Outreach Highlights
January 2009

The Outreach Ambassador in Springfield

Elaine Anderson

Elaine Anderson is an ambassador, helping strengthen the vital link between the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Commonwealth’s second largest city, Springfield.

A familiar figure in civic, charitable or educational circles, she does some of her most effective ambassadorial work in more varied and far less formal venues… so that a chance encounter—in the supermarket checkout line, for instance—may lead you to believe that you have known her for a very long time.

Further, instead of enduring a passing brush with the candy bars and tabloids, you are bound to exit that encounter with an expanded—or even passionate—interest in UMass Amherst and in the rich, critical link between the university and its neighbors.

And that’s just for starters.

Officially, she works for UMass Amherst Outreach as a liaison to university programs in the Springfield area. At the same time, however, she also serves a less formal—but equally vital—role as an emissary from diverse Springfield communities to the university. Part educator and part entrepreneur, with just a dash of general contractor, she is unfailingly gracious, gregarious and curious in helping to build new relationships between the campus and the urban community.

That makes her a point person for key elements of the historic Greater Springfield-UMass Amherst Partnership, which builds in part on longstanding collaborative initiatives between Springfield and UMass Amherst Outreach in areas as diverse as nutrition education, continuing and professional education, creative economy, cultural access, and youth and family development.

Though the Greater Springfield-UMass Amherst Partnership was formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding signed on November 7, 2008, Anderson says it’s easy to forget how deep the roots of the collaboration run, and how long it has taken to bridge the mountains of the Holyoke Range that separate the communities.

“I think that what we have had to learn, especially at the university, is that whatever we do in Springfield has to be driven from the heart. Otherwise it won’t make any difference,” insisted Anderson recently in her UMass Outreach office at Springfield Technical Community College.

The city, she says, is complex, and any attempt to engage its people and its resources needs to recognize the rich diversity of its neighborhoods and ethnic communities.

“Too many people view Interstate 91 South as Springfield,” she said. “When I start showing visitors the 17 neighborhoods, they are amazed.”

“It really is the most unusual city I have ever lived in,” she continued. “There are more and more ethnic communities all the time. It’s complex not just in terms of culture, but in the way they approach change. I am really impressed with this city and its people, and with how they keep moving forward.”

In much the same way, the sprawling UMass Amherst campus, and the even more complex university system, are a distant enigma to many Springfield residents, she added. She recalls, with great affection, one of her students who—as part of a group about to visit Amherst—was most concerned that he be able to bring his parents. Students like that benefit greatly from patient, ongoing, and sometimes informal mentoring once they attend the university.

The posture of a patient teacher, encouraging those around her to embrace new experiences, engage new people and explore untapped resources, is central to Anderson’s work in creating a bridge between the city and the campus. In the 1970s she co-founded and ran the Applewood School, once an experimental independent school in Amherst, and later went on to teach in UMass Amherst’s University Without Walls program. Teaching is a career, she adds, to which she may well return.

Elaine Anderson

“As a teacher, I continually had to remember to be patient,” she added. “We can’t be looking for immediate responses and solutions. Change is slow, and one size does not fit all. You need to plant the seeds and get people interested in what you have to offer and in your willingness to work collaboratively.”

Collaboration, for Anderson, means more than touching base. It means, in her words, “sidestepping the hoopla and joining your partners in the trenches.” It also means, like any good general contractor (yes, she really did do that, too…), making sure that sometimes-fragmented teams get the work done, and done well.

In that sense, Anderson and her husband, Frank, a now-retired longtime MassMutual Insurance executive, are collaborating general contractors of the first order as they work with the each other and with the extended community.

“We have a lot of fun together,” said Anderson. “We really work toward having fun every single day.”

Both continue to play key roles in civic and charity organizations across the region. Anderson chaired the board development campaign that underwrote a new addition to the Wing Memorial Hospital in Palmer, and, over 10 years, spearheaded the funding of more than 250 projects by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts.

Frank Anderson, in the meantime, is a Red Cross disaster worker who served as longtime chair of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of the American Red Cross. He has received the highest honor bestowed by the American Red Cross, the Clara Barton Volunteer Leadership Honor Award, and is the 2008 recipient of Springfield’s William Pynchon Award, established in 1915 “to honor those who go beyond the call of duty to make life better for the western Massachusetts community.”

If Springfield is Anderson’s chosen home, it is not for lack of having been elsewhere. She traveled extensively after leaving her hometown of Burlington, Vermont, where her parents had encouraged her to embrace challenges, to work tirelessly, and to not fear reaching beyond the next valley—or over the next mountain range, as the case may be.

“Most of all, they taught me that you must give back,” she adds. “Enjoy what you can, but no matter what, you must give back.”

While Elaine Anderson does, sometimes, seem to know everyone in Springfield and in the university system, you might feel complimented if Elaine Anderson engages you—again, for instance—in the checkout line at the supermarket. After all, she claims not to suffer fools gladly.

She also claims, however, to be an introvert…