How do you pronounce “Worcester” and “Gloucester”?

A dozen new international students laughed as they watched a video that demonstrated that most Americans don’t know how to say the names of several Massachusetts cities.

This article originally appeared in the New England Board of Higher Education Journal.

“It is an interesting biological fact that all of us have, in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean.” —President John F. Kennedy, Sept. 14, 1962, Newport, R.I.

Nearly 40 years into the HIV epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control finds there are still about 40,000 new infections a year. Three-quarters of new infections are discovered in people of color and two-thirds are in sexual minority (gay and bisexual) men. Professor of Psychology David Pantalone has made it his life’s work to be part of the public health response to the virus.

Only five to seven percent of applicants are accepted into the American Psychological Association’s Minority Fellowship Program, which covers the remaining tuition for the accepted student’s schooling. Yet in 2019, two students in UMass Boston’s Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program received this honor.

For years, science and engineering educators, social scientists, industry leaders and policymakers in Massachusetts have struggled to expand and diversify the STEM workforce, each coming at the problem from different disciplinary and institutional perspectives, says professor of psychology Nilanjana “Buju” Dasgupta, director of the campus’s Institute of Diversity Sciences (IDS).

AMHERST, Mass. – In two highly anticipated reports about the economic impacts of MGM Springfield, University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers found that the resort-casino’s construction was felt in every corner of the Commonwealth, and its development has been part of the strengthening housing and real estate markets of Greater Springfield.

VA Central Western Massachusetts Healthcare System and UMass Medical School will build a new, community-based outpatient clinic (CBOC) for veterans, projected to open in 2021, on the campus of UMass Medical School in Worcester. The CBOC will occupy 53,000 square feet on the first two levels of a new, four-story clinical building, which will total 100,000 square feet.

In an effort to give back to their community while creating career opportunities in the legal professions, Hispanic members of the New Bedford Police Department have begun a scholarship at UMass Law. On September 24, Banessa Gonzalez, a third-year UMass Law student, became the inaugural recipient of the Hispanic Police Officers of New Bedford Scholarship.

AMHERST, Mass. – A University of Massachusetts Amherst interdisciplinary research team has received a $3.1 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to measure the impact of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables on the breast cancer risk of lactating women.

Jenia Tevelev, professor in the department of mathematics and statistics, has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award to Chile. Tevelev will conduct research and lecture at Universidad Católica de Chile in Santiago as part of a project called “New Frontiers of Algebraic Geometry.”