Collecting area: Mass Agricultural College (1863-1931)

The University of Massachusetts Amherst has offered graduate education since 1896, awarding more than 11,360 doctoral and 37,480 master’s degrees. With a graduate faculty of 1,100 (2006), the Amherst campus offers 50 programs leading to a doctorate and 68 programs toward a master’s degree.

Included in the records of the Graduate School are files related to the the Dean of the School, its graduate programs, and the records of the Boston Office of the University Press.

Beginning in a room in the first South College building, filled with books donated by faculty, staff, and students, the University Library has grown to include over three million items. After expanding into larger quarters in the Old Chapel Building in 1884 (the first campus building designed as a library), the library was relocated to Goodell Hall (1935) and the University Library tower (1973), named the W.E.B. Du Bois Library in 1996. Other library facilities on campus have included libraries for the biological sciences, physical sciences, and the Music Library, as well as the Integrated Science and Engineering Library in the Lederle Graduate Research Center.

The collection consists of basic administrative records of many library departments, the records of the Library Director (1924-1975), other materials that document the library, its staff and activities, and information about the design, construction, and dedication of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library tower, the Hampshire Inter-Library Center (HILC), and Five College cooperation.

The archives of UMass Amherst contain tens of thousands of formal and informal photographic images of the campus community from its founding in the 1860s to the present. The collections have been organized into over twenty discrete series. Digitized version of approximately 13,000 of images are available online.

The Physical Plant at UMass Amherst is responsible for the custodial, grounds, utilities, and building maintenance for nearly six million square feet of administrative, academic, and recreational space.

Record Group 36 documents the varied aspects of the built environment on campus, from public art through maintenance work, and an extensive series relating to the design, construction, and maintenance of individual campus buildings.

On November 29, 1864, the Board of Trustees for the Massachusetts Agricultural College created the Office of the President and elected Henry Flagg French as the first president of the newly created land grant institution. In 1970, the President’s office was relocated from the Amherst campus to separate offices in Boston, and the Office of Chancellor was established as the chief executive position at each of the five UMass campuses. The responsibilities of the President and of the central administrative staff are summarized in the University’s Governance Document of 1973: the president acts as the principal academic and executive officer of the University, presents policy recommendations to the Board of Trustees, keeps current a master plan of the University, prepares the annual budget, allocates the appropriated budget, appoints members of the faculty to tenure with the concurrence of the Board of Trustees, coordinates the work of all campuses of the University and promotes the general welfare of the University as a whole.

Containing the papers of individual presidents of UMass (1864-2007) and their Presidential Reports (1948-1984), the record group also includes records of central administrative offices, including the Secretary of the University, the Treasurer’s Office (1864-2007), and the Donahue Institute for Governmental Services (1970-2007). Collections for individual Presidents are filed separately in UMarmot under the President’s name.

Access restrictions: Access is restricted on some files of recent Presidents.

Public relations efforts at UMass have shifted over the years from an early emphasis on education in agriculture and home economics to contemporary efforts to manage the torrent of information generated by a research university. The first news editor at UMass was not appointed until 1948, and as late as 1961, the entire central Public Relations staff consisted only of a news and publications editor, although the College of Agriculture hosted a separate staff of five. Since the 1960s, however, the public relations efforts have expanded as rapidly as the University as a whole. The position of Vice Chancellor for University Relations and Development was created in 1983, (called Vice Chancellor for University Advancement after 1993) to oversee public affairs, alumni relations, and development activities.

This record group consists of materials from the several offices concerned with the production of University publications and publicity. The records include press releases, brochures, guidebooks, newsclippings, newsletters, bulletins, weekly newspapers, semi-monthly feature publications, special publications and photographic negatives. Also included in this group are the following publications: Chancellor’s Monthly Press Briefings, Chancellor’s Annual Review of NewsClips, Commonwealth Research Reports, Campus Guidebooks, University Newsletter, Weekly Bulletin, Executive Bulletin, University Bulletin, brochures, Contact, UMass, Science Journal, University Notebook, Tips, News Summary, and the Commonwealth Journal.

This record group consists of materials gathered from university offices, units, and centers responsible for admissions, financial aid, and student services (including housing, health and religious services, disability services, academic support, transportation, and campus safety). Included in this record group are the records of Dean of Students, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs, United Christian Foundation, Counseling Center Research Reports, Student Affairs Research and Evaluation Office and Student Affairs Research, Information and Systems (SARIS) reports, and Pulse Surveys.

Since the arrival of the first class of students at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1867, the student body at UMass has grown to over 20,500 undergraduates and nearly 6,000 graduate students.

Record Group 45 includes the collected records of student activities at UMass Amherst, from student publications and organizations (fraternities and sororities, unions, and honorary societies) to records of student government, student protests, and religious and social groups. Also included are class notes and correspondence of some individual students while enrolled in the University.

A number of student publications have been digitized and are indexed in YouMass.

Since almost the time of first arrival of students at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1867, the college’s students have taken an active role in publishing items for their own consumption. Beginning with the appearance of the first yearbook, put together by the pioneer class during their junior year in 1870 and followed by publication of the first, short-lived newspaper, The College Monthly in 1887, students have been responsible for dozens of publications from literature to humor to a range of politically- and socially-oriented periodicals.
This series consists of the collected student publications from Massachusetts Agricultural College, Massachusetts State College, and UMass Amherst, including student newspapers, magazines, newsletters, inserts, yearbooks, and songbooks. Publications range from official publications emanating from the student body to unofficial works by student interest groups or academic departments. Links to digitized versions of the periodicals are supplied when available.

SCUA holds a nearly complete run of undergraduate honors theses, arranged chronologically by year and then alphabetically by author. A small selection of honors theses are available to view online at university’s institutional repository’s CHC Theses and Projects page. Honors theses can be viewed on site in the Special Collections and University Archives reading room. Starting in 2019, all undergraduate honors theses are submitted electronically.

• Paper honors theses (pre-2019) may take up to one to two business days to retrieve.
• Digital honors theses (2019 forward) must also be viewed on site in SCUA’s reading room, but they do not have a delay period from request to retrieval and access.

A spreadsheet list of honors theses can be consulted online. Email SCUA with your requests in advance of visiting. Please include the year, author’s full name, and the title for each thesis requested.

Masters theses and dissertations written by UMass Amherst students are not a part of the University Archives, but most are available in electronic form through the university’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks.