Dean's Welcome
As another academic year begins, I’m delighted to welcome students, faculty, and staff back to campus. More...
Creative Economy
Research project that measured the economic impact of HFA and our alumni on the Pioneer Valley. More...
Academic Freedom
The College's official policy on academic and artistic freedom and community response.
About HFA
The College of Humanities and Fine Arts (HFA) is one the most distinguished and distinctive colleges at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. HFA brings together an extraordinary array of scholars and creative artists who are passionate about their students’ education and futures. Each year, thousands of students – undergraduates as well as master’s and doctoral candidates – work closely with faculty mentors to explore human history, experience world cultures, create art, and master important fields of thought, inquiry, and innovation. HFA offers its students unparalleled opportunities to broaden their individual perspectives, apply their knowledge to the conception and design of their own work, refine their skills, and develop professional connections.
Representing the foundation of learning for the campus as a whole, the College has a hand in the education of nearly every UMass Amherst student at some point during their undergraduate experience, and one out of every five graduate students at UMass is a part of the College. With some of the lowest student-to-professor ratios on campus (46% of HFA courses have fewer than 20 students), the education is both enriching and personalized. More directly, the College’s 350+ faculty members personally mentor over 3,000 HFA graduate and undergraduate students annually in 36 majors, 25 minors, and 19 post-graduate degrees, while remaining committed to their own high level of research and creativity.
Among faculty accomplishments are the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowships, Pollack-Krasner and NEH Grants, MacArthur ‘Genius’ Awards, and over 200 scholarly books. The College as a whole boasts particularly strong Linguistics, Philosophy, Classics, English, History, and Music Departments, a consistently high-ranking MFA in Creative Writing program, one of only a few PhD programs in African American Studies, the only BFA in Dance and MA in Translation Studies programs at a public institution in New England, one of the few Centers for Renaissance Studies in the country, and a state-of-the-art Studio Arts Building.
The College is a campus leader in designing interdisciplinary learning opportunities, in providing faculty with access to research and grant resources, and in enriching the lives of students, faculty, staff, and community members through a plethora of performances, exhibitions, films, and lectures each year.