Community of Scholars
Honors College students benefit from a tight-knit community, close ties with faculty, small Honors classes, value-added Honors Advising, and access to special programs, merit scholarships, and research grants.
Small Classes, Big Ideas
Honors College students reach beyond the boundaries of their academic majors, while advanced scholarship tracks provide students opportunities to contribute original knowledge to their fields of study.
Campus Full of Opportunities
Honors College students have access to the extensive resources of the University of Massachusetts Amherst — a large research university with roughly 100 majors and wide-ranging opportunities for student engagement.
Recent News
Commonwealth Honors College held its annual Celebration of Excellence on May 12, celebrating the Honors graduating class of 2022. This year's celebration was the first in-person event for graduating seniors held by the college since 2019. The celebration recognized the 718 graduates, representing 73 majors. Over 560 of these accomplished students chose to complete yearlong Honors Thesis projects and papers on multidisciplinary research.
Jaileen Baptista `22, a mathematics and education major, was the student speaker for the 2022 Commonwealth Honors College (CHC) Celebration of Excellence. The event took place at the Mullins Center, on Thursday May 12, 2022 from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. The Celebration of Excellence provided each graduating Honors senior with the opportunity to be personally recognized and provided with an official CHC gold stole. Baptista presented her speech during the celebratory night, along with campus leaders like Honors Dean Mari Castañeda, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy, and Provost John McCarthy.
Tuesday April 26th marked the final Commonwealth Honors College Thesis Workshop for the 2022 spring semester. This hour-long seminar, entitled “Choosing the Right Methodology”, was led by Elena Carbone, professor and associate dean for curriculum and academic oversight in Commonwealth Honors College, and Ashley Braziel, coordinator of events and programs.
Adriana Katzew, professor and director of graduate programs in art education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design, was the keynote speaker for the 2022 Massachusetts Undergraduate Research Conference (Mass URC), a state-wide research symposium managed by Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to serve all 28 public undergraduate schools of the Commonwealth. Addressing the gathering virtually, Katzew described her journey exploring the intersection of identity and immigration within art, and the role research has played as she has navigated these concepts.
