UMass Boston: Invest in Us: Funding Priorities

University Advancement
Quinn 1
617-287-5320
giving@umb.edu

Alumni Relations
Quinn 2
617-287-5330
alumni@umb.edu

:: Invest in Us

Funding Priorities

We need your partnership to build a vibrant, student-centered public university for the 21st century.

Your investment helps us achieve the goals of our Strategic Plan to:

Increase student access, engagement, and success;
Attract, develop, and sustain highly effective faculty;
Create a physical environment that supports teaching, learning, and research; and
Enhance campus-community engagement through improved organizational structures.

How can your gifts help? In many ways.

University-Wide Giving

Whether you chose to make a gift for current use or one that is endowed in perpetuity, your generosity can foster significant strides toward realizing our vision.

Your gifts of financial aid enable us to accept any student who is qualified to study here and fosters a single-minded focus on learning, undiluted by the financial pressures.

Your gifts to support faculty recruitment, retention and development can be made in multiple ways, and designated to the disciplines and causes that matter the most to you.

Your gifts to renew our physical plant, through renovations and the construction of new facilities, create spaces for intellectual engagement, research, student collegiality, and community alliance building. These gifts offer exciting naming opportunities.

Your gifts to our colleges, institutes and centers, and other entities catalyze our university's capacity to address community issues and challenges.

Support for Colleges, Centers, and Institutes

College of Liberal Arts

Support for the Dean’s Innovation Fund, provides cutting-edge teaching and research efforts of our faculty, with a special emphasis on our younger faculty. This fund also supports exciting new programs like the interdisciplinary undergraduate major in Asian Studies and the planned Ph.D. in Developmental and Brain Science.
The Global Voices Reading Series sponsored by our new MFA in Creative Writing allows us to bring a diverse group of distinguished writers to campus for readings, inspiring undergraduate and graduate students and the local community.
Distinguished Scholar Chair will recognize distinguished scholars in the College of Liberal Arts. The chair will be available on a competitive rotating basis for five year terms to senior faculty with distinguished records as scholars and teachers. It will carry an annual stipend of $10,000 and an additional annual $5,000 for research.

College of Management

Gifts to Faculty Support enable the College to recruit the best faculty and retain them by offering professional development.
Gifts to Scholarships enable College of Management students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Support for the Dean's Innovation Fund allows the dean to respond to creative opportunities as they arise and to seed promising initiatives.

College of Science & Mathematics

Gifts to Faculty Support enable the College to recruit the best faculty and retain them by offering professional development.
Gifts to Scholarships enable College of Science and Mathematics students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy (CPCT) will improve tumor diagnostics in a way that will lead directly to more effective therapeutic regimens. Such an outcome would have tremendous impact on life science research, training, and economic development in Massachusetts, and indeed have considerable national and international significance. The most significant outcome anticipated is for cancer patients and their families because the proposed approach will significantly help to flatten health disparities pertinent to cancer treatment. All patients, no matter their demographic group, will receive a highly individualized diagnosis. The CPCT will work to develop affordable clinical tests that could be performed in community hospital settings. The CPCT informatics (highly sophisticated relational databases) will also support community physicians to most effectively choose optimized therapy, thus enabling the broadest possible population of patients to benefit from cutting-edge cancer research. Funds are sought to support the development of this vital resource to support cancer treatment.
Center for Coastal Environmental Sensing Networks (CESN) brings together university researchers, Massachusetts business and industry leaders, and state and federal decision-makers, to provide an integrated framework for developing environmental sensor networks, especially in coastal areas. CESN allows partners to (a) develop and test new environmental sensors and transfer them to commercial markets, (b) develop “smart” sensor networks for observing complex interactions of coastal systems including “hotspots and hot moments,” (c) develop discrete and agent-based models to rapidly analyze and visualize complex and non-continuous data streams, and (d) support environmental decision-making processes. Applications for this center range from ecological and military to recreational. Funding is sought to develop this resource for environmental understanding and preservation.
Support for the development of Computational Science. Funding is sought to strengthen the College of Science and Mathematics' development of this vital area which focuses on the construction of computer-based models and numerical analysis techniques to simulate, evaluate, and solve problems through the integration of large amounts of data. Computational modeling is heavily applications-oriented with particular emphasis on understanding and unlocking the potential to address important issues in areas of life sciences, economics, business, and the environment.

College of Nursing & Health Sciences

Gifts to Scholarships enable College of Nursing and Health Sciences students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Support for GoKids Boston, one of the nation’s most innovative child health research centers, is developing practical tools to promote health and fitness in children and fight obesity, asthma and diabetes.
Support for the Center for Clinical Education & Research, a state-of-the-art facility which uses simulation technology to mimic a variety of patient care settings from intensive care to cardiac rehabilitation and allows students to work through real life clinical scenarios.

Graduate College of Education

Gifts to Faculty Support allow the College to recruit the best faculty and retain them by offering professional development.
Gifts to Scholarships enable Graduate College of Education students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Support for Teach Next Year, a three-way partnership between UMass Boston’s Graduate College of Education, the university’s successful pre-collegiate programs, and the Dorchester Education Complex (DEC) which simultaneously improves teaching and learning at DEC and gives teacher-preparation at UMass Boston a stronger urban focus.

College of Public & Community Service

Gifts to Faculty Support allow the College to recruit the best faculty and retain them by offering professional development.
Gifts to Scholarships enable College of Public and Community Service students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Support for the Dean's Innovation Fund allows the dean to respond to creative opportunities as they arise and to seed promising initiatives.

McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies

Gifts to Faculty Support allow the College to recruit the best faculty and retain them by offering professional development.
Gifts to Scholarships enable Graduate College of Education students to focus their attention on their studies without the added worry of financial pressures.
Reverend Michael E. Haynes Distinguished Professor in Urban Studies will promote urban education, healthcare, youth development, and other areas of public policy that focus on strengthening urban communities and urban schools. The professorship will also engage McCormack Graduate School students in applied research and service to underserved Boston youth, and will take the lead in coordinating interdisciplinary programs and projects within UMass Boston to address the education, health, sociological, economic and environmental needs of these young people and their families.

Diversity Project which aims to establish Boston as a uniquely inclusive, honest and supportive community of — and for — diverse people. This project acknowledges our mixed history in this effort, and squarely faces the challenges that still need to be overcome, understanding that the rich promise of the region's growing diversity must be tapped fully if Boston is to achieve its economic, civic and social potential.

Healey Library

Friends of the Library Endowment Fund which builds and enriches collections and services.
The 21st Century Library Development Fund which makes the library a state-of-the-art facility meeting the needs of the 21st century researcher and student. Many opportunities exist to name spaces and programs.
Healey Technology Fund augments collections of materials, beyond books, and improves library technology associated with the acquisitions of intellectual property .

Centers & Institutes

UMass Boston sponsors more than 30 interdisciplinary research organizations that bring faculty and students together from across the university to pursue research, teaching, and service on broad scholarly and social topics, including adult literacy, alternative dispute resolution, historical archaeology, disability policy studies, environmental and cultural history, gerontology, green chemistry, science and mathematics education, urban marine and watershed issues, veterans’ affairs, women’s leadership, and issues vital to Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latinos.