University of Massachusetts Boston

UMass Boston was established on June 18, 1964, when Governor Endicott Peabody signed legislation creating the second campus of the University of Massachusetts system . The founding was driven by urgent need: in 1964, UMass Amherst rejected 1,400 qualified students from metropolitan Boston—most of whom could not afford private college education—amid a wave of baby boomer applications . The university opened its doors in September 1965 in a renovated Boston Gas Company building at 100 Arlington Street in downtown Boston's Park Square, welcoming 1,227 undergraduate students, 75 faculty, and 10 staff .

In 1968, officials announced that UMass Boston's permanent home would be on Columbia Point in Dorchester—a 100-acre landfill and former cow pasture on a peninsula jutting into Dorchester Bay . The new campus opened in January 1974, featuring McCormack and Wheatley halls, the Science Center, Healey Library, and the Quinn Administration Building .

A pivotal moment came on January 28, 1982, when Boston State College—founded in 1852 as a normal school for teacher training—was merged into UMass Boston . This merger added graduate and undergraduate programs in education, criminal justice, nursing, and regional studies, plus an evening division, boosting undergraduate enrollment by 38 percent and tripling graduate enrollment . By 1995, UMass Boston had 31 graduate degree and certificate programs, with graduate students comprising 21 percent of total enrollment .

In September 2022, the university launched its ten-year strategic plan, "For the Times: UMass Boston Strategic Plan, 2022–2032," affirming its vision as "a public research university with a teaching soul" dedicated to pursuing locally rooted and globally engaged research, teaching, and learning at the highest level of scholarly excellence . The university has grown from its pioneering class to become the most diverse university campus in New England, serving as a gateway to intellectual discovery and an engine of social mobility