University of Massachusetts Medical School

Welcome to the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS), the Commonwealth's first and only public, academic health sciences center.
Our mission is to advance the health and well-being of the people of the Commonwealth and the world through pioneering education, research, and health care delivery with clinical partner UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest health care provider in Central Massachusetts. As the Commonwealth's only public medical school, we take seriously our mission to serve the people of Massachusetts. We welcome the responsibilities we face in caring for their needs. We meet these challenges by providing clinical staff for public and private institutions, emphasizing training in the primary care specialties, and encouraging graduates to practice in the state's underserved areas.
The University of Massachusetts Medical School's (UMMS) educational mission stems from its founding in 1962 to provide affordable, high-quality medical education to qualified residents of the Commonwealth. With that goal as its cornerstone, UMMS' educational mission has expanded to include residency and fellowship training, graduate education in nursing and the biomedical sciences, training in allied health professions, and continuing education for health care practitioners.
Our students are highly motivated, intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate. They volunteer to work with community organizations and are thoroughly imbued with the school's commitment to public service. Our faculty have developed a curriculum designed to stimulate and support students in the acquisition of advanced knowledge and skills while instilling compassionate attitudes and values so that they may best serve their patients.
In the area of research, UMMS has achieved world-class status. Research is conducted in the laboratory, ambulatory clinic, and at the bedside, contributing significantly to medical science and the state's economy and enhancing our ability to attract outstanding faculty members for all three schools. Extramural research funding totals more than $240 million. As our researchers continue to make discoveries and explore new avenues of inquiry, we continue to grow with exceptional principal investigators conducting clinical and basic research in such areas as cancer, molecular genetics, neurobiology, chemical biology, and immunology.
In all that we do, we place the highest priority on respect for the dignity and diversity of the Medical School community members - patients, students, faculty, employees, and volunteers. We are committed to supporting their professional, intellectual, and emotional growth so they may have the opportunity to fulfill their potential and achieve their goals.
In the spirit of serving the public, we dedicate these pages to those who want to learn more about our innovative School of Medicine, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Graduate School of Nursing, and our centers, institutes, and programs of national distinction.
Today, UMMS is proud to be at the forefront of the Commonwealth's life sciences initiative, having received funding in 2007 and 2008 to establish an Advanced Therapeutics Cluster (ATC) on campus. The ATC will bring together an interdisciplinary group of research faculty and physician-scientists in three interconnected research clusters—stem cell biology, RNA biology, and gene therapy to be housed in the Albert Sherman Center. RNA studies at UMMS are conducted by world leaders to direct gene therapy initiatives; UMMS recruited an internationally recognized researcher in 2008. And in the realm of stem cell biology, the institution launched the Stem Cell Bank and Stem Cell Registry, two separate but complementary infrastructure programs that are fundamental to the advancement of today's cutting-edge biomedical research.
The Commonwealth established a state-supported public medical school for Massachusetts in July of 1962. The founding dean, Lamar Soutter, was appointed in December of 1963 and began executing a vision for an extraordinary medical school. "I think that if you're starting a medical school from scratch," he said at the time, "you can say all right, let us get this science of medicine very firmly rooted in the students' minds—but then let's take them back to the bedside and make them much better practitioners and much more interested in taking care of human beings even though they are making full use of laboratory procedures and scientific advances."
A period of expansion began in 1990 with the appointment of Aaron Lazare as dean and, subsequently, chancellor, who would go on to become one of the longest-serving leaders of a medical school in the US by the time he stepped down in 2007.
The Nobel Prize drew attention and support to UMMS throughout the Commonwealth. The University of Massachusetts created a Life Sciences Task Force that proposed a series of strategic investments in biomedical sciences education, research, and infrastructure across the five campuses. Many of these recommendations were mirrored in the Commonwealth's own Life Sciences Initiative, a ten-year, billion-dollar investment plan.
Two significant facilities investments on the UMMS campus have laid the groundwork for the next generation of life sciences education and research: the 278,000 square-foot Ambulatory Care Center, home to Centers of Excellence in Diabetes, Cardiovascular Medicine, Orthopedics and Cancer, which opened in 2010 and the 500,000 square foot Albert Sherman Center, which opened in 2013 and houses state of the art facilities for medical education, including homes for the learning communities the standardized patient program dedicated seminar and conference space in addition to six floors of wet and dry laboratory space for new research initiatives in population health, RNA biology, gene therapy, and neurodegenerative disease.