UMass Dartmouth awarded grant for justice programming

UMass Dartmouth officials announced Tuesday that the university was awarded a $150,000 grant from the Massachusetts Higher Education Innovation Fund to invest in a new transformative justice program and center.

The center will be constructed on the main campus in Dartmouth and will also serve students from UMass Law and the Massasoit Community College in Brockton.

The creation of this infrastructure will be led by UMass Dartmouth faculty Dr. Viviane Saleh-Hanna, Dr. Tammi Arford, and Dr. Erin K. Krafft.

This award follows an initial $150,000 grant in spring 2021 that funded research and data collection toward creating the inter-campus Transformative Justice Practitioner’s curriculum, which is a series of practices and philosophies designed to create change in social systems.

The goal, according to a university press release, is to have programs which focus on conflict mediation, trauma-informed facilitation skills, and envisioning and building Transformative Justice responses to both individual and structural harms and violence.

“The Transformative Justice Practitioner program provides a valuable opportunity for our law students to make a very real impact in the social wellbeing of their communities,” said Eric Mitnick, the Dean at UMass Law. “UMass Law is excited to participate in this vital initiative.”