ABSTRACT
In Inside and Out, University and Education for Sustainable Development (2006), Silka and Forrant make the case for the “engaged university,” playing a proactive role in cultivating equitable and sustainable regional economic and social development. They share how their institution, the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML), has been working since the early 1990s to become regionally “embedded” by aligning their teaching, research, and outreach in ways that help their surrounding region “avoid its historic patterns of economic boom and bust” (p. 2). Moving from regional resident to regional partner represents a major shift in thinking for a university. For UML, this shift has meant changing the way it structures teaching, research, and outreach so that it relates and responds to its region. For the region, it has meant undergoing changes and moving toward sustainable development with and alongside UML as a proactive and engaged regional partner.
