The faculty at UMass Amherst has grown from five when Massachusetts Agricultural College opened its doors in 1869 to nearly 1,200 full time members in 2009.

In addition to extensive documentation of the Faculty Senate and other groups, RG 40 includes documentation of over 5,000 individual members of UMass Amherst faculty and staff, with information ranging from vitae and resumes to research notes, newsclippings, and publications, mostly originating with or gathered by the University or University Archives. The personal and professional papers of individual faculty members are housed and entered into UMarmot separately (with call numbers beginning FS), and materials for faculty who also held administrative posts may be filed in the relevant record group(s).

Group founded at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1943 to protest proposed changes in the Massachusetts state employees’ retirement system. By 1969, the group became the exclusive bargaining agent for the University’s administrative, clerical, and technical employees. Includes constitution and by-laws, Executive Board and general body minutes, correspondence, contracts, legislative materials, grievance records, hearing transcripts and decisions pertaining to job reallocations, subject files, newsletters, and press releases, that document the activities and administration of the University of Massachusetts chapter of the Massachusetts State Employees Association from 1955 to 1978.

Pres. Hugh P. Baker and
Cabinet of Faculty, 1936

From its founding in 1863, UMass Amherst has grown from rural agricultural roots into a major research university, and the handful of instructors who present at the inauguration of the college has grown into a diverse faculty of over 1,100.

The Faculty and Staff Collection contains files accumulated by the University Archives relating to the faculty, staff, and administrators of UMass Amherst and its predecessors, the Massachusetts Agricultural College and Massachusetts State College. This list is not an exhaustive accounting of present or past members of the UMass community: although full-time, part-time, and visiting faculty are included, this listing includes only those for whom the University Office of Communications or University Archives collected information. Typically these files consist of some combination of resumes, notices of honors and awards, press releases and news clippings, articles about or by the subject, obituaries, and other miscellaneous information. In many cases, the subjects are represented by only one or two items.

The Vietnamese Students Association hosted a Vietnamese New Year celebration at the Campus Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst on February 20, 1985. Collection contains twelve photographs and a program listing sponsors, speakers, performers, the sequence of events, descriptions of ancestor worship, the legend of the earth and the sky cakes, the menu, and some song lyrics.

In the summer of 1967, members of University of Massachusetts Amherst campus groups, such as the Faculty Group on War and Peace and the Students for Political Action, joined with individuals from other area colleges and from the community at large to form the Valley Peace Center of Amherst for the purposes of opposing the Vietnam War, providing draft counseling, eliciting pledges from the government to avoid first use of nuclear and biological weapons, and reduction of the power of the “military-industrial complex”. The Center was active for more than five and a half years, drawing its financial support largely from the community and its human resources from student and community volunteers.

Correspondence, minutes, volunteer and membership lists, financial records, newsletters, questionnaires, notes, petitions, clippings, posters, circulars, pamphlets, periodicals, other printed matter, and memorabilia. Includes material relating to alternative service, boycotts, war tax resistance, prison reform, environmental quality, and political candidates.

The first faculty union at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) AFL-CIO, was established largely in response to the administration’s reluctance to recommend raises in faculty salaries (1958-1964) and due to the faculty’s desire for self-governance. The union was short-lived on the campus, but served to raise the consciousness of faculty to issues of faculty autonomy. The collection includes historical sketches, memoranda, correspondence, resolutions, and treasurer’s reports.

Established under the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1863, the Massachusetts Agricultural College began with four faculty members and 56 students distributed among four wooden buildings and acres of farms, orchards, and fields. In keeping with the progressive educational principles of its early years, the College offered advanced instruction in the eminently practical pursuit of agriculture, while its fellow land grant college, MIT, covered the mechanical arts. Although “Mass Aggie’s” fortunes waxed and waned, it grew to become Massachusetts State College in 1931, and the University of Massachusetts in 1947.

Among the official publications of the University in Record Group 1 are institutional histories, annual reports, special reports, minutes, directories, catalogs, newsclippings, press releases, and memorabilia.

Peter d’Errico, former Professor of Legal Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, entered the world of law in the mid nineteen-sixties, “defending [himself] against other choices: draft, exile, prison.” In addition to his teaching responsibilities, d’Errico served as President of the Massachusetts Society of Professors and as Chair of the Faculty Senate Council on University Service, Public Service, and Outreach. d’Errico retired from the University in August 2002; a central figure in the development of the Legal Studies Department at UMass, his research and teaching were focused on the legal issues of Native Americans and indigenous peoples. D’Errico continues to be active in the litigation of issues regarding indigenous peoples.

The d’Errico Papers consist of three small notebooks documenting d’Errico’s time as President of the Massachusetts Society of Professors, the union which represents faculty and librarians on the UMass Amherst campus.

David R. Inglis at Argonne N.L., ca.1953

David R. Inglis enjoyed a distinguished career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and work on renewable energy in the 1960s and 1970s. A Professor of Physics at UMass from 1969-1975, Inglis was a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists and from the mid-1940s on, he dedicated himself to informing public policy on the dangers of nuclear technologies.

The Inglis Papers offer a perspective on the life and career of a theoretical physicist who grew from an early involvement in the Manhattan Project to becoming a committed critic of nuclear weaponry and nuclear power. Although the collection is relatively sparse in unpublished scientific work, it includes valuable correspondence relating to Inglis’s efforts with the Federation of American Scientists and other organizations to influence public policy on issues relating to disarmament and nuclear power.

Born in Montefegatesi, Italy, in April 1937, Roland Sarti began his academic career as a teaching assistant and instructor at Rutgers University from 1960-1964. In the fall of 1967, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Italian History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, becoming chair of the University Seminar on Studies in Modern Italy five years later. A scholar of the fascist movement in Italy, Sarti also wrote on topics ranging from rural life in the Apennines to the life of the revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini. During his tenure at UMass, he served on the Personnel, Curriculum, and Graduate Studies Committees, and played a prominent role in the Faculty Senate and the International Programs Office, particularly with respect to the summer programs in Italy. A past president of the New England Historical Society and the Society for Italian Historical Studies, he was a board member for the European History Quarterly and the H-Italy Network. He retired from active teaching in 2002.

The Sarti Papers document Sarti’s distinguished career as professor, author, and chair of the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They consist of professional correspondence, history department records, records of major crises at the University, Italian studies newsletters, student publications, and historical society records. A significant amount of the materials, particularly among the correspondence and periodicals, are in Italian.