(Photo courtesy of Ed Brennan) “From left to right: Jessica Boatright, Marie Frank, Lori Weeden, Steven Fallon, Raj Gondle at the James B. Francis Lecture.”

Tristin Henson
Connector Staff

There are many lectures, presentations and colloquiums on the grounds of UMass Lowell’s campus. However, most of them are often catered to a specific major, or only allow or are for students attending the college. One lecture series, though, that seeks to foster an informed and welcoming community for students, staff, faculty and Lowell residents alike is the James B. Francis Lecture on the Built Environment. The James B. Francis Lecture is about topics surrounding the built environment, or the impact of man-made structures and activities on the natural environment. Named after James B. Francis (1815-1892), who spent most of his career in Lowell as the Chief Engineer of Locks and Canals, this lecture series is an annual event put on by UMass Lowell. More specifically, it was created by Marie Frank, the Architectural Studies Program Director at UMass Lowell, as well as a couple of her colleagues: Edward Hajduk, a professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department, and Lori Weeden, a professor in the Environmental Earth and Atmospheric Sciences department. Marie Frank said the series came about by just chatting with her colleagues. “We shared so many similar interests about the built environment. We realized we all had our own angle about the built environment, so I suggested to them we set up a lecture series at the university level, instead of just siloing our information in each department, to foster connections in all the fields.”  

The lecture series first started in 2022 on the topic of manmade land in Boston to keep the city above water and included speakers Nancy S. Seasholes, a prominent figure and acclaimed authority on Boston’s manmade land, as well as Julie Eaton Ernst, an alumni and resilience team leader at Weston & Sampson. When asked about what the initial reception towards this lecture was, Marie Frank stated that “it surprised the heck out of me, because it was brand new, and no one had heard about it, yet we completely filled up the whole of ETIC’s Perry Atrium.” Marie Frank then went on to mention how the lecture series had started off with the formula of two speakers presenting for 25 minutes each, one speaker “from outside to set the context and larger issue, think usually a professor or a spokesperson for their field”, and the other speaker being a “case study of that topic from a community member, student, or alumni.” This formula worked so well in the first lecture, she and her colleagues decided to keep the format going for other lectures as well.  

In 2023, the series focused on the topic and impact of Urban Heat Islands which are sections, or sometimes whole cities, that, because of the way they are built, absorb and radiate heat. This lecture included Lucy Hutyra, a professor from Boston University who specializes in urban climate and biogeochemistry as well as remote sensing and vegetation ecology, and a group of planners from the city of Lowell. These included Katherine Moses, alumni of UMass Lowell in Energy Engineering and the City of Lowell Department of Public Works Energy Manager, Sophie Mortimer, Lowell’s Neighborhood Planner who has aimed to enhance Lowell citizens’ quality of life, and Jess Wilson, a professor at UMass Lowell and a design planner for the city. In 2024, the lecture surrounded the topic of geothermal energy, or heat energy harnessed from the Earth, and how UMass Lowell, as well as the city itself, is currently constructing a geothermal system. Guest speakers included Zeyneb Magavi, Executive Director of HEET (a nonprofit organization in Boston) and designer of the initiative to plan out a geothermal system for Lowell, and Ruairi O’Mahony, Senior Executive Director for the Rist Institute for Sustainability and Energy at UMass Lowell.  

Finally, this year the lecture topic centered around AI, robotics and affordable housing. Guest speakers included Jessica Boatright, who has worked for over 20 years in Boston’s affordable housing programs and recently joined Reframe Systems (a construction company based in Andover that prioritizes building attainable, resilient, and high-performance houses), and Steven Fallon, an alum of the Civil and Environmental Engineering program here at UMass Lowell and Assistant Project Manager 2 for the MBTA in Boston, as well as an architectural designer for D21 Architects.  

Jessica Boatright talked about high-performance housing solutions and how those solutions have to incorporate the diverse range of challenges across the United States, more specifically, the “seven climate zones, 30K zoning jurisdictions, and 50 different state codes.” She also talked about the skilled labor shortage and how there will soon be a knowledge gap in construction because of the older demographics currently working, along with the high threshold for entry into the construction market. Boatright also mentioned how the cost to build is getting higher and higher as times go on, which is backed up by the National Association of Home Builders. Thus, in order to make construction “fast, cost-effective, and predictable…construction needs a factory.” Thus, this is what the company she works for, Reframe Systems, seeks to do by incorporating technology-forward solutions, including robotics, into the construction process. They have built a few homes in Somerville and Arlington, the latter of which is “2.5x faster, 20% tighter [than other homes on average, and included] 60% apprentice builders [in the process].” Finally, at the end of her talk she put up a QR code to tours available on the Reframe website, in case community members, students and professors wanted to have a look at the factory for themselves.  

Meanwhile, Steven Fallon presented his first-place prize-winning thesis for an affordable housing competition in Revere, MA. He discussed how computational design, as well as AI, can reshape the affordable housing industry, and similar to Boatright, he talked about how construction is a much smoother process when in a factory setting with helpful technology. For the competition, he created a playbook of methods architects could use for different cases of site-specific homes, and then talked about how robots could quickly build each of these smaller parts inside a factory he and his team envisioned. Steven Fallon envisioned a factory where “on the first floor, robots would be working. Then, on the second floor would be the human design, so people could create their design on a computer on the upper floor, and then step out of their office and look down to see their design being built on the first floor.” Similarly, he talked about how AI could potentially be useful in this process as well, but more so as something to be used when humans needed something that they themselves could not create. Each member of his team for the competition were included in all aspects of the construction process, all the way from finance, to architecture, to engineering, similar to the concept of a ‘master builder’ in medieval times, who saw a project through, start to finish, playing many different roles to build a design themselves.  

At the end of both presentations, the crowd was allowed to ask questions to the speakers. When asked how she and her colleagues come up with ideas on what each lecture series should be about, Marie Frank said that they come up with themes that are often very relevant to that year. In reference to the lecture that took place two weeks ago, she mentioned how “AI is a timely issue, the housing crisis is a timely issue, especially for students.” And thus, keeping on brand with her one professional in the field and one case study application, she got in contact with her past student, Steven Fallon, to speak to AI and a theoretical approach of how AI could be used in robotics and housing construction, and then found Jessica Boatright to speak on the more on-the-ground side of using robotics in affordable housing construction. Marie Frank also stated how most of the speakers she finds, and topics she ends up debating between, often come from word of mouth from other professors. “The second talk about the Heat Islands? That came out of a talk with a faculty member who knew Lucy Hutyra. When I learned what she did, I thought ‘this might be a good JB Francis topic’,” Marie Frank said. She also touched on another important aspect of these lecture series, how these invited guest speakers reaffirm previous connections and build entirely new ones for both the university as a whole, as well as for students who reach out to the presenters after the lecture. Student feedback, Marie Frank also emphasized, is a huge part of how the lecture series has and will develop, as she even happily noted that this most recent lecture “was the one lecture that students clicked with the most…I witnessed the most response from students after this lecture…I had students in my class coming up to me and saying, ‘I wanted to thank you for bringing in that speaker!’”  

For the next lecture in 2026, Marie Frank stated that she could not yet reveal what the next lecture in the series will be about, but she did state that this one will be very special, as it will be the fifth anniversary of the lecture series as a whole. However, as implied with her excitement over students’ reactions to this most recent event, she said that she is “more than welcoming hearing from students any topics that they want! I really want to appeal to the student body. If they have an idea they think is good, reach out to me and we can work together on it!”