The University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) is one of five campuses of the University of Massachusetts (UMass) system. It is home to three schools: the School of Medicine, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, and the Graduate School of Nursing, as well as a biomedical research enterprise and a range of public-service initiatives throughout the state. One of the fastest-growing academic health centers in the country, UMMS is located in Worcester, Massachusetts; other UMass sites are located in Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth and Lowell. UMMS is also known as UMass Worcester.
UMMS was established by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1962 to provide residents of the commonwealth an opportunity to study medicine at an affordable cost and to increase the number of primary-care physicians practicing in the commonwealth’s under-served areas. The School of Medicine accepted its first class of 16 students in 1970. Six years later a 371-bed hospital opened on campus; the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences opened in 1979, and the Graduate School of Nursing opened in 1986.
In 1998 the UMMS system of hospitals and clinics merged with Memorial Health Care to form UMass Memorial Health Care, the largest health-care provider in Central Massachusetts and clinical partner of UMMS.
