College of Social & Behavioral Sciences UMass Amherst

05/29/2026

We’re so excited to share that the ADVANCE Faculty Peer Mentoring Award for the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences goes to Dr. Sancha Medwinter, Associate Professor of Sociology! 🎉

Professor Medwinter’s approach to individual mentorship is described as humble, gentle, honest, and inextricably linked to her steadfast work to build community
amongst colleagues and within the classroom. Specifically, Professor Medwinter’s mentorship is credited with demystifying success for colleagues from
underrepresented groups. Prof. Medwinter’s candor about both her mistakes and her successes reveals the structural nature of the challenges of academic life and has inspired her colleagues to persist through their own challenges. Professor Medwinter’s expertise in decolonial pedagogy, shared widely in campus workshops, has informed course design and departmental DEI practices towards building
equitable and caring communities.

05/27/2026

Congratulations to Boone Shear, Senior Lecturer of Anthropology and facilitator of the Building Solidarity Economies program, for being recognized with the Distinguished Community Engagement Award for Teaching! Shear's efforts have created numerous ways for students to build meaningful connections with local and regional communities and organizations. "This class (Anthro 341) is just one part of a larger project to build a different type of world that’s based on care and reciprocity,” says UMass economics PhD student Annie McGrew.

“A big part of this is not just about meeting people and hearing presentations about the transformative, world building work that they’re doing, but forming deep, ongoing relationships with people in those organizations, by participating in work that they’re doing,” Shear explains. “It provides a sort of hopeful realism, that ‘Oh, this is something that more and more people are trying to do in different ways.’ It becomes more solid and sobering and concrete.”

Learn more:

BSE coordinator and facilitator Boone Shear has received the 2026 University Distinguished Community Engagement Award for Teaching.

05/20/2026

Heads up, Class of ‘27: may want to save these for inspiration🎓👀
Nice work, Class of ‘26! 🙌

05/19/2026

Memories made at the 2026 SBS Senior Celebration, May 16, 2026 🎓🎉 Congratulations, graduates!

05/19/2026

Congratulations, SBS Class of 2026! Your hard work, creativity and commitment to understanding the world have prepared you for meaningful impact. Enjoy your accomplishments and carry your spirit forward. We can’t wait to see what you do next!

05/14/2026

Sharing the WISDOM 👏👏👏 Congratulations, class of ‘26! 🎓🎉

05/11/2026

In television, a crossover episode brings two audiences together. For shows like “Abbott Elementary” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” or “Rugrats” and the “The Wild Thornberrys,” a crossover allows characters from separate worlds interact in unexpected ways, often toward a common goal.

SBS faculty members Sadiyah Malcolm-Wallace, sociology, and Bridgette Davis, public policy, realized they taught their quite-related courses at the same time, in the same building, on the same days. Jokingly, they asked: “What if we did a joint event with our classes? Like a crossover episode?”

Their recent joint venture, “Youth Programs, Policy, and Praxis: ‘Crossover Episode,’” was a collaboratively-designed event merging two distinct courses for a single shared learning experience. Malcolm-Wallace’s course, Sociology of Childhood, examines how childhoods are socially constructed across race, class, gender, and geography. Davis’ course, Policy in an Age of Precarity, explores how public policy shapes the life trajectories of young adults navigating instability in education, housing, and labor. The faculty and their respective courses are housed in different disciplines, but in essence, they both look at deeply interconnected questions about young people’s lives.

Read more about this unique teaching innovation: https://www.umass.edu/social-sciences/news/crossover-episode

05/09/2026

PART 2 of showing the internet parts of UMass Amherst it hasn't seen before! Today, we undertook a special mission to visit the work of UMass Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning PhD alum Nedim Kemer! Thanks so much for your comment, Dr. Kemer! Yes, here it is in the Hall of Dissertations (as we call the 20th floor)! 🙌

Did you know about the special archive of students’ dissertations on the 20th floor of the Du Bois Library? 📚 👀

05/07/2026

The Association for Anthropology, Gerontology, and the Life Course (AAGE) Biennial Conference 2026--AGING: The Where and When--takes place at UMass Amherst this weekend, May 8 - 10.

Highlights include an opening night Keynote Address by Nadine Changfoot, a Saturday evening Interlocutor Session on Method & Memory, many great panels, and papers by UMass Amherst Anthropology graduate students and faculty from across the region. All are welcome!

Registration Open! AAGE Biennial ConferenceMay 8 – 10, 2026Hosted at the University of Massachusetts Amherst* REGISTER HERE Final Program Keynote Lecture on Friday, May 8 Dr. Nadine ChangfootFull Professor of Political Studies, Trent UniversityPast Acting Director, Trent Centre for Aging & Society...

05/06/2026

Ahh, Founders Day! ☀️ On April 29, 1863, the Massachusetts Agricultural College charter was signed under the national Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. With only four faculty members, this was the birth of what is now UMass Amherst! We now celebrate Founders Day every year with food, fun and activities across campus 🎉

05/05/2026

Don’t miss the Farmers’ Market on Friday from 12 to 4 PM on the East Pond Lawn by the Student Union (a.k.a. the Goose Lawn)! This Friday, May 8, will be the final market of the semester 🪿