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While driving on the boulevard in Lowell during late August you might notice some strange events taking place on the Merrimack river. There are many people gathered along the rivers banks to watch a kind of traditional boat race. As the light turns green you cross the university bridge and head downtown where you find the epicenter of this foreign event with even more people, food and music, and looking up you see the banner for the Southeast Asian Water Festival. Such an event draws around 50,000 people into Lowell to reproduce a similar festival that takes place along the Mekong River in Laos and Cambodia. This celebration is of the Merrimack instead of the Mekong, and the event serves to bring together traditions from foreign culture to be melted into the diverse population of Lowell.
Linda Silka most likely did not have such an event planned when she came to Lowell twenty six years ago to teach at the University of Lowell. Having grown up in the Midwest she had never seen "three decker houses" and the quick pace of the city combined with its density made Lowell "seem like a foreign country" to her. Perhaps this is why she has been so passionate in the development of the Regional Economic and Social Development department at what is now the University of Massachusetts in Lowell. This department helped to cultivate the Southeast Asian Water Festival and was able to integrate a lecture series from Buddhist Monks on environmental issues while also engaging other discussions on the value of the river to the community of Lowell. Such an event works to bring together many different aspects of the community and involves educators, policy makers, and citizens who work to gain a betters understanding of cultural, environmental, and communal interests. As Linda describes the involvement of the department of RESD: "We try to identify things that draw on the strengths of people who are new to the country while also build on the strengths of people who are here and bring them together". Linda has always been involved in the educational system. She found a job at the University of Lowell only a month after receiving her Doctorate in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas. After being a member of the Psychology department in the University for many years, she and some of her colleagues began to discuss the fact that, despite their specialties in different departments, their research and ideas were crossing over to other disciplines and working to formulate multidisciplinary theories. Linda comments that from the discourse with her colleagues "what we discovered was that we all had more in common with each other and that we could do more together if we were in the same department". This prompted the formation of the department of Regional Economic and Social Development. To create a multidisciplinary department and new branch of the University the members had to provide research and theories that showed a desire for such a department and to see if such a program had already been created somewhere else. Linda recalls that "we were surprised to find that there really wasn't such a program that brought in people from economics, sociology, history, political science, and psychology to look at issues of sustainability", and after University approval the RESD department was created. Today most members of RESD also serve as directors of community outreach centers. Linda is the director of the Center for Family, Work, and Community and she also serves as the co-director of the university's Community Outreach Partnership Center. The demand on each member of the department is vast, but when talking to Linda about her work she smiles and is eager to explain the difference her work, and the departments work, does to aid the community in solving problems. She related her experience of Lowell to that of new comers saying "When people move here and have a hard time adjusting to the fast pace, it is very familiar to me" because of the difference of New England cities. The RESD works quite often with local businesses along with the growing immigrant population of Lowell. Lowell, just as all of America, is a place where new people from different countries are always moving to in hopes of a better life. Linda commented that RESD has been "Doing all kinds of things to help people become Americans". RESD works to educate people on environmental laws and labor practices so that new business in immigrant communities can work to follow guidelines of a sustainable community. Linda summed up the function of the department saying that in dealing with a "concept that [a] particular community has struggled to understand. One of the great accomplishments of the group is that we work to bridge these gaps." Linda Silka is not a typical professor at the university because of her involvement with the community beyond the realm of academia. She and the RESD department serve as a network or connection between the studies of community building and sustainability, to the policy makers who enact and appropriate projects, and to the overall community who receive the benefits of these works. In Linda's own words, she and the other faculty in her department aid to "bridge these gaps" that often separate people in the community ideologically because of their vantage points. The interdisciplinary approach of RESD often accounts for the factors that add to the "gaps" in community building. The reward of the work can be seen in the successful programs the department is involved in. Linda asserts that the department is quite a part of the university in its academic work, but that it also serves a greater role in the community. "We do things that get published in academic journals, but we are more focused on how should we serves as a tool to be used by policy makers or community groups". |