Courses
Summer Courses at NFS
Each summer, UMass Boston offers several courses from May through August. These courses often feature field work that allows participants to use the island’s natural resources to investigate classroom topics.
Housing at the field station is included in course fees; students provide their own meals and transportation to and from Nantucket. Cost varies by course and credits. If you are taking the course and do not need housing, a discount in fees may be available.
UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station summer classes range from history to science courses and are often a mix of the two, creating unique courses that often rotate from year to year each summer at the Nantucket Field Station. Through discussion, exams, essays, projects and hands on field work students will master course material and build skills. The Nantucket environment will shape the courses throughout their duration.
UMass Boston has offered summer college credit courses at the field station since the late 1960s. In the 1970s, 1980sand 2010's UMass Boston has periodically offered a program during the school year called the "Semester on Nantucket," which were classes in English and Nantucket History taught by Nantucket historian Edouard Stackpole, and UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station naturalists Clint Andrews, Wes Tiffney and Sarah Oktay.
The Nantucket Semester
Since 2013, the NFS has run a semester of placed-based, hands-on courses primarily for Environmental Science or Biology students but the program is open to any students with an interest in the environment. The 16 credit semester offers students a customized curriculum focused on ecology and environmental sciences as well as Nantucket history and culture. The courses offer a combination of classroom time, field research and lab techniques. Coursework have been taught at the Nantucket Atheneum, Maria Mitchell Nature Center, the Greenhound building, and the entire island. In addition, students have done independent field work at the UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station's laboratory, located off Polpis Road. As well as with the Nantucket Conservation Foundation, Maria Mitchell, and Linda Lorning Nature Center and more.
Read more about the program in a Boston Globe article.
Read more about the Nantucket semester and learn how to apply at the https://www.umb.edu/academics/environment/ug/nantucket
Visit our Facebook page to see what the students have been experiencing while on Nantucket https://www.facebook.com/NantucketSemester2014?ref=hl
We thank our sponsors and contributors:
Remain
UMass Boston
UMass Boston School for the Environment
UMass Boston College of Science and Mathematics
UMass Boston Nantucket Field Station
Nantucket Atheneum
Nantucket Yacht Club
Preservation Institute : Nantucket
Maria Mitchell Association
Seadog Brew Pub
Queequegs (John Keene)
Nantucket Inquirer and Mirror
Starlight Theatre
African Meeting House, Museum of African American History
Rose and Crown
Mitchell's Book Corner
Nantucket Health Club
Petticoat Row Bakery
Dreamland Theatre