Graduate Catalog — The University

The University of Massachusetts Boston is a community of scholars that prides itself on academic excellence, diversity, and its commitment to serving students and the greater Boston community. UMass Boston was founded in 1964 to provide the opportunity for superior undergraduate and graduate education at moderate cost to the people of the Commonwealth and particularly of the greater Boston area. It's a lively place, where classes go on year round, and where studies in a wide range of disciplines are conducted by a truly distinguished faculty.

The university's urban setting allows it to offer a broad array of resources—educational, professional, and cultural. These resources, together with UMass Boston's active concern for individual academic development, offer students the opportunity for an excellent education.

Three miles south of downtown Boston, UMass Boston shares a peninsula overlooking Boston Harbor with the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum, and the John F Kennedy Presidential Library. The Library building, designed by IM Pei, has become a Boston landmark. The JFK Library shares its impressive archival resources with UMass Boston through a series of educational programs. An equally impressive range of research opportunities is provided by the Massachusetts Archives and Commonwealth Museum.

UMass Boston, which has more than 12,000 students in its undergraduate, graduate, and continuing education programs, is the second-largest campus in the University of Massachusetts system. With campuses at Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell, and Worcester, the University of Massachusetts serves more than 57,000 students and is the largest university system in New England.

Graduate Study at UMass Boston

Graduate study is becoming a way of life for more and more people in the United States and internationally. Career shifts and rapidly changing technologies require professionals to update their expertise or to prepare for new directions through graduate education. People at the beginning of their careers require an understanding not only of their disciplines but also of the people with whom they will be working and the new global community that is emerging.

At UMass Boston, the members of a talented, flexible faculty are responsive to the ways in which society and workplace are evolving. They provide graduate students with teaching and supervision that is distinctive in quality, range, and perspectives, through certificate- and master's-level study in more than fifty areas and thirteen doctoral programs. The faculty here are among the most accomplished scholars in their fields. Their research, writing, and consultantships have earned them national and international reputations. Yet they are also widely known for their commitment to their classes and students. They constitute a unique graduate teaching faculty.

Many of UMass Boston's faculty members are associated not only with academic programs, but also with a range of institutes and centers at the university whose focus is on applied research and public service. These institutes and centers make important contributions to the greater Boston community's knowledge and understanding of crucial social issues. Graduate students in turn can share in these affiliations, which afford exceptional opportunities to acquire research and field experience that is both valuable in its own right and career-enhancing as well.

One of the most pressing challenges to public policy makers in urban America is the need for government to respond effectively and positively to the explosion of new immigration and ethnic diversity. Many doctoral students in clinical psychology, education, gerontology, nursing, and public policy are making significant contributions to this and related issues in their dissertation research, often supported by faculty, staff, and resources in institutes and centers.

In another example of synergy, the Urban Harbors Institute, which focuses on such issues as water quality, port planning, and harbor management, sponsors both doctoral- and master's-level research undertaken by students in the environmental sciences.

The relationship between graduate programs and the institutes and centers is one of the distinctive features and strengths of UMass Boston.

Office of Graduate Studies

Under the leadership of the Dean of Graduate Studies, this office oversees all graduate work at the university. In collaboration with the university's Graduate Studies Committee, the Office of Graduate Studies exercises overall review and supervision of graduate programs, and provides guidance for the development of new programs, as well as for the maintenance of academic standards within existing programs. At UMass Boston, graduate education is supported cooperatively and in accordance with the highest national professional standards by the university's College of Liberal Arts, College of Science and Mathematics, Graduate College of Education, College of Management, College of Nursing, John W. McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies, and College of Public and Community Service. Intercampus programs provide students the opportunity to benefit from faculty expertise on multiple campuses of the University of Massachusetts system.