The Undergraduate UMass Boston Navitas GSSP is the first year of a bachelor’s degree program at UMass Boston. The Navitas GSSP consists of for-credit coursework and provides an academic and cultural bridge from the high school experience to studying at a university in the United States. When students successfully complete the UMass Boston Navitas GSSP, they will progress directly into the second year of their undergraduate degree program.

The Philosophy Department at UMass Boston is pluralistic, with faculty that teach and pursue research in almost all major areas of philosophy, including Ethics, Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Law, Theory of Knowledge, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Language, Aesthetics, Feminism, Philosophy of Race, Asian Philosophy, American Philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Modern Philosophy, Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, and Twentieth-Century Continental Philosophy.

The department sees philosophy as an engaged discipline, one in which theoretical understanding is meant ultimately to make a difference in practical lives as persons and citizens. The department has a concentration of faculty working in ethics, applied ethics, law and political philosophy (Blum, Rivera, Tirrell, Bromwich, Perina, Zurn, Silver, Klein, and Zabel), a concentration in American Philosophy very broadly construed (Tirrell, Wanderer, Brincker and Levine), and one in the history of philosophy (Beresford, Inukai, Lande, Levine, Fleshe, and Kaye).

The Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy Major (ESP) is designed for students whose primary philosophical interests are in value questions as they relate to the individual, society and the state, who wish to pursue these questions systematically and in-depth, and who may seek careers in the law, government, social service, or other fields where moral issues and value questions frequently arise.