UACT is a unique partnership of UMass students, faculty and members of grassroots community organizations. We work together to design programs that build community, promote social and economic justice, advance cross-cultural understanding and serve the educational and civic objectives of our Land Grant University.
Staff
Sustainability Initative Liason
Hi my name is Sara Hopps. I love to do anything outside that is with great people. This includes walking, hiking, running, eating, drawing, listening to music etc. I am creating my own major in the BDIC Civ-X program titled “Sustainable Engagement for Community Health.” I come to this work from the premise of this quote by Chief Seattle of the Suquamish. “Man did not weave the web of life – he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”
Student Administrator 2012-2013
Rachel Claffey is a junior studying Management and minoring in anthropology. She’s excited to continue her work with UACT after taking GCO her freshman year. She loves meeting new people, playing intramurals, and walking around our lovely campus. Country music and tailgates are two of her favorite things.
Outreach Coordinator
Julia Ozog is starting her 4th year with GCO and is thrilled for the opportunity to continue working with her community! She is passionate about social justice education on many fronts and hopes to continue her intersectional approach to activism after graduation by educating or organizing. In her spare time, Julia enjoys gardening, making/eating/thinking about delicious food, zumba, going on adventures, juicing whatever’s left in the fridge, and reading and learning outside of what she’s required to do in school.
Project Coordinator and Trainer
Lily Brown graduated from UMass in Spring 2012 with a Bachelor’s Degree of Individual Concentration in Community-Integrated Holistic Pedagogy. After growing up in the culturally-rich community of Syracuse, NY and working at a self-sustained ranch in Costa Rica, Lily figured out that community is essential to living a purposeful and engaged life. Lily saw the problems around her—climate change, social injustice, rampant corporate greed—as byproducts of a lack of local community power, and sought to find out how communities are built as the focus of her work at university. After working as a peer educator with the Sustainability Initiative on campus, she decided to take Grassroots Community Organizing as a sophomore to further her understanding of how community is formed, little did she know she’d find a learning community of her own. This experience was so empowering, that Lily decided to facilitate GCO the in spring 2011 to better understand how learning communities could be created for others. After spending the 2011-2012 academic year training future facilitators, Lily is returning to train again while overseeing the implementation of a new course, Sustainability & Environmental Justice, within UACT. When she’s not doing UACT stuff, Lily enjoys eating fine cheeses, giggle fits, culinary exploits, Netflix, and globetrotting.
Director
Jen Sandler, Ph.D.Jen is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology. In her research, Jen focuses on the knowledge practices of activist organizations and movements, asking how those who are trying to change the structures of society learn and teach about the problems they aim to address. Jen has conducted research with urban educators, community organizers, policy activists, parent activist groups, and popular education organizations in several urban centers in the United States as well as in Mexico. She also engages as a participant in many organizations and collectives that work with people to understand their shared struggles and to gain the power to shape the institutions and policies that affect them.Jen received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008, and subsequently held visiting faculty positions at Trinity College and Bates College. As a professor, she has worked with many local community activists and organizers as partners to teach students, through engagement with both theory and practice, about different ways of understanding contemporary power, social inequalities, and diverse approaches to social change. Her classes have frequently involved efforts to disrupt the traditional power dynamics of the classroom to create collective environments for learning and community engagement. Jen comes to UMass this year ridiculously excited to work with the UACT staff along with graduate students, faculty, and community partners who are interested in thinking critically about engaged teaching and research on activism.
UACT 