Two New Academic Programs Approved for Fall 2025

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The University of Massachusetts Amherst has recently been approved by the UMass Board of Trustees and the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education to offer two new academic programs – Computational Linguistics and Master of Health Administration – that will be available to students in fall 2025.

In their December 2023 meeting, the trustees approved Computational Linguistics, a new on-campus bachelor of arts degree program in the Department of Linguistics in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA). The degree will be one of the few in the country and the only one of its type at a public institution in the Northeast.

Computational linguistics will prepare its graduates to meet the needs of the rapidly growing demand for computational linguistics jobs, which often play a central role in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) language models and programs such as ChatGPT.  

Through the program, students will acquire the knowledge and skills to effectively use computing to solve important problems about language and develop technical knowledge of software and programming so they can work with language data. They will also learn sufficient mathematical sophistication to understand foundational computational algorithms used to model language.

The program draws on existing teaching and advising resources from the linguistics department and the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS). Students who enroll in the computational linguistics major will have access to courses in the computer science (CS) department, which often tend to be limited to CS majors due to high enrollment.

“We are excited about this new interdisciplinary collaboration with our colleagues in CICS that will provide an educational experience that is intellectually enriching and challenging, and that has excellent possibilities for job placements for its graduates,” says Joe Pater, linguistics department chair and professor.

Students will graduate ready for employment in the language technology industry—called natural language processing—or to pursue graduate studies. The program aims to increase the diversity of this STEM area in the workplace, including recruiting and training women and members of other underrepresented groups in the field.

In their April meeting, the trustees approved a Master of Health Administration (MHA), an online degree program in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy in the School of Public Health and Health Sciences (SPHHS). The part-time, online MHA program will be one of the few of its kind offered by a Massachusetts public university.

The curriculum is comprised of 40 credits including core courses in public health (health policy and management), management, strategic management, leadership, graduate seminars and a capstone experience that involves a service-learning case study with the student’s current or prospective place of employment.

Lawrence Pellegrini, director of the Online MPH in Public Health Practice Program and senior lecturer in health policy and management, says the program is designed to be completed in three years for individuals who want to further their education part-time while continuing to work.

“The degree is designed for working professionals looking to acquire needed skillsets to gain leadership positions within the healthcare field,” Pellegrini says.  “The program is fully online and asynchronous which offers a great deal of flexibility for students to complete the degree while balancing other responsibilities.” 

The program differs from a business school master’s program in health care administration or master’s in business administration because it is within the SPHHS and is public health focused. 

“We’re a school of public health,” Pellegrini says. “A lot of the values that we're going to be installing in the context of our program are going to be very much public health-oriented, so there would be a lot of population-based approaches to healthcare innovation.”

Graduates would be prepared for roles as healthcare administrators across industry sectors in businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, non-profit groups, community wellness programs, residential healthcare facilities, hospitals and clinical settings.