka finalized a project that reports on the reception in the United States of the Portuguese feminist manifesto-like work, New Portuguese Letters. And another project is a book-length study of the Portuguese poet Ant�nio Botto, who wrote and published extremely candid homoerotic lyric poetry during the 1920s and 1930s.

In some ways, Professor Klobucka's research style has evolved over the years. There was a time when she didn't own a computer. "I wrote my senior thesis on a manual typewriter," Klobucka said. "I didn't even own a computer until my last year of PhD dissertation writing." But there are some ways that she won't change. "I'd say that I am relatively set in my ways with regard to my researching/writing methodology, since I know what works for me and what has been successful in the past," Klobucka said. "That's one substantial benefit of aging."

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Joana Reis: Committed and Determined

When she was fifteen years old, Joana Reis, a junior UMass Dartmouth Mathematics major, moved from her hometown in Cape Verde to Brockton, Massachusetts. Unable to understand the English language, Reis struggled to adapt to a new culture. To her, life in the United States seemed a lot harder than in Cape Verde, especially in school. "In order to understand the material I was being taught in school, I would translate it in Portuguese to learn and understand it," she said. "Once I learned it I would do the homework in Portuguese and translate it back to English."

Reis made her education a top priority. And in doing so, she fell in love with the study of mathematics. In 2013, Reis, an honors student, worked with Professor Sigal Gottlieb and five other math majors on a project grant program funded by the National Science Foundation. The project - "Is it Worth Attending College?" - attempted to statistically demonstrate that college is worth the hassle. "The grant program was a rewarding opportunity because it provided me with more creativity and critical thinking skills," Reis said. "I became a more collaborative learner, and it made me more comfortable with the research process."

Right now, Reis remains committed to her goals, and she hopes to be a role model for other young women who are passionate about math. She admits that a gender bias exists in the field of mathematics, and it may influence girls' and women's likelihood of cultivating their own interest in math and science. But Reis shares her secret for success. "To succeed in anything that is hard, you must believe in yourself," she said. "My advice to all other hopeful female mathematicians is to be confident, determined, and work hard for what you are passionate about."

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Students Find the Nexus Between Politics and Education

Last semester, Professor Shannon Jenkins introduced twenty-one of her students to a completely new experience - tutoring elementary students. Every Tuesday, Jenkins' class traveled to Potter Elementary and worked with the 1st, 4th, and 5th grade classrooms. "The UMass Dartmouth students helped the children complete science projects and complete math worksheets," Jenkins, the Political Science Chair, said. "They read with the students, and even did yoga in some of the classes."

The George H. Potter Elementary School, located in Dartmouth, provided an opportunity for the college students to experience some of the very issues they were reading about in class. "We talked about standards-based testing, and my students were able to see the preparations for these tests," Jenkins said. "The tutoring helped them better understand the issues we talked about in class."

The Political Science class - Education Politics and Policy - focused on how schools in the United States are organized and how they operate. It examined several policy questions, such as whose interests should schools serve, what should be taught, and how should schools be organized. According to Laurinda Ralph, one of Jenkins' students, the class was quite memorable. "It is by far one of the most rewarding experiences I have gained through UMass Dartmouth."

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