Masters in Global Inclusion and Social Development

Whether you are switching careers, seeking a new opportunity, or looking to get a promotion, our master’s program in global inclusion and social development can help you reach the next level in your field.

The 36-credit GISD MA program examines global, national, and local issues related to inclusion and social development. Students seek solutions to complex challenges in today’s rapidly changing society, such as health disparities, environmental justice, community development, participatory decision-making, and economic inequality, as well as discrimination based on gender, disability, sexual orientation, age, race, ethnicity, and economic status.

Our graduates go on to serve as leaders in their communities, as well as in national and international nongovernmental organizations; local, regional, and national governments; foundations; community organizations; and the for-profit sphere. In all these roles, they work to increase inclusion and social development regionally, nationally, and globally.

Concentrations

1. Individualized plan of study: Students take courses across departments at UMass Boston that that relate to a specific area of global inclusion and social development. An example might be working with refugee and immigrant populations in the U.S. or abroad.

2. Or, students may select from the following concentrations:

   • Human rights : Focuses on the framework needed to foster inclusive change throughout societies and organizations. A certificate in human rights is also available.
   • Critical ethnic and community studies : Collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts. Analyzes migration patterns and other population movements, as well as race/ethnicity, through the lenses of culture, community, identity, and citizenship.
   • Disability studies : Prepares students to work with people with disabilities in various capacities and to become leaders and advocates in the field. Supported by our colleagues at the Institute for Community Inclusion.
   • Nonprofit management : Prepares students to lead a nonprofit organization. Students take courses from the College of Management to gain proficiency in business practices.
   • Gerontology : Prepares students to understand aging from a social and psychological perspective, and to work in the community or at a policy level. Partner: Department of Gerontology.
   • Rehabilitation counseling : Help people who face barriers to employment find fulfilling work. We also offer a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling.
   • Transition leadership : Support people with disabilities to attend college, enter the workforce and live independently. We also offer a transition leadership certificate.
   • Vision studies : Advocate for and support individuals with low vision to thrive in their daily lives and in their communities. We also offer a master’s degree in visual studies.

The University of Massachusetts Boston is nationally recognized as a model of excellence for urban public universities. The scenic waterfront campus, with easy access to downtown Boston, is located next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Presidential Museum, the Commonwealth Museum and Massachusetts State Archives, and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.

Mission

The University of Massachusetts Boston is a public research university with a dynamic culture of teaching and learning, and a special commitment to urban and global engagement. Our vibrant, multicultural educational environment encourages our broadly diverse campus community to thrive and succeed. Our distinguished scholarship, dedicated teaching, and engaged public service are mutually reinforcing, creating new knowledge while serving the public good of our city, our commonwealth, our nation, and our world.

Values

Inquiry, Creativity, and Discovery

The University of Massachusetts Boston is an educational institution dedicated to rigorous, open, critical inquiry—a gateway to intellectual discovery in all branches of knowledge, and a crucible for artistic expression. Our campus culture fosters imagination, creativity, and intellectual vitality. Responsive to the call of diverse disciplines, schools of thought, and public constituencies, we expect and welcome divergent views, honoring our shared commitment to expanding, creating, and disseminating knowledge. We celebrate our research culture, with its diversity of methods, commitments, and outcomes. We promote a culture of lifelong learning and serve as a catalyst for intellectual interactions with scholarly communities, students, alumni, and the public.

Transformation

Our work can transform the lives, careers, and social contexts of all members of our community. We seek to help our students to realize their potential in the pursuit of education. We support our students, faculty, and staff in their efforts to create knowledge, gain new understandings, and assume the responsibilities of leadership and civic participation.

Diversity and Inclusion

Our multi-faceted diversity is an educational asset for all members of our community. We value and provide a learning environment that nurtures respect for differences, excites curiosity, and embodies civility. Our campus culture encourages us all to negotiate variant perspectives and values and to strive for open and frank encounters. In providing a supportive environment for the academic and social development of a broad array of students of all ages who represent many national and cultural origins, we seek to serve as a model for inclusive community-building.

Engagement

As a campus community, we address critical social issues and contribute to the public good, both local and global. We participate in teaching and public service, as well as in basic, applied, and engaged research, to support the intellectual, scientific, cultural, artistic, social, political, and economic development of the communities we serve. We forge partnerships with communities, the private sector, government, health care organizations, other colleges and universities, and K-12 public education, and bring the intellectual, technical, and human resources of our faculty, staff, and students to bear on pressing economic and social needs.

Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability

We seek to foster a consciousness of nature’s centrality to the human experience and our collective obligation to environmental sustainability. Since our founding, we have emphasized teaching, research, and service activities that promote environmental protection and nurture sustainability, strive for responsible stewardship and conservation of resources and enhance the natural environment—not least the marine environment around our campus on Dorchester Bay and Boston Harbor.

Economic and Cultural Development

We make significant contributions to the cultural and economic life of a major American city and enhance the commonwealth’s vital participation in the global community. We educate artists, writers, archivists, nurses, teachers, environmentalists, managers, scientists, scholars, and others whose lifelong efforts enrich the culture and environment of many communities. Through our research, teaching, and service, we work cooperatively with businesses and industries, and with local, state, and federal governments, to strengthen our contribution to the state’s, the nation’s, and the world’s cultural and economic development.

An Urban Commitment

Our work is marked by a particular commitment to urban places, people, culture, and issues, and by an acknowledgment of their complex local, national, and global connections. Our university is located in a great city—Boston—the commonwealth’s capital and major population center. We are proud to provide an excellent and accessible university education, as well as highly informed research and service, to residents of Boston and other cities, regions, and countries. Partnering with urban institutions and residents, we help to create sustainable and healthy social fabrics, economies, service organizations, and civic and cultural institutions.

Facts & Figures

The University of Massachusetts Boston serves the most diverse student population in New England, and we are currently expanding and changing in exciting new ways.

Research Funding

We're making advances in the natural and social sciences with the help of $62 million in research funding in the fiscal year 2019.

136 Countries Represented

We have students from all over the world. In fall 2020, international students from 136 countries were enrolled.

3,671 Diplomas

Nearly 4,000 students graduated from UMass Boston in 2020. Popular programs are psychology, biology, exercise, and health sciences.

Fall 2020 Enrollment

In fall 2020, UMass Boston had 16,259 students. Our Honors College serves 692 students who enjoy a challenge.

Integrated Sciences Complex

This 220,000–square-foot building is home to researchers looking at things such as infertility and cancer.

University Hall

This 190,000–square-foot building features specialized chemistry labs and art and performing arts spaces, including a black box theatre.

Academic Recognition

• UMass Boston’s graduate programs in clinical psychology, education, nursing, and public affairs ranked as the top 100 programs on U.S. News & World Report’s 2022 Best Graduate Schools list.
• UMass Boston’s online graduate education programs jumped 19 spots in U.S. News & World Report’s 2020 Best Online Programs rankings. The online graduate education programs were ranked No. 35, up from No. 54 in 2019. UMass Boston has four online undergraduate programs. Collectively, those were ranked No. 93 on the list of Best Online Bachelor’s Programs.
• In 2019, Forbes ranked UMass Boston No. 247 in its fourth annual ranking of the 300 Best Value Colleges.
• In 2018, U.S. News & World Report ranked the University of Massachusetts Boston in the first tier of national universities for the third year in a row. The Princeton Review named UMass Boston as one of its “Best in the Northeast” colleges. The Princeton Review named UMass Boston’s College of Management one of the Best Business Schools.
• The College of Nursing and Health Sciences is the ninth-largest nursing school in the country.

Pioneering Ph.D. Programs

UMass Boston is home to 30 doctoral programs.

• In keeping with UMass Boston's environmental consciousness, we launched the nation's first Green Chemistry Ph.D. program in 2004.
• Our Gerontology Ph.D. program has produced more gerontology PhDs than any university in the world.

Research & Innovation

Our areas of expertise include the biomedical, health, and life sciences; sustainability; and inclusion.

• Among our prestigious research partners are the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, IBM, Sanofi and Genzyme, New England Aquarium, and the Boston Public Schools.
• UMass Boston's Venture Development Center has helped launch 35 cutting-edge technology and life sciences startup enterprises.

Institutes & Centers

The more than 50 interdisciplinary research institutes and centers at UMass Boston bring faculty and students together to pursue research, teaching, and service on diverse topics.

• The Center for Personalized Cancer Therapy provides a means for undergraduate and graduate students to become the next generation of well-trained biomedical workforce talent and future leaders of life sciences research in academia and industry.
• UMass Boston is one of only two universities in the country with free-standing research institutes dedicated to four major communities of color in the U.S.—African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American—through its Collaborative of Asian American, Native American, Latino and African American Institutes (CANALA).

Accreditation

The University of Massachusetts Boston is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE).

Accreditation of an institution of higher education by the commission indicates that it meets or exceeds criteria for the assessment of institutional quality periodically applied through a peer review process. An accredited college or university is one that has available the necessary resources to achieve its stated purposes through appropriate educational programs, is substantially doing so, and gives reasonable evidence that it will continue to do so in the foreseeable future. Institutional integrity is also addressed through accreditation.

Accreditation by the commission is not partial but applies to the institution as a whole. As such, it is not a guarantee of every course or program offered or the competence of individual graduates. Rather, it provides reasonable assurance about the quality of opportunities available to students who attend the institution.

Rankings

Consistently ranked in the top-tier of universities in America by several leading rating outlets, UMass Boston's academic excellence, diversity, and urban location are among several factors that set the university apart.

With undergraduate, graduate, and online programs that continue their upward trajectories in the rankings, several have taken their places among the best in the country.

Some of our recent rankings:

2022

• According to U.S. News and World Report, UMass Boston is:
  • #43 in the country for undergraduate nursing
  • #19 for ethnic diversity
  • #36 for social mobility
  • #62 for computer science
  • #112 overall among public universities
  • #227 overall best national universities
• U.S. News also ranked UMB's graduate programs among the best in the country:
  • #48 for graduate programs in education
  • #63 for master's of nursing
  • #69 for master’s programs in public affairs
  • #86 for doctor of nursing practice
  • #79 for sociology
• The Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education ranked UMB #8 in the country for the environment, citing outstanding diversity and inclusion.
• Niche ranked UMass Boston as
  • #3 best public university in Massachusetts
  • #6 best college for nursing in Massachusetts
  • #18 college with the best professors in Massachusetts
  • #53 best college for information technology in America
  • #28 most diverse college in America
• UMB's business program was ranked as Tier 1 by CEO Magazine
• Intelligent awarded UMass Boston's online master's programs Best for Accelerated Programs

2021

• U.S. News and World Report ranked UMass Boston as:
  • #113 overall among public universities
  • #36 for social mobility
• U.S. News also ranked UMB's graduate programs:
  • #62 for graduate programs in education
  • #66 for master's of nursing
  • #72 for master's programs in public affairs
• Forbes ranked UMass Boston on their annual list of top colleges in America, including their rankings for:
  • Public colleges and universities
  • Caliber of research
  • Best value colleges

2020

• QS Quacquarelli Symonds, in its inaugural ranking of top universities, ranked UMass Boston:
  • #9 in Massachusetts
  • #79 overall in the country
  • Diversity, employability, and internationalization were each key factors in the ranking
• 24/7 Wall Street said UMass Boston was the 3rd most diverse four-year college in the U.S.