Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION
A. Philosophy. The Anthropology Graduate Program at UMass Amherst strives to produce leading scholars,
educators and public intellectuals. Graduates of the program have gone on to secure prestigious awards, post-doctoral and tenure-track positions in academia as well as high-impact positions in the public, private and non-profit sectors. Our flexible graduate program allows students to craft their own program of study in any of the subfields. We encourage students to pursue innovative work that cuts across subfields and disciplines. Students work closely with their advisors and committee members to choose courses and research directions. We offer both a master’s and a PhD. Students can expect to take three to four semesters of coursework for the Master’s and an additional four years of research and training for the PhD.
We offer a variety of funding opportunities through teaching and research assistantships. Most students can expect five years of funding from the Department. We also offer additional funding for conference travel, pre-dissertation pilot studies, and dissertation writing fellowships.

B. Faculty Committees. An important focus of graduate education lies in the student-faculty committee relationship. The student is generally given broad latitude in selecting from among the faculty a few individuals to guide and evaluate the student's work, and the relationship is expected to be professional and collegial. Our experience has been that the collegial bonds of working together, whether informally or in coursework and research, creates ties of friendship and cooperation that become life-long.
At the outset, the MA student works with an assigned advisor. Most MA students will pursue a course-based degree. Students who write an MA thesis are advised by a thesis committee. In the doctoral program, the guidance committee sees the student through the doctoral examination, while the dissertation committee guides the development and writing of the dissertation research project. Committees are constituted by student initiative. The faculty membership conceivably could remain the same in all stages though this is rarely the case. As a matter of philosophy and personal commitment, faculty members invited by a student to serve on the advisory, thesis, guidance, or dissertation committees accept the legitimacy of the student's educational goals and the capability of the student in reaching these goals. The assumption on the part of the faculty is that faculty are invited to serve on committees because they possess expertise in the areas where the student desires mastery. Students are free to change the composition of an existing committee, so long as the Graduate Program Director assents. In general, such requests are approved except when done precipitously or to avoid meeting committee-mandated expectations.

C. Coursework. Students are regularly required by their advisory or guidance committees to take particular courses, depending on background and objectives. These courses and the credits they entail are not, however, the heart of the program. Taken together, the courses should form the foundation, but not the pinnacle, of inquiry and mastery. Thus, while the Graduate School requires MA candidates to complete a minimum of 30 credits of graduate course work, the department expects students to demonstrate mastery of specific skills and issues that permeate and transcend particular courses. Of greater importance than credits and grades are the papers written in those courses, the faculty's assessments of student work, and the subsequent papers students write upon the foundation of course work or independent reading and research.
Nonetheless, graduate students are expected to do well in their courses and to complete course work when it is due. Faculty may give a grade of incomplete at the end of a course when only a small portion of work remains to be done. Students whose grades average out to below a B or who have two or more grades of incomplete (not including thesis or dissertation credits) are placed on probation (see Chapter V, section I).

D. Organization. While the Graduate Faculty of the University of Massachusetts is the formal body that recommends to the trustees that specific degrees be granted to students, the day-to-day operation of graduate programs is largely decentralized from the Graduate School to particular departments. The Graduate School maintains records, handles admission, registration, tuition, and diploma issues for a population of 5,000 or more graduate students on the campus. The Department of Anthropology has developed its own organization to implement its philosophy of graduate education, while at the same time adhering to the requirements imposed from the Graduate School. Here are the key elements in that organization:

1. Graduate Program Director. The faculty elects one of their number to serve as the Graduate Program Director (GPD) for a term of three years. The GPD is actually appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School and is required to carry out certain policies and procedures of the Graduate School. It is the job of the GPD to ensure that the substance and the letter of the MA and PhD program requirements and procedures set forth in Chapters II and III are met by each student. Further, the GPD is the formal link between the department and the Graduate School. All actions between the student and the Graduate School (except those involving money) go through the GPD.
2. Graduate Studies Committee: The Graduate Program Director convenes meetings of the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) throughout the academic year. The committee consists of two to three faculty members from a range of subfields and a representative from the Graduate Caucus. The graduate student participates in formulating policy and in selecting the winner of the Woodbury Travel Award. Only faculty representatives participate in matters involving students such as admissions, assessment, and funding.
3. Program Coordinator. The departmental assistant is in 217 Machmer whereas the Program Coordinator to the GPD is in 213 Machmer. One of the jobs of the program coordinator is to keep student records up to date and to manage the flow of paper among faculty, students, GPD, and the Graduate School. As you complete various steps of the graduate program, please be sure that the program coordinator receives records of what you have accomplished. No action in your program will be considered official until it has been certified by the program coordinator and logged onto your Basic Student File.
4. Files. All the files for graduate students are kept in Room 213 under the direct supervision of the program coordinator. Each student file is organized into folders. The first (blue) folder is termed the Basic Student File, where memos and forms are added and logged only by the program coordinator. No one else is permitted to add or to remove paper from the blue folder. The remaining folders contain student papers, appointments to assistantships, and teaching evaluations. Students are free to add material to their files or to read the file contents, but only in Machmer department space. While students have ready access to their own files, they are allowed access to other students' files only under limited and specific conditions and with the explicit permission of the GPD or the Department Chair or with the written permission of that student.
5. Mailboxes for graduate students and faculty are located in the departmental lounge, Room 201. U.S., departmental, and campus mail sent to you at the department will be placed in your mailbox there. Be sure to check your mailbox regularly. The department does not send material to you at your local address via the U.S. Postal Service; rather, all department mail to you goes to your mailbox.
6. Graduate Caucus. Departmental governance recognizes three constituencies: the undergraduate caucus, the graduate caucus, and the faculty caucus. Each graduate student is automatically a member of the graduate caucus, which represents the interests of graduate students on various departmental committees and in the departmental meetings. Notices of Graduate Caucus meetings are posted in advance and all graduate students are encouraged to attend and participate.
7. Get Togethers. Throughout the academic year, there are frequent occasions for students and faculty to get together outside the format of courses. These range from purely social events such as Friday afternoon volleyball games or Halloween parties to the Monday afternoon colloquium series of special lectures or presentations and the Friday noon "brown bags" where works-in-progress by students or faculty are presented for discussion and feedback. There are also prospectus presentations scattered throughout the year. And there are spontaneous reading groups that spring up; there are also the sporadic discussions that take place in the lounge. These social and intellectual events are at the heart of the program—where the craft of anthropology gets continually re-crafted. No one takes attendance, yet participation in these events is indispensable to your education as an anthropologist.