UMass Boston

The exploration and invention of new ideas is at the heart of the university. The Undergraduate Research Portfolio encourages you to participate in research—and become part of this analytical and creative activity at UMass Boston. The Undergraduate Research Portfolio gives you the opportunity for high quality faculty/student intellectual exchange by helping you to learn about and participate in research in your field. 

The Undergraduate Research Portfolio is also a flexible way to participate in research; you use your major’s coursework and research opportunities to craft a sequence of research experiences that works for you. The Undergraduate Research Portfolio is noted on your transcript and can offer you advantages on the job market and in the graduate school application process.  The portfolio can be completed in one year or up to three years. Please see the Undergraduate Research Portfolio Flyer for more information on the requirements for completion. Upon completing the program, you will submit the Undergraduate Research Portfolio Form for final approval.

To schedule an orientation please contact Rafael.Jaen@umb.edu

Pre-Law in the College of Liberal Arts

The College of Liberal Arts (CLA) will support you in creating an academic plan that best prepares you for law school. Your professional and faculty advisors can help you find ways to gain exposure to the law and the legal profession and assist you with the law school application process. They can be a resource in helping you select courses to achieve your goal, explore careers, choose a major or program of study, research law schools, and prepare for the LSAT. 

Intentional academic pre-law pathways are provided by the following CLA programs

• The Criminology and Criminal Justice Major. 
• Philosophy as a Pathway for Pre-Law Students.
• Political Science, Public Policy, and the Law.

Pre-Law in the College of Liberal Arts

This initiative from the CLA Dean’s Office, in partnership with the Applied Ethics Center and the Center for Humanities, Culture, and Society, currently consists of three parts for the AY 2026-27. We will be reaching out to chairs and faculty to find faculty who might be interested in participating in any of these parts!

The One Page Project:

The One Page Project will be a series of 6 events over the course of the academic year (3 per semester), open to both students and faculty. In each, a faculty member from a different CLA department will lead a discussion of a short piece of text from their discipline—no more than one page. We will provide hard-copy handouts of the page to all attendees; the faculty leading the discussion will engage the whole group in an hour-long focused reading and discussion of that one page.

Once or twice during the year we hope to shift from being a “One Page Project” to a “One Picture Project”: the attentive, guided close reading will remain, but with the focus on an image.

Finally, we hope that the final event in the One Page Project might involve a collaboration between 3 faculty from different disciplines, all looking at the same text and revealing how they read it and how they can lead the audience in three different ways of reading.

The One Page Project is not simply meant to foreground the different kinds of thinking and reading that we do across the college, though it will do that. It is also a moment when we ask everyone to collectively engage in a form of study that is rooted in paying attention—to words, to ideas, to images. It is part of the project to carve out both a time and space when we ask everyone to step back from their screens and to come together as a community in an act of shared and sustained attention.

CLA 100: The Deep Read: A CLA Seminar

Description: The Deep Read: A CLA Seminar is an intimate, discussion‑driven, 1-credit seminar that invites incoming students into the core of academic life through close conversation with a faculty member and with each other. Meeting for one hour a week, we center our collective attention on a single book, art object, or important document—you will use a hard copy of this work so that you can disconnect from the digital world for this class—reading it slowly, carefully, and with curiosity. You will learn how to analyze ideas with depth and nuance, how to listen attentively, how to ask better questions, and how build meaning collaboratively. The seminar experience emphasizes genuine community: you will get to know a faculty member as a mentor and guide and each other as co‑thinkers and collaborators. The Deep Read will prepare you to get the most out of your college experience, as well as to build sustaining intellectual practices, connections, and community.

This course is a 1-credit class meant to serve as a foundational course for any entering student in any CLA major. The strategies of long-form reading, close attention, discussion, analysis, and collaboration will serve students across the College. This is the first CLA designated course; it does not overlap with any other courses in the College, and it welcomes faculty from any department. *We hope to get this through governance before the fall; if not, we will roll it out in Spring 2027 with several different sections.

Some background: CLA 100: The Deep Read: A CLA Seminar was created in response to the need to increase a sense of student belonging and connection, as part of the CLA strategic priority to enhance student engagement, retention, and achievement. The 1-credit seminar will serve these goals using the following methods:

• Fostering student/faculty relationships and pathways to mentorship by connecting entering students with a senior faculty member. (See research on the importance of faculty mentorship to student success here: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/career-development/2025/04/18/mentoring-era-uncertainty-higher-education)
• Creating a pathway for student connections and a sense of belonging with the small seminar style class dedicated to conversation and collaboration. (See research on how student belonging increases graduation rates: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/life-after-college/2026/01/06/increased-sense-belonging-boosts-student)
• Creating a temporal, physical, and intellectual space for students to disconnect from the online realms and work on fostering a sense of intellectual curiosity and engagement with both the texts and their peers. (see the following studies about the impact of digital media on attention: https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Vol.30-Issue10/Ser-3/B3010030915.pdf; https://www.scirp.org/pdf/psych_6904734.pdf; https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1671214/full)
• Addressing the attentional deficit that comes from engaging in primarily online work and reading and allowing students to practice their memory and skills in analysis of hard-copy materials (See the following study, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0736585316305378?via%3Dihub) and this article for further references about the benefits of print reading: https://theconversation.com/the-enduring-power-of-print-for-learning-in-a-digital-world-84352)

Fall and Spring Speakers:

• There will be a fall and a spring CLA Dean Speaker Series; these speakers will approach the topic of attention from different angles and disciplines.
• Fall: October 8^th, 11-12:30, ISC Atrium: Peter Schmidt, Director of The Strother School of Radical Attention and co-author of Attensity!
• Spring: Date TBD: Gloria Mark, Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Attention Span

Dean's List achievement is noted on an undergraduate student's transcript when they have achieved a certain minimum grade point average (GPA) in a given semester.

Each college has its own standard: 

College of Liberal Arts: 

• At least 9 graded credits with a 3.50 GPA or higher and no incompletes. Courses with a grade of "P" do not count towards the 9 graded credits. 

The University bestows three separate honors designations for scholastic excellence reflected in the cumulative average:

Summa cum laude- Students must maintain a GPA of 3.75 or above
Magna cum laude- Students must maintain a GPA of 3.50 to 3.74 inclusive
Cum laude- Students must maintain a GPA of 3.30 to 3.49 inclusive

Did you know UMass Boston offers 18 accelerated master’s program (AMP) degree choices exclusively for UMass Boston undergraduates? 

• Save money and time with the accelerated master’s program (AMP)  
• Earn a master’s degree in as little as one additional year at UMass Boston
• Apply in your junior year (earlier for Honors College) and start taking graduate-level courses to count as undergrad electives.
• Make more money master's degree holders typically find higher-paying jobs, faster.

 AMP eligibility and how the program works.

Boston is home to a number of world-class museums. We encourage UMass Boston students to take full advantage of these institutions, and to use the privileged access that our students enjoy. Please see the Museum Partnerships page for a list of museums that offer benefits to UMass Boston students. 

More information can be found on Student Writing Journal "Undercurrents" page.

The McNair Program at UMass Boston has been funded for the next five years.  The new application includes STEM students and faculty from CLA.  The Mission of the Ronald E. McNair Program is designed to provide opportunities for undergraduates from disadvantaged backgrounds- especially from underrepresented academic groups- to excel at the undergraduate level and progress toward doctoral degrees to undertake careers in college and university teaching. Participants prepare for graduate school by attending seminars, advising sessions, and completion of a faculty-mentored research project. Benefits include travel opportunities, a research stipend, partial tuition assistance, and intensive during the graduate school application process. The McNair Program at UMass Boston has been funded continuously by the U.S. Dept of Education for over thirty years with thirty-four of its McNair Scholars going on to receive PhDs at universities. Please let us know if you know of any talented students who might fit the requirements of the program and we will contact them about opportunities in education and research. 

In addition, if you are interested in becoming a sponsor for McNair Scholar please let us know. We try to connect scholars with faculty mentors for training in research opportunities in their research specialties. We assist research investigations by providing support for necessary laboratory supplies needed for research investigations. Please, let us know if you have any questions about the program or selection of students as McNair Scholars. 

McNair Program Application