Type | Public |
---|---|
Established | 1852 Boston State College 1964 UMass Boston |
Endowment | $78.9 million (2015) |
Chancellor | J. Keith Motley |
President | Marty Meehan |
Provost | Winston E. Langley |
Academic staff
|
1,243 (2016) |
Students | 16,847 (2016) |
Undergraduates | 12,847 (2016) |
Postgraduates | 4,000 (2016) |
Location |
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. 42°18′48″N 71°02′18″W / 42.313432°N 71.038445°WCoordinates: 42°18′48″N 71°02′18″W / 42.313432°N 71.038445°W |
Campus | Urban, 175 acres (0.7 km²) |
Newspaper | The Mass Media |
Colors |
UMass Boston Blue White |
Athletics | NCAA Division III – Little East, ECAC East |
Nickname | Beacons |
Mascot | Bobby Beacon |
Affiliations |
UMass System APLU AAC&U AASCU Urban 13/GCU CUMU |
Website | umb.edu |
University rankings | |
---|---|
National | |
Forbes | 525 |
U.S. News & World Report | 220 |
Washington Monthly | 210 |
Global | |
QS | 551-600 |
U.S. News & World Report | 553 |
The University of Massachusetts Boston, also known as UMass Boston, is an urban public research university and the third-largest campus in the five-campus University of Massachusetts system.
The university is located on 177 acres (0.72 km2) on the Columbia Point peninsula in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. UMass Boston is the only public university in Boston. Students are primarily from Massachusetts but some are from other parts of the U.S. or different countries.
The University of Massachusetts Boston was established by vote of the state legislature in 1964. Freshman classes started for 1,227 undergraduate students in September 1965 at a renovated building in the Park Square area of downtown Boston. The Founding Day Convocation was held December 10, 1966, at the Prudential Center in Boston. John W. Ryan was installed as the university's first chancellor. UMass Boston is part of the Greater Boston Urban Education Collaborative, In 1982 it merged with Boston State College (est. 1852).
In 1974, it opened its new campus at the Columbia Point peninsula on Dorchester Bay. The university originally occupied five buildings: McCormack Hall, Wheatley Hall, the Science Center, Healey Library, and the Quinn Administration Building.
The original Harbor Campus buildings were said to have had sparse and unattractive interiors, with odd mazes of hallways; the campus was known as "the fortress" or "the prison" colloquially. They were rumored to have been designed by architects who were primarily familiar with prisons, although the library had been designed by the Chicago modernist architect Harry Mohr Weese. At one point in his career, Weese had designed the Metropolitan Correction Center in Chicago.
McKee-Berger-Mansueto, Inc. (MBM), the company contracted to supervise construction of the new campus, came under fire after its contract with the Commonwealth was criticized in a series of newspaper articles for being abnormally favorable towards MBM. A special legislative committee was formed to investigative the contract. A scandal erupted after it was learned that MBM paid State Senators Joseph DiCarlo and Ronald MacKenzie $40,000 in exchange for a favorable report from the committee. DiCarlo and MacKenzie were convicted of extortion.