Bachelor of Arts in Labor Studies

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 Economics department has approximately 400 declared undergraduate economics majors and serves students from many other departments and programs in the College of Liberal Arts, as well as students from other colleges of the university.  Currently 8% of declared undergraduate majors in the College of Liberal Arts have chosen Economics as their major. Their interests include Economic Development, Economic History, Environmental Issues, Health Economics, Industrial Organization, Immigration, International Economics, Labor Economics, Macroeconomics, Marxism, Monetary Theory, Political Economy of Race and Gender, Public Policy, Public Sector Economics, Social Welfare, Statistics and Econometrics, and Urban Economics. In addition to teaching, faculty members are engaged in research, writing, consulting, and other professional activities in their areas of interest.

In keeping with the mission of UMass Boston, the faculty and staff of the Biology Department are committed to providing the highest quality experiences for students. We offer a vibrant curriculum and extensive opportunities for mentoring and hands-on research experiences as a means of developing a deeper understanding of biology at the levels of molecules, cells, organisms, and the ecosystem. We stress the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills both in the classroom and by undergraduate students conducting original research in faculty laboratories.

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.

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.

Community development is a multi-disciplinary field based in the social sciences. In UMass Boston's Community Development program students can customize their focus of study drawing on a breadth of disciplines to focus on issues at the intersection of the environment and economic development, community health, and planning.After completing your requirements in the BA in community development you will have a firm grounding in the multiple fields that contribute to empowering communities through environmentally sound and sustainable economic development and programming that ensures community health and prosperity. You will have the critical thinking skills necessary to develop and manage community programs and the analytical skills required to advance new strategies and actions in support of a sustainable and just future.

UMass Boston's MS in Finance (MSF) is a 10 course, 30 credit degree program. The 10 courses are composed of Finance Requirements, Finance Electives, and a Capstone course. Four prerequisite courses must be satisfied or waived through prior relevant coursework, based on a review of transcripts.*

The CFA Institute University Affiliation Program can be completed full-time or part-time, with classes that meet primarily in the evenings and online. Scheduling is highly flexible, with most classes meeting once per week.

Students will be required to select from 2 tracks, General Finance or Investment Management & Quantitative Finance.

Admission to the program is highly competitive and is based on several factors, including prior academic record, professional experience, standardized test scores, essays, and recommendations. The curriculum has been designed by the College of Management Accounting and Finance faculty in consultation with the AF Department’s Advisory Board to assist students in furthering careers in finance and in preparing for the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) exam.

The IR major gives students the opportunity to explore how peoples and nations interact across political boundaries.  Students in the major study international relations from the perspective of multiple disciplines and examine topics such as:  international political economy, conflict and cooperation, human rights and international organizations, regional and socio-cultural studies, globalization and transnationalism, and international development.  Students in this major are able to take courses drawn from many different academic departments and programs at UMass Boston.

Our BS program in Computer Science is accredited by the Computing Accreditation Commission of ABET. ABET assures quality for degree programs in applied science, computing, engineering, and technology. The program provides a rigorous education in theory and practice of Computer Science in addition to outside science courses. A BS degree can be used as a basis for many jobs in industry or for graduate work in Computer Science and other fields. We have an Honors Program for students who complete an Honors Thesis.

We offer a curriculum stressing software development. It provides training appropriate for students with interests in areas such as cybersecurity, data mining, artificial intelligence, database management, and software engineering. An aptitude for logical reasoning and mathematics is needed to complete the major successfully, partly because designing programs to solve problems requires good problem-solving skills and partly because some of the requirements are relatively advanced theoretical Computer Science and mathematics courses.

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

In addition, the BSIT program offers four specialization tracks: business intelligence1, computer forensics1, information architecture1 and systems administration.

Computer Forensics Track
The Information Technology (IT) major is a jointly offered program between the College of Management (CM) and the College of Science and Mathematics (CSM) at the University of Massachusetts Boston. The IT major consists of a common core of ten courses, a track of four to six courses in a particular area of specialization (the computer forensics track requires five courses), a common capstone course, and three professional electives.