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President Grace J. Wang was named to the annual list which was featured in The Boston Globe Magazine as part of its Women & Power issue. The list was created by The Women’s Edge, a nonprofit that supports female business leaders, and celebrates the state’s leading companies and nonprofit organizations led by women. The group examined 2023 revenue or operating budget as well as other variables and ranked organizations according to its own formula.
WPI’s new TechFlex was noted in the MassLive report. TechFlex is WPI’s reworking of teaching and learning for the upcoming academic year, grounded in all that is distinctive about the WPI experience, and designed to support students in person and remotely.
The Boston Globe quoted President Leshin in their article. “Every single one of the presidents is taking this work incredibly seriously,” Leshin told The Globe. “They see these decisions as being the most important of their professional careers."
The Worcester Business Journal featured WPI university research in their article. Yan Wang, William Smith Dean’s Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is principal investigator of the three-year project.
President Leshin was quoted in the Commonwealth article. Leshin served as the higher education representative on the Massachusetts reopening board headed by the lieutenant governor. Leshin told Commonwealth that Polito took the weight of the Massachusetts reopening decisions seriously, listening to various opinions, acknowledging that the group needed to act with imperfect information.
Vox noted the work of Jennifer Wilcox, James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering, and her team (scroll down to caption under Figure 4.5) in their article.
WPI was one of the many Worcester colleges noted in the Telegram & Gazette article defending international students’ rights to higher education in the United States. President Leshin spoke about the importance of educating all students, including those from around the world: “WPI has a proud history of welcoming and educating students and scholars from around the world,” she said. “These future STEM leaders are important members of our community, and this week’s action by ICE threatens their educational success.”
Andrew B. Palumbo, dean of admissions and financial aid, was interviewed for The Chronicle of Higher Education article. “The playbook goes out the window,” he said. “It’s a scary thing on one hand, but it’s also somewhat refreshing. It opens us up to innovate.”
President Leshin was interviewed for the Boston Business Journal. she describes the impact on college and university presidents of having to make decisions on how to approach the Fall semester/term.
IEEE Spectrum recapped President Leshin’s interview with a high school student as part of a series by MassRobotics “How to Be a Robotocist.” (scroll down to Robotics Debate subhead, 3:59 mark).
New England Cable News featured an interview with President Leshin. ”I think every campus across the commonwealth is making plans that will allow them to reopen and also plans in case they cannot,” she said.
President Leshin, President Laurie Leshin, who serves as the higher education representative on the advisory board Gov. Charlie Baker established to plan for the state's economic reopening, was interviewed on the podcast AICUM Insight (Association of Independent Colleges & Universities in Mass.). She spoke about, among other things, the difficult issues colleges and universities face during the pandemic. “I think our job in this moment is just to be as transparent as we can possibly be. If we’re going to have communities back together…it’s our job to continue to work to stop the spread of this virus,” she said.
The Worcester Business Journal included President Leshin’s thoughts in this article, (scroll up to 3rd article from bottom). “The protests of the past few days, ignited by the killing of George Floyd, but truly fueled by the continued targeting, demonization, and abuse of black people across our country, highlight legitimate anger, which I share,” Leshin wrote. “The uprising we’re now seeing points to the significant work we still have to do as a society to confront and eliminate racism. I stand with those who are outraged at the senseless loss of black lives.”
The Shelter Island Reporter covered the work WPI students Carly Campbell, Anna Carriero, Alaa Hassan, Brandon Weyant and Georgianna Wood, all of the Class of 2020, did during their MQP at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. The students designed a modern wind energy system to augment the farm's windmill and its future energy production potential.
“It’s a thrilling and exciting day, and I wish them Godspeed,” President Leshin told NBC Boston over the weekend as SpaceX launched astronauts into orbit. Leshin used to work at NASA where, 10 years ago, she was involved in overseeing the commercial program which gave the very first funding to SpaceX to create the rocket.
Provost Wole Soboyejo appeared on Spectrum News 1 discussing his research in identifying targeted drugs that reduced the sizes of hard-to-treat breast cancer tumors in mice without inducing the toxic side effects that are typically associated with conventional chemotherapy.
Angela Rodriguez, assistant professor in the Social Science and Policy Studies department, wrote an account for the Telegram & Gazette's "As I See It" section on how our culture can more positively reshape its portrayal of the working mom and work-life-balance – especially while in a pandemic.
President Leshin and Michelle Jones-Johnson, vice president for talent and inclusion and chief diversity officer, were among the Worcester Business Journal’s honorees in its compilation of The Power 50 for 2020. The annual Power 50 issue “gives us an opportunity to really examine who wields influence in the Central Massachusetts economy, understand who is making power moves and their reasoning for doing so,” the article stated.
President Leshin’s involvement in a virtual seminar on robotics was featured in The Telegram & Gazette’s College Town section (scroll down to third item). The four-part “Robot Stories” series was broadcast by the Innovation Institute at the Mass. Technology Collaborative and MassRobotics.
