The University of Massachusetts Amherst (otherwise known as UMass Amherst or simply UMass) is a land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts. It is the flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts system. The University of Massachusetts Amherst offers over 90 undergraduate and 65 graduate areas of study.
Its mission statement follows, from Trustee Document T05-024:
UMass was changing as well. McDonald and MilneMcDonald, Mark and George Milne (1999), Cases in Sport Marketing. Jones and Bartlett, ISBN 0763708631. p. 284: "zoo mass" era. note:
In spite of the various expansions and changes of status of the University, it remains true to its roots, continuing to provide high-quality education in the agricultural (Stockbridge School of Agriculture), mechanical (School of Engineering), and martial (Army ROTC and Air Force ROTC) arts.
In 2004, Governor Mitt Romney proposed an ambitious expansion project in which the size and population of the university would almost double as it took over the role of the state's community college system which Romney has begun to consolidate and dismantle. While this proposal received the support of the student government, town residents are exceedingly resistant to any such plan as it would increase the already critical traffic congestion in the center of town. The university also owns land throughout the Pioneer Valley for agricultural and ecological research.
Mitt Romney's stance that an expanded university would take over the role of the state's community college system is contrasted by Vice Chancellor Mike Gargano's comments to a group of students, first that, "We need more Abercrombie and Fitch and less GAP on this campus"O'Donnell, Julie. votes 'no confidence' in Vice Chancellor Gargano." Daily CollegianMA 18 November 2004: News., and later in that same discussion, to a student of color that if he could not afford to go to UMass, he should go to community college. These remarks were noted by Student Trustee Matthew Murphy, and made public during the November 17 2004 Student Government Association meeting that eventually led to the vote of no confidence in the leadership of Vice Chancellor Gargano.
Following Mitt Romney's mandate, the UMass Amherst administration (headed up by Chancellor Lombardi and Vice Chancellor Gargano) has pushed for admission of more students than there are residences for and thus, in Fall, 2005, over a thousand students who had been promised housing (with the implicit understanding that it would be a normal 2-person dorm room) were instead placed in hotels and study lounges.
Classrooms are often filled to capacity, and past capacity in some cases.
As the size of incoming classes is constantly increasing, the alleged lack of diversity amongst the student body has become a contentious issue. In 2004, the Student Government issued a Freedom of Information Act request for statistical information on minority enrollment. According to Vice Chancellor Gargano, the university did not provide some of the requested information because providing it would have violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Since the record size of the Class of 2009 caused problems in terms of class sizes and housing, the university responded by tightening admissions standards for admission to the Class of 2010. The acceptance rate for the Class of 2009 was over 80 percent, however it has been reported that the acceptance rate for the Class of 2010 was significantly lower, at under 70 percent.
In 2003, for the first time, UMass Amherst was legally designated by the state legislature to be a "research university" and the "flagship campus" of the UMass system*
The Integrated Sciences and Engineering Library is the other main library on campus. It is located on the 2nd floor of the Lederle Graduate Research Center (occasionally referred to as the Lederle "low rise").
UMass Amherst is home to the DEFA Film Library *, the only archive and study collection of East German films outside of Europe.
All five colleges are located within 10 miles of Amherst center, and are accessible by public bus. The five share an astronomy department and some other undergraduate and graduate departments.
The campus may be thought of as a series of concentric rings. In the outermost ring are parking lots, the admissions center, playing fields and barns for the animal science program. In the middle ring there are the five residential areas and dining commons. The innermost ring had most of the classroom buildings and research labs.
Anticipating the drastic increase in student population in the 1960's and 1970's, the University underwent major expansion. Many of the buildings were constructed relatively quickly from poured, exposed concrete, which reflected much of the styling of the era. The most prominent examples of exposed reinforced concrete construction are the Campus Center and Hotel, Fine Arts Center, and Whitmore Administration Building. Although this architectural styling is sometimes considered dated or unattractive today, several of these buildings are considered architectural landmarks, notably the Fine Arts Center by Roche-Dinkeloo, designers of the U. N. Plaza. There are several recently completed buildings that are both modern and functional, and generally considered attractive by today's standards. Some examples of these buildings include the Mullins Center, The Polymer Science Facility, the Computer Science Building, and the Engineering and Computer Science II facility.
South Campus The Isenberg School of Management has its buildings in the southernmost part of campus near the Visitors Center and the Newman Center, the Catholic student center. In addition to being the site of the main administration building, Whitmore, the southeast side of campus has buildings mainly dedicated to the humanities and fine arts. Buildings include Herter, Bartlett, Mahar and the Fine Arts Center (Abbreviated "FAC"). Between Whitmore, the FAC and Isenberg lies the Haigis Mall, a local stop on both the PVTA and Peter Pan bus lines. The buildings on the southwest side of campus house the college of social and behavioral science. These include Totman, Dickinson and Tobin.
The 26 story WEB DuBois library and the Old Chapel are the notable buildings in the center of campus. The buildings in the center of campus, Goodell and Machmer are mainly used by the Commonwealth Honors College.
Student Union The Student Union Building houses most of the University's Registered Student Organizations (RSO's) and it is the home of the Student Government Association. Other facilities include the Campus Design and Copy center, a convenience store, a ball room, and a student lounge. Several student-run businesses and co-ops are also present including the organic convenience store and bagel shop Earthfoods.
South College South College is the home of UMass' world renowned linguistics department, and is the oldest building on campus. The DuBois library was intended to be an annex to South College.
Campus Center Designed by famed architect, Marcel Breuer, the Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center is located adjacent to the Student union and is accessible via passageways from both the Student Union as well as from the main level of the parking garage.
On the concourse level are the campus store, restrooms, graduate student lounge, which serves beer, and the Bluewall, which contains a cafe, a smoothie stand and a fair trade coffee stand. This level is a high-traffic area throughout most of the day with students and faculty not only using it as a 'pass through' from one building to another, but also as the central hub of on-campus life. Many people often pass the time between classes on this level and it is common to find vendors and organizations operating from fold-out tables along either side.
The lower level of the campus center has multiple conference rooms and a large auditorium. Within the central space of the lower level are telephones, ATMs, vending, as well as couches and television. The offices of the University newspaper, The Daily Collegian, can be found at the far end of the level. One of the conference rooms is home to the UMass Science Fiction Society's library.
The top floor of the Campus Center, "The Top of the Campus" is currently undergoing a complete renovation. When finished it will be home to a state of the art teaching kitchen, beverage lab and dining room facility.
Campus Center Hotel Above the concourse level is the Campus Center Hotel, a five-level full service facility with 116 rooms, including two suites located in the Campus Center. The Campus Center Hotel is the training ground for the university's Hospitality and Tourism Management students.
North Campus The north side of campus is mostly dedicated to science and engineering, and many buildings there are newer than their counterparts in the humanities. The Physics Department primarily uses Hasbrouck Lab, located at 666 North Pleasant Street. The Lederle Graduate Research Tower is the largest building on the north side, housing the Math department on its sixteenth floor. As the Math Department headquarters, the sixteenth floor is prominently labeled 42. The Silvio Conte Polymer Research facility is located in North campus.
Computer Science The Computer Science department recently moved into an airy new building built for them on the edge of campus, though classes are usually taught elsewhere. Between the imposing concrete LGRT, the second-story walkway from it to its sister structure the LGRC, the glass-and-aluminum Computer Science building, and other new buildings for the Engineering and Polymer Science departments, North Campus looks more "high-tech" than the rest of campus.
Sports, Recreation, and Exercise On campus there are two major gyms, the Totman Center near Northeast and Sylvan and the Boyden Gym to the south. Major sporting events, such as UMass's hockey and basketball team games, are held in the Mullins Center, amidst the fields to the west.
Campus Bus System The PVTA bus system serves not only the University of Massachusetts campus, but also the surrounding colleges and communities. This bus system is run primarily by University students and is free for students, which allows them to easily get to classes at the other four colleges.
Students living on the UMass campus live in one of the five residential areas: Southwest, Central, Orchard Hill, Northeast and Sylvan. Each residential area has a student-run business. All campus residence halls are staffed by Resident Assistants, and have quiet hours, which start at 9pm on weekdays, 12 midnight on the weekends.
Buildings of note in Northeast include Knowlton, an all female dorm, Hamlin, an all male dorm. Lewis dorm provides international students 9-month housing.
Thatcher House is unique because it houses so called "foreign-language" students. The residents are expected to speak the language they are studying while on their language floor. The dorm is extremely difficult to get into, only foreign language students with high GPAs can expect to get housing there.
Northeast is across the street from North Campus, which has the polymer research lab, the engineering quad, and the computer science complex. Because of this, many of the residents of Northeast are in math, engineering or science programs.
Central also has several non-residential buildings, making it unique amongst living areas. Fernald Hall, also known as "the Bug Lab", Hills, and New Africa House are all academic and office buildings. Hills houses the Study Abroad office, the Mental Health resource center, the regional planning/landscape architecture department, and several graduate classrooms. New Africa House was renovated in 2004 and early 2005, and contains the African American Studies Department.
Central is organized into 4 clusters of buildings: Gorman-Wheeler and Brett-Brooks at the bottom of the hill, Baker, Chadbourne and Greenough ("BCG") organized in a quad halfway up the hill, and Van Meter-Butterfield ("VMB") at the top of the hill.
Gorman Hall is a building-wide Living Learning Community called NUANCE. Founded in 1989, it is a diversity awareness Living Learning Community. Wheeler is home to the Central Art Gallery.
Brett is where the Pixies met, and besides being home to the hockey team, it is completely wheelchair-accessible dorm. Brooks is substance-free housing.
Baker houses the Area Office. Chadbourne houses the Josephine White Eagle Native American Cultural Center. Greenough has the Area's student-run business, Greeno Sub Shop.
Butterfield Hall used to be known as the "hippie" dorm and was home to its own full kitchen and dining program, as well as hosting numerous bands over the years. Butterfield residents were known for being a close-knit, friendly group. Due to complaints of excessive partying and destruction of property, the university renovated and converted the dorm to all-freshman housing in 2001.
In the wake of the all-freshman conversion of Butterfield, Van Meter Hall took the reins as the proverbial "hippie" mecca. Van Meter will become all-freshman in Fall, 2006.
Orchard Hill (in Field) is the location of the student-run business Sweets n' More, opening during evenings that sells treats and snacks.
Orchard Hill also refers to the hill on which the Orchard Hill Observatory and a cell phone tower are located. The cell phone tower also supports a microwave relay system for internet and land phone service at the Five College Radio Astronomy Observatory, located on a peninsula within the Quabbin Reservoir (according to Dr. Ronald Snell, UMass Amherst Astronomy Department chair, circa 2003).
Southwest is the largest residential area, and it houses three of the five campus dining commons (Hampshire, Hampden, and Berkshire). It is composed of five 22-story towers (Kennedy, Coolidge, John Quincy Adams, John Adams and Washington) and 11 smaller residence halls (referred to as low-rises), holding a total of around 5,500 students. Southwest houses approximately 50% of the students living on campus. Longtime residents of Southwest state that living in SW is like living in an entirely separate city — this high-density, high-volume population is possibly the most diverse region of campus; socially, ethnically, anyone can find a niche.
Perhaps because there are so many students in so little space, Southwest is prone to having uncontrolled parties. In recent years, during victories by the New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox, the courtyard was filled with students and Amherst residents celebrating. This uncontrolled behavior of up to 5,000 students provided basis for UMass' reputation as a "party school,". UMass Amherst was reconized in the 2005 edition of the Princeton Review as #9 on the list of best party schools.
Southwest is also home to James Hall, which is a Wellness dorm that prohibits drug and alcohol use. In addition several TAPs (Talent Advancement Programs) for incoming freshman are located in Southwest. These programs are designed for incoming students who show particular academic promise in their chosen major to live on one or more floors with other similar majors. Students in a TAP will usually sign up for many of the same classes, so studying is made easier by the close proximity of others in the same classes. Each TAP program has weekly seminars and occasional field trips designed to orient students to the university and get them interested in the diversity of subjects offered at UMass. TAP programs, which are by invite-only, as well as RAPs (Residential Academic Programs), are also common in other areas of campus. Southwest has a convenience store, a small art gallery, a University run Snack Bar as well as the kosher dining commons.
Southwest also houses the EPOCH program, designed strictly for incoming freshmen to be with other freshmen. EPOCH, specifically the RA's and Peer Mentors (exclusive to EPOCH), organizes a myriad of trips and activities. Currently, the Moore, Melville, Pierpont, and Thoreau buildings are part of the program, with Emerson, Kennedy Tower, and John Adams to join in Fall 2007. By 2008 there will be EPOCH dorms in Central, Orchard Hill and Southwest, and all incoming freshman will be required to live in an EPOCH community.
UMass Amherst is a member of Internet 2.
At UMass, SPIRE is a web-based system used to register for courses, as well as a variety of other tasks. In the winter of 2003, the Office of Information Technologies (OIT) rolled out the SPIRE system, which is based on PeopleSoft's student information system. Reactions were initially favorable, but over the next year people began criticizing it for its confusing user interface (UI), among other issues. An attempt at resolving some of the UI complaints over the summer caused more serious problems. SPIRE was unavailable for most of the first week of the Fall 2004 semester, although other components of the PeopleSoft system functioned normally. Some have claimed that the university purchased PeopleSoft as the result of an executive conflict of interest. PeopleSoft is currently being sued by Cleveland State University for fraud.
Some classes have OWL (Online Web-based Learning) assignments. Giving homework through the OWL system allows students to see whether and where they failed and gives them an opportunity to fix their work faster than traditional paper-based homework assignments. Some students believe that it has little educational value or that using OWL is a waste of time. Since OWL assignments are graded by a computer and usually don't require students to show intermediate steps, students try to complete their assignments with the least amount of effort. Another criticism of owl is its inflexibility: the professor needs to write in every possible answer OWL will accept, allowing for the possibility that a student would get the right answer, but leave it in the wrong format. Indeed this inputting of the correct answer in the wrong format occurs frequently and students have reported that they find it very frustrating.
Some classes, particularly online, use the Blackboard Prometheus * system to organize and track classes and to provide a portal to information.
Some computer science classes use TWiki as their course web page.
For some lectures, students are required to purchase a PRS transmitter from the campus store or certain locations in Amherst. A PRS transmitter, similar to a TV remote control, allows students to answer multiple-choice questions during lectures, providing a level of feedback.
OIT supports Mac OS and Windows, and is currently researching and developing support for Linux and similar open source technologies. *
On October 21, 2005 UMass Amherst was designated as the first-in-the-nation Microsoft IT Showcase School by CEO Steve Ballmer, recognizing the university's innovative leadership in applying information technology to teaching and learning.
The 2006 season marks the final season under which the football team will compete in the Atlantic 10. Starting in the 2007 season the A-10's twelve football teams will compete in the new football conference sponsored by the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA).
First played in 1905 and held annually since 1995, UMass' basketball rivalry with Boston College is called the "Commonwealth Classic." The UMass basketball team also competed annually with the University of Connecticut in a game that was formerly known as the "U-Game" until UConn Coach Jim Calhoun chose not to continue it after new Coach Travis Ford's arrival. This series included a stunning UMass upset of the then-defending national champion Huskies in November 2004 at the Mullins Center.
During the 1990's the men's basketball team was known as one of the finest in the nation, holding the number one ranking in national polls for extended periods. Under the leadership of then-head coach John Calipari and players such as 1996 National Player of the Year Marcus Camby and Lou Roe, the Minutemen participated in the NCAA Tournament each year between 1992 and 1998, and reached the Final Four in 1996. Notable UMass basketball alumni include Julius Erving, Marcus Camby, Louisville head coach Rick Pitino, and Boston College head coach Al Skinner. The current coach of the Minutemen is Travis Ford.
UMass men's lacrosse reached the NCAA Championship Game in 2006, where they lost to the #1 ranked and undefeated University of Virginia. UMass, unseeded in the tournament, had to defeat three seeded teams (Cornell, Hofstra, Maryland) to make it to the championship game in Philadelphia.
The University of Massachusetts has won two NCAA national championships, one in Division I-AA football in 1998, and the other in Division I women's lacrosse in 1982.
NCAA Division I Teams - Men's
Baseball, Basketball, Cross Country, Football (I-AA), Ice Hockey, Lacrosse, Skiing, Soccer, Swimming & Diving, Track & Field
NCAA Division I Teams - Women's
Basketball, Cross Country, Field Hockey, Lacrosse, Rowing (Crew), Skiing, Soccer, Softball, Swimming & Diving, Tennis, Track & Field
Due to title 9 which states that there must be an equal amount of funds spent on women's sports as men's sports, several men's sports program were cut such as men's tennis and men's water polo teams.
Athletic "Club" Groups
Baseball Club, Bicycle Racing Club, Crew Club, Curling Team, Fencing Team, Figure Skating Club, Men's Lacrosse Club, Rugby Club, Tae Kwon Do Team, Tennis Club, Volleyball Club (Men's), Water Polo Club (Men's), Water Polo Club (Women's), Women's Ice Hockey, Women's Rugby Club, Women's Volleyball Club, Wrestling Club, Ultimate (Zoodisc)
The SGA has three branches: the President and Executive Cabinet, the Undergraduate Student Senate, and the Student Judiciary.
UMass Amherst has many registered student organizations (RSOs). These are funded by the Student Government Association (SGA), from the activity fee that all students pay. In recent years, the fee has been about $81. In order to start an RSO, one needs a group of at least 10 interested students, who then request the SGA for recognition. Each semester, the SGA reviews RSOs, and those which have too few members are considered inactive. Club Sports, which are non-NCAA athletic or organized sports teams, are considered RSOs.
The slogan of the Alumni Association, "You were, You are. UMASS" The University is campaigning to get Alumni to purchase specialty Massachusetts license plates with the UMass Amherst logo. The proceeds from sales of the plates would go to help fund student scholarships. The University Alumni Association operates out of Memorial Hall.
See also: List of UMass Amherst Alumni
UMass officials said the report was flawed in two ways: first, ABC used figures from 2002 and 2003, when UMass reported 57 and 58 violent crimes, and did not take into account the data from 2004, when only 28 violent crimes were reported; second, the news program calculated the rate of violent crime by dividing the number of crimes by the total enrollment rather than by the number of on-campus residents.DuBois Library Special Collections
1863 establishments | Hockey East | Land-grant universities | University of Massachusetts Amherst | University of Massachusetts
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