Dear Incoming or Prospective CCT Student,
Welcome to the Critical and Creative Thinking Program, a unique and innovative inter-disciplinary graduate program offered only at UMass Boston [see overview of the program]. The CCT Handbook provides a step-by-step guide to joining and moving through the Program. The most current information about CCT activities and updates on future semesters' courses can be accessed via the CCT website (www.cct.umb.edu), which has links to a calendar, wiki, and regular news bulletins. Prospective students and others interested in CCT are encouraged to email the Program office to get added to the email distribution list. Please keep us informed of any changes in your email address.
As an interdisciplinary, cross-college program CCT has to be critical and creative in the way it secures its resources and uses them, especially in times of state budgets cuts and shifting institutional priorities. For several years we have worked to build more "horizontal" exchanges and support among students and "vertical" exchanges between students and the larger community of CCT aums and associates. These have coalesced into monthly events of the CCT network and an online social network. Through these you can extend your learning beyond the formal classes by hearing about the range of ways alums, faculty, and students put critical and creative thinking into practice and reflect on how their current work builds on their CCT experiences. Every CCT Network event has time for socializing, but there are also occasional social gatherings organized by the graduate students' group, the CCT Forum.
Each matriculated student is assigned a general CCT advisor, but should feel free to ask other faculty members for advice. We want the time students spend consulting with faculty to focus as much as possible on issues of personal, professional, and intellectual development, so we have designed the web-based handbook to enable students to handle most bureaucratic matters on their own. (Students recently admitted should take note of the guidelines about advising.)
We would also value help getting CCT's website (http://www.cct.umb.edu) linked in appropriate places and any good old word of mouth about CCT would be appreciated. To reach our target of new students each year, we need to reach out and find people who might not have knows we exist but are thrilled when they find us.
Finally, we view the CCT program as works-in-progress, which means that we encourage members of the CCT community to find opportunities to affirm what is working well and to suggest directions for further development. It helps our spirits to know that others are thinking about how the Program can move ahead.
Sincerely,
Peter Taylor, Program Coordinator