Dr. Tom Piñeros Shields (UMASS-LOWEL) y Dr. Carles Simó Noguera (Universitat de València).

Dr. Piñeros Shields is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts (UMASS) at Lowell where he teaches courses related to his expertise including Sociology of Immigration, Youth and Society, and Social Problems. In 2017 he collaborated with colleagues at the University of València, Spain to establish an internship exchange program with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. He is also the founding director of the Master of Public Administration (MPA) program now in its third year. His bring over 25-years of experience in the field of experiential learning through internships, service-learning and community-based participatory research. Dr. Piñeros Shields has developed and taught courses that analyze non-profit organizations through internships at Brandeis University for six years and at UMASS Lowell since Fall 2014. Prior to joining the faculty at UMASS Lowell, he worked as a consultant and a Research Associate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University for over a decade. He has a doctorate in Social Policy and Sociology from Brandeis University, a Master’s degree in Urban and Environmental Policy (UEP) from Tufts University and a B.S. from Cornell University in Human Development and Family Studies.

Dr. Carles X. Simó-Noguera is professor at the Departement of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the University of Valencia. PhD in Demography from the University of Montreal (Quebec, Canada), has worked as a researcher at the University of Durham (UK), the Centre for Demographic Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the University of Bielefeld (Germany). He has been a visiting scholar at the University of Cordoba (Argentina), the University of Bamberg (Germany), the University of Iceland, and the Institute for Social Research in Norway. As researcher, he has focused on population information systems, divorce, family demographics, cycles and life transitions, sociolinguistics, migration and aging. He has conducted several research projects and has participated as a reviewer in several scientific journals and in Spanish and international organizations of research funding in the field of social sciences. He was a member of the Research Committee of the University of Valencia. Currently, he is responsible of the Doctorate Program in Social Sciences at the University of Valencia. He has also been involved in internship for students as supervisor and as a responsible of the internship program for undergraduate students at the Degree in Sociology for more than 10 years, and has participated in several innovation projects on this topic.