Curry will provide career services, including counseling and training in interview techniques. Students who participate fully but do not obtain a job or graduate offer Students seeking admission within six months of graduation could choose from one of three options: have their student loan payments covered by Curry for up to 12 months, a paid internship in their field (possibly at Curry) for up to 12 months, or have tuition waived for six credits of graduate study there.
“This is what students and families want most from their investment in college today,” Gonzalez said. “If we’re not delivering on this, then what are we doing?”
Gonzalez believes Curry can’t afford not to offer the program. This is part of his effort to boost the school’s graduation rate, which currently hovers around 50 percent. Curry is suffering, like many smaller New England schools, from changing demographics, with fewer kids applying to college each year. Today, Curry’s enrollment hovers around 2,000 students, including about 400 adult and graduate students. Five years ago, Gonzalez said, that number was around 2,500.
“The fact that we are differentiating ourselves in a significant way will not only likely result in increased demand for Curry, but it will also force us to be hyper-focused and make sure we deliver on our promises,” Gonzalez said. “We can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing. Curry will not be sustainable.”
Mayor Michelle Wu delivered the State of the City address at MGM Music Hall at Fenway on Jan. 9. Danielle Parhizkaran/Globe Staff
Wu puts aside housing tax cuts
In September, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu He expressed his frustration at the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce At the time, he said rising interest rates were preventing work from starting on thousands of housing units that already had city permits. The City Council, he said, was seriously considering a tax incentive program to boost stalled projects.
Developers saw this as a welcome change following Wu’s move to control rents and impose a transfer tax, not to mention higher environmental and affordable housing standards. In the end, there was talk that Wu would unveil tax incentives in his State of the City address in January. This was not to be.
The promoters subsequently placed their hopes on the mayor’s speech. Boston Municipal Research Officea budget watchdog group. But when Wu delivered the speech on Thursday, there was more bad news.
While he mentioned his separate tax breaks for converting downtown offices into apartments, Wu also touted his proposal to seek permission from the state Legislature to raise property tax rates on commercial properties.
He then talked about how his administration worked with Harvard University Professor of economics Edward Glaeser In analyzing the housing incentives he proposed last year, they found that interest rates remain too high for tax incentives — at least the ones the city can afford — to have a significant impact. Giving up many years of future tax revenue for the program, Wu said, is not in the best interest of city residents. right now.
Will that change? Apparently many developers have given up.
“The impression that many people took away from the speech… is that the door has closed,” he said. Little Tamaraexecutive director of the NAIOP Massachusetts trading group. “It’s death by a thousand cuts, that’s how it looks.”
Nexamp CEO Zaid Ashai. Courtesy of Nexamp
For Nexamp, a quick trip to find financing
When Nexamp director Zaid Ashai launched another round of funding to boost the growth of the solar company, but it didn’t have to look far to find its last big investor.
Last week, Nexamp announced a $520 million capital raise, with a new investor Manulife Investment Management together with existing investors Diamond generating corporation. and Generate capitalManulife, the parent company of Boston-based insurer John Hancock, is based in Toronto. But the investment team, led by Pradeep Killamsettyis here in Boston, continuing to share offices in Back Bay with colleagues at John Hancock, and just a mile from Ashai’s downtown facility.
Nexamp is present in 19 states and employs about 500 people, including 260 in Boston and 85 at its new second headquarters in Chicago. The new investment will help Ashai grow its workforce and expand Nexamp’s presence. It plans to enter eight more states in the next 18 months.
This round of financing led by Manulife was Nexamp’s largest to date.
“It was pure luck that they were local,” Ashai said. “For any entrepreneur, having an investor who is four minutes away by Uber is easier than having someone who is on the other side of the country.”
MIT President Sally Kornbluth is pictured at a Demo Day event last September at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. The event was attended by cheerleaders. Susan Neal
Kornbluth encourages MIT to tackle climate change
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) president Sally Kornbluth She is a cancer biologist, not a climate scientist. But when she joined MIT last year from Duke UniversitySeveral friends asked him basically the same question: “Can you fix the weather?”
An impossible task? Perhaps. But Kornbluth is determined to harness MIT’s considerable brainpower to tackle it.
Last week, Kornbluth outlined his vision at a clean-tech startup event in Boston hosted by the federal government. Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energyled by a professor on leave from MIT Evelyn Wangand the Massachusetts Clean Energy CenterHe mentioned his recently announced Climate Project at MIT, which is putting $75 million and dozens of professors toward solving some of the biggest climate problems. He also told a room full of entrepreneurs and investors that he is looking for collaborators for the initiative.
That request already seemed to bear some fruit. After Kornbluth finished, MassCEC’s executive director Emily Reichert She said she was impressed by Kornbluth’s ambitions and planned to have someone from the CEC reach out to offer help.
Kornbluth believes MIT is up to the task in part because of the entrepreneurial culture he found when he arrived at the Cambridge campus. Almost everyone there is interested in starting a company, he said. if they haven’t already. To illustrate this point, he spoke of a “Demo Day” last September, overseen by Bill Aulet in it MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurshipwhich featured cheerleaders.
“I didn’t know there were cheerleaders at MIT,” Kornbluth said. “They were there, cheering for the entrepreneurial spirit. I can tell you that at Duke, the cheerleaders were cheering for other things.”
Liam Martin has just left WBZ-TV to join Newsmaker Marketing. Photo courtesy of Newsmaker Marketing
Martin leaves WBZ and the news industry
Liam Martin He has just left his dream job: TV presenter, in WBZ TelevisionNot only did he leave, Martin wrote why he did it, with an essay in Boston magazine.
In that essay, Martin details his emotional struggles, not to mention the physical challenge of waking up at 2:15 a.m. for the morning shift. He previously worked the night shift, but that meant he barely got to see his two young children. The switch to the morning shift meant he was often too tired to really be present for them.
So he left the news business altogether and joined the former JOBsNews Universal newsreader Jackie Bruno as a partner in your public relations and communications business, Newsmaker Marketingtogether with a third partner Rachel Robbinspreviously with Greenough Communications(Bruno wrote an essay on a similar topic a year ago.)
Martin wrote his essay in part because men often don’t feel comfortable talking about mental health issues or the difficulties of balancing family and work. The response has been overwhelming.
He can still tell stories, but in a different way. For example, he just spent a day in New Hampshire working on a documentary-style video about Cyclica plastics recycling company.
Martin misses the hustle and bustle of the newsroom, but is also glad to no longer be there.
“I miss the people at WBZ-TV,” Martin said. “I don’t miss having to stay on top of everything all the time.”
You can contact Jon Chesto at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.
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