Students Investigate Class

After a yearlong exploration about socioeconomic class, NMH Upward Bound students will get to hear from an expert on class and race. Rachel Rybaczuk, the program coordinator for Class Action, an Amherst-based organization that supports cross-class alliances and economic justice, will speak at NMH on July 17.

Rybaczuk grew up in a racially diverse, economically poor neighborhood in Miami.  She was the first in her family to be born in the United States as well as the first and only, to attend college. As a white, working-poor, Jewish woman at a predominantly white, wealthy college, issues of class and race became the guiding forces of her experience.  Since then she has become a community organizer and activist with a particular interest in class and race.  She is also a graduate student in the department of sociology at the University of Massachusetts where she focuses her research and teaching on issues of class, race, and identity, as well as strategies for effective community organizing. The talk, to which the public is invited, is part of NMH UB’s 15th Annual Diversity Conference. Rybaczuk will speak at 8:45 July 17 in Grandin Auditorium.

NMH Upward Bound is a Department of Education program that serves 66 low-income and first generation college-bound youth from Greenfield, Turners Falls, Springfield, and Holyoke. Students receive intensive year round academic advising, tutoring, counseling, and college application assistance. Students spend six weeks on the NMH campus each summer. Northfield Mount Hermon School has hosted the Upward Bound program since 1967. Additional funding for the program comes from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts and the Edwin S. Webster Foundation.