Connector Staff
The UMass Lowell Honors seminar Experimenting with Philanthropy/Birds of Change held its awards ceremony, where the Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust and Project LEARN were each awarded $5,000. These awards were given after a long semester of deliberation, debate, weighing of pros and cons, creativity, vision and learning.
The two winners were the Lowell Parks and Conservation Trust, which focuses on blending science and technology with the natural world, and Project LEARN, which has a focus on getting middle school students excited about S.T.E.M. through “underwater learning,” using new and technologies such as Sea Perch.
According to Honors College Dean, Dr. James Canning, the UMass Lowell Honors College has gone from simply being an honors program to being its own college with its very own housing for freshman students. One of these new seminars is Philanthropy for Change.
The focus of the Philanthropy for Change course is to demonstrate to students how charities and nonprofits operate, and what kind of impact they can have on a community. The Honors College is constantly interacting and being active in the Lowell community.
Philanthropy for Change began when Canning attended an Honors conference in Arizona four years ago. Many Honors representatives from universities across the nation were there. A representative from Texas Christian University and their philanthropy course greatly influenced Canning to create our own UMass Lowell version.
Nancy Lippe, who previously taught a similar philanthropy course at Tufts, was enlisted to head the course. She also made funding for the new course possible, and soon, many interested students of various majors had signed up.
The award ceremony, held on December 11, 2014, had a line of speakers which consisted of Dr. James Canning, instructor Nancy Lippe, and students from the course. John Kilgo discussed what the essential backbone of the class structure is; he mentioned that the first hour of every two-hour seminar would be dedicated to readings and finding differences between philanthropy and charity, while the second hour would focus on the specific day’s topic. Students also created their own nonprofits, including riversocks.org, where socks are collected and given to the Lowell Transitional Center.
“The main goal of the class was to find charities the class wished to award $5,000,” Kilgo said. Kilgo also noted that the class had to go from five final proposals down to two through a process of debate and intense thought.
Nick Zylkuski and Thomas Reimonn also gave reflections on the course during the awards ceremony. Zylkuski said he wanted to make sure the class’ democratic decision would have a large impact and how important it was to find the correct program to fund.
Reimonn’s reflection touched on how the course showed how significant of an impact one can have on the community.
“You don’t have to be Bill Gates,” Reimonn said. He also mentioned how philanthropy is everybody’s issue because everybody is a part of the community.
Course instructor Nancy Lippe ended the ceremony with acknowledgements, thanking Learning by Giving, which helps to connect colleges with their surrounding communities, and also Doris Buffett, for funding.
Lippe also wanted to get across how tough and challenging it was to make decisions in the course, and how this is reflective of why people should be charitable and philanthropic so communities as a whole can be bettered.
