UMass Lowell is a nationally ranked research university located among the historic mill towns
north of Boston and home to 17,000 students– offering more than 120 undergraduate and 77
graduate programs across five colleges. While the pandemic slowed the university’s growth, its
enrollment has increased 50% since 2007, and the sprawling campus is evidence of that, with
$1 billion invested in capital projects since 2010.
For more than a century, UMass Lowell has been preparing students to work in the
real world, solve real problems, and impact real people with a high return on the educational
investment. The university began as two: the Lowell Normal School (a teaching college founded
in 1894) and the Lowell Textile School (founded in 1895 to train technicians and managers for
the textile industry). Over the next 75 years, both institutions extended their offerings to meet
the growing needs of the region and in 1975, Lowell State and Lowell Tech, as they were then
known, merged to form the University of Lowell. That campus became part of the University of
Massachusetts system in 1991.
Chancellor Julie Chen was the gracious host for my visit. Chen was chosen to helm UMass
Lowell after growing the university’s research franchise into a nearly $95 million/year enterprise
and was unanimously appointed by UMass trustees in May 2022. Chen assumed her role as
UMass Lowell’s fourth chancellor on July 1 of that year, becoming just the second woman to
lead the university.
Among the topics we discussed was the Lowell Innovation Network Corridor,
the heart of a pending economic transformation in Lowell. For nearly two decades, UMass
Lowell has steadily increased its research collaborations with industry, government agencies,
and non-profit organizations that now total nearly $120 million/year. With LINC, the university is
seeking to dramatically scale up these partnerships by anticipating and meeting the needs of
companies seeking to relocate to Lowell. The primary partners in this development, GMH
Communities and Wexford Science and Technology, plan to invest over $700 million with the
university and the city of Lowell. Wexford is working in 17 such “knowledge communities” across
the U.S. – places like Philadelphia, Durham, Miami, Baltimore, Providence (and now Lowell!) –
in partnership with more than 30 institutions including Drexel, UPenn, Duke, Wake Forest and
the University of Miami. Exciting company!
Another new partner in LINC is the engineering firm Draper, which is bringing 700 new jobs to
Lowell, along with internships, collaborative research, and employment for UMass Lowell
students and faculty. Given the high cost of housing in cities like Boston, Draper sees a real
opportunity in locating in one of Massachusetts’ “Gateway Cities,” which is less expensive but
offers a highly trained and educated workforce, thanks to proximity to institutions like UMass
Lowell. A win/win, for sure.
One of the joys of doing this blog is that every time I visit a campus, I seem to learn something
new and unexpected about the school or its locale. In the case of Lowell, for instance,
who knew this was the birthplace of Jack Kerouac, the 1950’s beatnik who authored “On the
Road”? (He copied me.)
First settled by the Pennacook people in the early 17th century and decades later by the Europeans, Lowell developed into an important manufacturing center along the Merrimack River. It was seen as an attractive site for a planned industrial city, and unlike many mill towns, its manufacturing facilities were built around a purposeful community design – in repudiation of British mill towns that were cramped, polluted, and considered inhumane. The “Lowell Experiment” imagined a manufacturing center that combined production efficiency with a democratic and moral social structure. The city was called the Cradle of the American Industrial Revolution and its historical manufacturing sites are protected today as the Lowell National Historical Park.
One inescapable fact about UMass Lowell in particular is that it’s a really huge place! The campus
stretches across 125 acres with the beautiful Merrimack River running through it. Pieces of
campus are sprinkled across the city in what are called the North, South, and East campuses. In
the East campus, two facilities originally developed by the city — a baseball stadium and large
indoor athletic pavilion– have been transformed into rather spectacular venues supporting some
of UML’s 14 Division 1 athletic programs.
As I planned my visit, I had mistakenly assumed I’d wander the campus by foot for an hour, but it’s too darn big! Instead, I was treated to a driving tour by native son Tony Sampas, the head archivist from the Center for Lowell History. I think if I had planned a day-long visit, Tony still would not have run out of things to share with me about his beloved city.
What a delight!