The University of Massachusetts Boston, also known as UMass Boston, is an urban public research university and the second largest campus in the five-campus University of Massachusetts system. The university is located on 177 acres (0.72 km²) on the Columbia Point (Harbor Point) peninsula in the City of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Students are primarily from Massachusetts but also from other parts of the United States and from foreign countries.

UMass Boston is the only public university in the city of Boston.

The University of Massachusetts Boston was established by vote of the State Legislature in 1964. Freshmen classes started for 1281 students in Sept. of 1965 at the temporary Park Sq. location, and the Founding Convocation was held December 10, 1966 at the Prudential Tower in Boston. John W. Ryan was installed as the University's first Chancellor. UMass/Boston is part of the Greater Boston Urban Education Collaborative, In 1982 it merged with Boston State College (est. 1852).

The University of Massachusetts is the five-campus public university system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The system includes UMass Amherst, UMass Boston, UMass Dartmouth, UMass Lowell, and the UMass Medical School. The UMass system was ranked 56th in the world in 2010 by the Times World University Rankings.

UMass Amherst is the flagship and the largest of the UMass campuses, as well as the first established. Like many colleges and universities, Massachusetts Agricultural College (as it was originally called) the Amherst campus was founded as a land-grant college in 1863, receiving initial start-up funding as part of the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act. It became Massachusetts State College in 1931, and University of Massachusetts in 1947. The library system is the largest state-supported library system in New England with over 6.1 million items. The campus has many architecturally distinctive buildings commissioned by the Commonwealth and designed by world-renowned architects.

UMass Amherst offers a variety of academic and co-curricular options. Ninety-three percent of the 1,174 full-time faculty members hold the highest degree in their fields. The average SAT score (reading and math only) for the 2011 entering class is 1220, and the average GPA is 3.6 on a 4.0 scale. The campus has 21,373 undergraduates and offers 86 bachelor’s degree programs. There is a student-to-faculty ratio of 17:1. The UMass Amherst honors college is called Commonwealth College where admission is more competitive with an average SAT score of 1390.

Massachusetts (ⁱ/ˌmæsəˈtʃuːsɨts/), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. Massachusetts is the 7th least extensive, but the 14th most populous and the 3rd most densely populated of the 50 United States. The state features two separate metropolitan areas – the eastern Boston metropolitan area and the western Springfield metropolitan area. Approximately two thirds of the state's population lives in Greater Boston, most of which is either urban or suburban. Western Massachusetts features one urban area – the Knowledge Corridor along the Connecticut River – and a mix of college towns and rural areas. Massachusetts is the most populous of the six New England states and has the US's sixth highest GDP per capita.

Boston (pronounced /ˈbɒstən/ or locally /ˈbɔstən/ ( listen)) is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper, covering only 48.43 square miles, had a population of 617,594 according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Boston is also the anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area called Greater Boston, home to 4.5 million people and the tenth-largest metropolitan area in the country. Greater Boston as a commuting region is home to 7.6 million people, making it the fifth-largest Combined Statistical Area in the United States.

In 1630, Puritan colonists from England founded the city on the Shawmut Peninsula. During the late 18th century, Boston was the location of several major events during the American Revolution, including the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party. Several early battles of the American Revolution, such as the Battle of Bunker Hill and the Siege of Boston, occurred within the city and surrounding areas. Through land reclamation and municipal annexation, Boston has expanded beyond the peninsula. After American independence was attained Boston became a major shipping port and manufacturing center, and its rich history now helps attract many tourists, with Faneuil Hall alone attracting over 20 million every year. The city was the site of several firsts, including America's first public school, Boston Latin School (1635), and the first subway system in the United States (1897).

Barack Hussein Obama II (ⁱ/bəˈrɑːk huːˈseɪn oʊˈbɑːmə/; born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. In January 2005, Obama was sworn in as a U.S. Senator in the state of Illinois. He would hold this office until November 2008, when he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004.

Following an unsuccessful bid against the Democratic incumbent for a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 2000, Obama ran for the United States Senate in 2004. Several events brought him to national attention during the campaign, including his victory in the March 2004 Illinois Democratic primary for the Senate election and his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July 2004. He won election to the U.S. Senate in Illinois in November 2004. His presidential campaign began in February 2007, and after a close campaign in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primaries against Hillary Rodham Clinton, he won his party's nomination. In the 2008 presidential election, he defeated Republican nominee John McCain, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months later, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. In April 2011, he announced that he would be running for re-election in 2012.