Bachelor of Arts in Community Development

at Shorelight Group - University of Massachusetts - Boston USA

Labor Studies is an interdisciplinary program that examines work, the workplace, workers, and their organizations. Drawing on the fields of economics, history, political science, sociology, and other disciplines, courses in Labor Studies deal with such questions as:

• What roles do unions play in affecting the well-being of workers and of society more generally? How and why have those roles changed over the course of economic development in the United States and elsewhere?
• How do changes in the global economy affect work and workers?
• In the history of the United States and other countries, how have workers’ rights changed over time? How have broad political and economic developments affected those rights?
• What opportunities and challenges do workers face as racial, gender, and ethnic diversity changes in the labor force?
• What are effective methods of worker organizing and of collective bargaining by unions? How are organizing and the practices of unions affected by changes in the larger society?

By focusing on these sorts of questions, the UMass Boston Labor Studies Program prepares students to provide critical analysis of historical controversies and to think strategically about social, political, and economic change. The program provides students with a strong foundations for a variety of occupations, and also prepares students to be active participants in their own labor and community organizations.

The Information Technology major offered through UMass Boston's College of Management is designed to offer pathways to highly-demanded careers in IT for both high school graduates and students of Massachusetts community colleges. Our small classes ensure personalized attention from IT faculty while our ties to the Greater Boston business and technical communities add an extra dimension of learning to our program of business information technology education. The IT major offers an “applications-path” format for students which includes a core of technical knowledge (nine courses), an area of specialization or track within IT (four or five courses, depending on track selection), three professional electives in an application or domain area (preferably outside of IT but within business), and two wrap-up courses (project management and IT capstone), in addition to general education requirements.

The IT major is project-based.  Every exercise assigned throughout the BSIT is designed to be of the kind that a student might encounter in his or her work: collaboration, competence, and outcomes assessment are the hallmark characteristics of the program.  Students will learn how to use IT to solve real-world problems within the context of a field in which they wish to work. Graduates will be familiar with, and be able to apply, the following core information technologies to solve business problems:

• Programming
• Networking
• Databases
• Web technologies

Business Intelligence (BI) is the technology that companies such as Amazon.com and Google use to take advantage of the enormous amount of data they collect and analyze. It is the technology with which Amazon.com knows what book to recommend you every time you login, Google knows how to rank the pages you are searching for, and banks decide whether to approve loan applications almost instantly.

The goal of the Criminology and Criminal Justice major is to provide social scientific grounding to issues of crime and criminal justice. Through classes, internships and projects, students explore the nature of criminal behavior, its causes, the role of punishment, and prison as a social institution. Students learn about the criminal justice system, including law enforcement, corrections, and the law. Classes focus on issues central to criminal justice policies and practices, including mental illness, substance use and abuse, racial and ethnic inequality, gender and immigration. Differences among societies and historical trends are also addressed.

A major focus of the criminal justice faculty is to help students connect theory and research with policy and practice in the “real world.” Using current events, their own research and observations, and critical study of criminal justice systems, students better understand broader trends and future options. For example, during classroom discussion and debate, students may consider the rapidly increasing prison population and high cost of incarceration and ask: Who is being incarcerated and why? Do prison alternatives work? How do incarceration policies affect families and communities?

As part of the Performing Arts Department, the Music Program welcomes students from our international campus community and provides a comprehensive education in preparation for careers in music and teaching. A dynamic faculty fosters an environment of academic and musical excellence within a liberal arts curriculum, and provides students with the tools to develop an understanding of a wide variety of musical genres, practices, and pedagogies.

• Music plays an integral role in the human experience.
• The historical, global, and creative contexts that inform music are presented with significant exposure to music education, music theory, musicology, and ethnomusicology.
• Core components of a comprehensive education in music include creating, listening to, responding to, and performing music of Western and non-Western musical traditions.
• Contextualizes the intersection of and interrelationship between music and other expressive arts especially theatre and dance.
• Faculty mentoring is vital to a successful undergraduate experience in music and serves as a foundation to support student’s career trajectories.

East Asia faculty generally specialize in interdisciplinary treatment of their various subjects. Art courses treat traditional paintings as visual art but also discuss the social role of artists at various periods in Asian history. History courses treat the way that Asian religions and philosophies like Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism and more recently Marxism -- have affected the course of Asian history. Film courses treat Asian film in the context of developing cultural currents in Asia, as well as their impact on the emerging global culture. The aim is to give students a well-rounded picture of the East Asian region, both its history and traditional culture, and present-day conditions and events currently unfolding in this rapidly changing area of the world.

The Asian Studies major gives students a broad knowledge of the politics, economics, history and culture of the countries of South Asia. Faculty members in the departments of women's, gender, and sexuality studies, English, economics, history, sociology, and art offer a wide array of courses on historic and contemporary South Asia. They also offer individual expertise on the countries of South Asia: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan.

The standard major in philosophy provides a general and comprehensive knowledge of the basic historical and systematic themes in philosophy. It will give a sound training both for those who anticipate going to graduate school or those who simply wish to acquire the broadly applicable skills of critical thinking and academic writing.

The majors in ethics, social, and political philosophy and in philosophy and public policy are intended for students who have a specific concern with questions of value as they apply to individuals, society, and public policy. These majors, in different ways, provide a broad outlook on these problems and attempted solutions to them, but should not in general be considered the best preparation for graduate work in philosophy. These majors, will, however, serve as a good liberal arts base for careers in government, the law, or social service.

Management major prepares students for specific management responsibilities and results in a bachelor of science degree from the College of Management (CM) at UMass Boston. The program is built on a solid foundation in the arts and humanities achieved by completing CM's general education requirements while also being immersed in business theory and practice.

The learning goals for the bachelor of science in management (BSM) program are for students to:

• Demonstrate proficiency in oral and written communication skills.
• Develop critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills.
• Demonstrate sound ethical reasoning skills.
• Integrate understanding of issues concerning diversity and globalization in business.

The Supply Chain and Service Management (SCSM) concentration prepares students for critical jobs prominent in the Massachusetts economy and the global economy. The need for graduates in this area is driven by major changes in the business world.

Students learn how to make businesses do more, do it better, and to do it as efficiently as possible.  The hands-on skills and analytical techniques of SCSM turn a vision into a profitable enterprise.  In running the operations of large and complex organizations, SCSM graduates negotiate with suppliers, design customer experiences and the systems that deliver them, and keep the business working.  Every business needs Supply Chain and Service Management.

Management major prepares students for specific management responsibilities and results in a bachelor of science degree from the College of Management (CM) at UMass Boston. The program is built on a solid foundation in the arts and humanities achieved by completing CM's general education requirements while also being immersed in business theory and practice.

The learning goals for the bachelor of science in management (BSM) program are for students to:

• Demonstrate proficiency in oral and written communication skills.
• Develop critical thinking and quantitative reasoning skills.
• Demonstrate sound ethical reasoning skills.
• Integrate understanding of issues concerning diversity and globalization in business.

The purpose of marketing is to find and keep customers. Employers in today’s economic environment actively seek competent, committed individuals for a variety of upwardly mobile careers in the field of marketing. The marketing concentration provides students with an in-depth understanding of the most current thinking and practices in strategic marketing techniques along with the analytical, communication, and computer skills their employers expect.

UMass Boston's Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (MLLC) offers a diverse and engaging curriculum, with courses focusing on language, literary, cultural, and film studies. Our well-rounded faculty, made up of prolific scholars and dedicated teachers, is committed to creating a strong community of language learners, critical thinkers, and responsible global citizens, who are well prepared for the professional demands of today’s global markets. The department offers language courses in Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, and Vietnamese as well as a wide variety of courses exploring the cultures of the Arabic-, Chinese-, French-, German-, Italian- and Japanese-speaking world taught in English.

The field of Africana Studies documents and disseminates a specialized body of knowledge about Africa, the Caribbean and especially the United States. We focus on the experiences of the African Diasporas – the global dispersion of peoples of African descent – its history, literature, culture, society, and contributions worldwide. Students are prepared for careers relevant to the development of the African world community and to the rectification of global social ills created by individual and institutional racism.  Students approach the field and subject matter from a rigorous curriculum rooted in the social and cultural history of Peoples of Africa and the Africa Diaspora, and designed to provide practical solutions to challenges facing them from both a local and global context.