Bachelor of Arts in Womens and Gender Studies

at Shorelight Group - University of Massachusetts - Boston USA

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.

The communication major is an 12-course program that focuses on the social and scientific study of human communication. The curriculum offers students the chance to explore coursework in interpersonal, mediated, political and health communication, among others. Our courses emphasize communication across a variety of channels diverse cultures.

Our goal as a program is to engage UMass Boston students actively with Anthropology's long-standing attention to issues of cultural diversity and to economic stability in both Western and non-Western regions combines with the discipline's holistic, evolutionary, deeply historical, critical, and cross-cultural approaches to offer students powerful resources for understanding current trends that affect their workplaces and their communities.

The first step in becoming an anthropology major is to enroll in Anthropology 105, 106, or 107. These courses provide an overview of the various subfields of anthropology, and all majors are required to take all three courses, although the order in which they are taken is up to the student. One of these courses, and in some cases all three, are prerequisites to nearly all upper-level anthropology courses.

The School for the Environment's nationally recognized Environmental Studies and Sustainability program emphasizes solutions integrating the humanities and social sciences with economics and business. As environmental and sustainability advocates, students customize their course of study, drawing from such diverse fields as anthropology, law, history, management, economics, and the sciences. In addition to coursework, this hands-on degree incorporates internships, research, cooperative education, and capstone course experiences in which students work as members of a multi-disciplinary team partnered with agencies and organizations throughout the Boston metropolitan area.

• Students will understand key sustainability concepts and become practiced at applying these principles to real world problems.
• Students will be able to use interdisciplinary and collaborative decision-making processes to devise practical solutions for managing environmental problems.
• Students will be able to analyze and critique sustainability issues balancing multiple disciplinary perspectives and research approaches (e.g., social, ecological, ethical, philosophical, political, and economic).
• Students will demonstrate analytical proficiencies, both quantitative and qualitative, to support data-driven decisions.
• Students will understand the system interactions and feedbacks between human activities and social institutions and the natural environment.
• Students will be experienced in communicating their learnings both in writing, visually, and orally, and for specific and general audiences.

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?

The Computer Science Department offers a BA degree in Computer Science. It provides a similar education in the theory and practice of computer science with more of an emphasis on outside humanities. Either degree can be used as a basis for many jobs in industry or for graduate work in computer science and other fields. 

History courses don’t simply introduce past eras of the world:  they teach students to write, research, and argue effectively.  History majors gain the skills for a wide range of successful careers, from teaching to law to environmental science to business management. Small classes, student camaraderie, internship opportunities, and faculty mentoring in the History Department create a stimulating and rewarding undergraduate experience.

UMass Boston's MBA is a streamlined 12-course, AACSB-accredited, immersive business program. focused on equipping you with the knowledge and skills you need to succeed as a business leader. The program is designed for professionals who want to gain a deeper understanding of the ever-changing business world to advance their career, change careers, or start their own business. Explore foundational business theories, gain experience with emerging technologies, and develop your analytical skills.

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.

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.