University of Massachusetts-Boston

and academic focus of the university, saying in June 1965 that "The first aim of the University of Massachusetts at Boston must be to build a university in the ancient tradition of Western civilization." Gagnon would be the principal architect of the university's brief attempt to create a Great Books program called the "Coordinated Freshman Year English-History Program", which was dismantled by the end of the 1960s.
Freshman classes started for 1,240 undergraduate students in September 1965 at a renovated building located at 100 Arlington Street in Downtown Boston, formerly the headquarters of the Boston Gas Company (which had leased the building to the university). Virtually the entire entering class were residents of Massachusetts, with the great majority living in the Greater Boston area. By the fall of 1968, the number of applications to UMass Boston for the fall semester had risen from 2,500 for fall 1965 to 5,700, and total enrollment had risen to 3,600. In the late 1960s, UMass Boston students on average …