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KEVIN BOWEN, DIRECTOR
Kevin Bowen was drafted and served in the 1st Air Cavalry Division in Vietnam from 1968-1969. He is a 1973 graduate of the University of Massachusetts Boston. A former Danforth Fellow and Fulbright Fellow at New College, Oxford, he earned his Ph.D. in English Literature from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He worked as an aide and speechwriter for Lt. Governor Thomas P. O'Neill, III prior to becoming director of the Veterans' Upward Bound Program at Umass Boston in 1984 . He was appointed co-director of the Joiner Center in 1984.
Since 1987, he has returned to Vietnam many times, initiating cultural, educational, and humanitarian exchanges. He is an adjunct Associate Professor in the English Department where he teaches courses in creative writing, literature and war, and the literature of the Vietnam War.
Playing Basketball with the Viet Cong, his first collection of poetry, was published by Curbstone Press in 1994. His poems have appeared in Agni, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares Press, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, Witness and other places. He has edited a special feature on contemporary Vietnamese poetry in the Winter 1996 issue of Manoa. With Bruce Weigl he is co-editor of Writing Between the Lines: Writings on War and Its Consequences published by the University of Massachusetts Press in February 1997. He has been director of the center since 1993. He lives with his wife and two children in Dorchester, MA.
Dr. Camacho served as a sergeant with the 9th Marines in Vietnam (1969-1969) and was wounded in action. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston College in 1986 and his MSIS from Northeastern University in 1995. He served as the executive director of a two-year investigative legislative Commission in Massachusetts from 1982 through 1983 and authored the publication of Senate 1824 and Senate 2307 (1983), the interim and final reports of that Commission. That study included a broad range of research on a number of issues, including health care for the underserved veterans' population. He also was responsible for follow-up study to those reports in 1990.
Dr. Camacho was one of several activists who played a
role in the passage of HR 1568, which became PL 106-50, the Veterans Entrepreneurship
and Small Business Development Act of 1999. He served as the principal investigator
for a major federal study in 2000 (SBAHQ-99-C-0001), which involved the conduct
of 24 focus groups across the nation. He has expertise in focus group and
field research methods as well as a level of expertise in statistics and questionnaire
design. He has been a practicing social scientist for well over twenty years.
He teaches a wide range of social science courses as an adjunct faculty at a number of universities in the Boston area. He has several published articles on the military in Vietnam and the status of Vietnam veterans in various books and journals, and is a member of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society.
Jaime Rodriguez served one tour in Vietnam in 1969. On returning, he obtained a master's degree in Education from Harvard University. Since then he had worked in a variety of projects - as team leader of the Boston Vietnam Veterans Outreach and Counseling Center, special assistant to the Office of Veterans Services of Massachusetts, and organizer of a massive three-year statewide voter registration campaign. He has received a number of awards for his outstanding contributions - the Philanthropic Inc. Boston Award, the ABCD and Latino Democratic Committee Community Service Award, the Massachusetts Hispanic Vietnam Veterans Award, the Legislators Black Caucus Award, etc. He is the President of the Massachusetts Chapter of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights.
Jaime is currently the Research Coordinator for the William Jointer Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass.
T. Michael Sullivan is the Director of the Resource Project for the William Joiner Center. In that capacity, he is the coordinator the Center's Reading Series, which was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1994. He is also the coordinator of the Writers' Workshop which is held the during the last two weeks of June each year. In addition to developing public relations initiatives and materials, he edits the Joiner Center Newsletter and multifarious research and public policy documents. Other duties include overseeing tutorial and counseling programs for student veterans and supervising a staff of student employees and volunteers.
Formerly the editor of a community newspaper, he led an investigation into governmental corruption, which resulted in a national award for the paper. After leaving the paper, he continued to write a column, which was syndicated in a number of community newspapers, and has served in an advisory capacity. Prior to working in journalism, Mr. Sullivan was a high school teacher and worked in municipal government.
He is a graduate of Boston College and holds a Master of Arts degree in Anglo-Irish literature from University College, Dublin.
Gus has been at UMassBoston since 1980, first as a student, then as an employee. He worked as a math instructor for the Veterans Upward Bound Program and as a Counselor for the Veterans Resource Project of the William Joiner Center. For the past thriteen years, Gus has been the director of the Office of Veterans Affairs, where he started as a work study student. Gus is responsible for all the essential paperwork that is involved with the Veteran students. His office processes all the financial forms, referrals, and work study assignments for the veterans on campus. Gus also does academic advising and assists veterans with registration. He has been a referee for Major League Soccor for the past two years as well as a referee for collegiate soccer.
A Boston native, Mary Sheinfeld received both her Bachelor and Master degrees in Education from Boston State College. Before coming to UMass Boston she had taught Math and freshman English for several years at various colleges in the Boston area. In 1980 she became a full-time Math instructor in the Veterans Educational Training Program At UMass. During that time she published Math Can Be Easy, a comprehensive text for the basics of arithmetic, algebra and geometry. The book was published by McGraw Hill in 1993, and is now being revised to include more concepts for a second edition.
Mary has also taught Academic Skills math classes through the Department of Continuing Education. She designed and now teaches a Math Refresher course for students who need to review their math or who plan to take the GRE and GMAT exams. Mary was an instructor and advisor in the William Joiner Center for more than twenty years. She does individual tutoring, runs workshop and counsels students on academic issues. Although dealing primarily with the veteran student population, she has worked closely with the Academic Support Services on campus and has an ongoing relationship with various departments.
Nguyen Ba Chung is a writer, poet and translator. He received a bachelor's degree in American literature from the University of Saigon in 1970 and a master's degree in American literature from Brandeis University in 1974. His essays and translations have appeared in Vietnam Forum, New Asia Review, Compost, Nation, Manoa, and other journals. He is the cotranslator of Thoi Xa Vang (A Time Far Past), the groundbreaking novel by Vietnamese writer Le Luu, and the author of three poetry collections Mua Ngan (Distant Rain) in 1996, Ngo Hanh (Gate of Kindness) in 1997, with Tuoi Ngan Nam Den Tu Buoi So Sinh (A Thousand Years Old At Birth) forthcoming. He co-edited with Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl the anthology - Mountain River: Vietnamese Poetry From The Wars 1948-1993 issued by the University of Massachusetts Press in Oct 1998.
Every summer, Nguyen Ba Chung organizes the Summer Study Program with Hue University, Vietnam. He is currently a Research Associate at the Joiner Center.
Patrick joined the Joiner Center in December 2000 as a full-time staff assistant. He is a graduate of UMass Boston and currently studying Music Education for teacher certification.
Part Time Contributors:
One of the original founders of the Joiner Center, Paul Atwood is a former marine, and teaches in the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts/Boston. He did his undergraduate work at UMass Boston where he was on the original staff of the Veterans Upward Bound Program, a federally funded initiative aimed at addressing the educational and counseling needs of returning veterans. He worked as a high school teacher in the mid-seventies, and later became Director of the Veterans Program at UMB in 1979. About 10% of the student population were Vietnam era veterans, and pressure was building for the creation of courses dealing with war. In 1982 Dr. Atwood was appointed co-director of the Joiner Center to establish a comprehensive program committed to teaching about the Vietnam War and meeting needs of veterans throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
In 1985 he returned full-time to Boston University, and after finishing his doctorate there, started teaching at UMB. His courses include The U.S. in the Sixties, The Culture of War, The U.S. in the 1940's, and the Vietnam War. He has edited the Joiner Center publication Agent Orange:Medical, Scientific, Legal, Political and Psychological Issues, and has published articles on the consequences of warfare, most recently in Barry Levy and Victor Sidel, eds. Public Health and War, New York, Oxford University Press, 1996 and articles on the Vietnam War in Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (1998).
Karen has a BA in Art and an MEd. in Instructional Design from UMass Boston. She has been the Joiner Center's part time office manager since July 2004.
Joan, a staff assistant for the Joiner Center for over fifteen years, retired from her full-time position in 2001 to become a part-time consultant for the center. She has since left the center. Her knowledge and experience at UMass made her an invaluable member of the Joiner Center staff.
Monica graduated from UMass Boston in 1998 with a degree in social psychology. She worked part time for the Office of Graduate Studies before becoming a full time staff assistant in the Office of Veterans' Affairs. Monica is working toward her Masters degree in Applied Sociology here at the university.
