Feature Stories 2016: Welcome, Class of 2020

The Class of 2020 is made up of 1,385 students from 249 Massachusetts cities and towns, 18 states, and 8 countries. The first-year students are joined by more than 500 new undergraduate transfer students and nearly 400 new graduate students.

Students and their families were assisted by hundreds of student, faculty, and staff volunteers—as well as campus mascot Arnie the Corsair—as they moved into their residence halls on September 4.

This I believe: our nation and our society desperately need the values to which we aspire on our campus: open inquiry, reasoned and civil debate, close analysis, intellectual rigor, and a spirit of service to others.

The new Corsairs spent the summer engaging with each other—and with their own beliefs—through UMassD’s This We Believe blog project.

The initiative gave the new students an opportunity to get to know one another and to join the larger UMass Dartmouth community. They wrote about topics ranging from anxiety, faith, and family to grief, justice, love, and perseverance.

On September 6, UMass Dartmouth formally welcomed the Class of 2020 at Convocation, the annual ceremony that marks the beginning of the academic year.

In his Against the Grain speech to the new class, Chancellor Peyton "Randy" Helm echoed the This We Believe theme and addressed the campus community’s responsibility to take action against violence.

Three students—Alexandra Joseph, Kayci Richardson, and Sarah Murphy—shared their own This We Believe essays, selected as top submissions to the blog.

The entire UMassD community will engage in a September-long, university-wide This We Believe dialogue focused on violence and peace around the nation and the world.