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How the DNC has helped form a bond between two Northeastern professors

Photo of Michael Dukakis and Dan Urman

Distinguished Professor Michael Dukakis’ unbreak­able, long-​​term com­mit­ment to his stu­dents and to pro­viding them with oppor­tu­ni­ties to suc­ceed is demonstrated by the special bond that he has with his former student and now-professor Dan Urman. A humble Dukakis says it’s real-​​world expe­ri­ences that are crit­ical to stu­dents’ learning and the essence of Northeastern’s expe­ri­en­tial learning model.

North­eastern fac­ulty member Dan Urman says the 2000 Demo­c­ratic National Con­ven­tion in Los Angeles was his “polit­ical coming of age moment”—one he says was made pos­sible by Michael Dukakis.

At the time Urman was a rising senior studying polit­ical sci­ence and his­tory at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­fornia, Los Angeles. He was a stu­dent of Dukakis’, Dis­tin­guished Pro­fessor of Polit­ical Sci­ence at North­eastern and vis­iting pro­fessor at UCLA. Urman had impressed Dukakis in class in the spring, and when the DNC rolled around he asked Dukakis if anyone was run­ning his visit.

He said, ‘Why don’t you do it?” Urman recalls. “It took me about two sec­onds to say ‘yes.’  It was a trial by fire, and I learned a tremen­dous amount. It inspired my pas­sion for pol­i­tics and teaching.  In 2012, we cre­ated a web­site to teach the larger public about the cam­paign and con­ven­tion process, and I can directly trace it to my ini­tial expe­ri­ence in 2000.”

Read the full story at news@Northeastern.

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