Massachusetts has a long and honorable history in textiles, originally based on the good workforce, the abundant supply of water and good communications by ship. In recent years, the Boston area was a hub of development and manufacturing for advanced defense systems. Now high technology and everyday life have grown together so that the rest of the state is changing to follow Boston into an era of new materials and new systems for medicine, communications, electronics and transport. Much of this is being driven by many small companies that have grown up around the large research institutions of the Boston area. These organizations have a constant need for graduates of all types with versatile skills at the boundaries between sciences, engineering, business and society. You cannot make anything without materials, so new materials and processes form a major part of this dynamic world.

Many traditional materials departments are predominantly devoted to hard materials, metals, ceramics and glasses. Coming from textiles we have a special view of a world where things bend and fold rather than crack and break; and systems are tough like animals and birds rather than fragile like current automobiles and aircraft. As a result, this region and this department have something special to offer.

MATERIALS AND TEXTILES DEPARTMENT
Textiles are so familiar as clothing, carpets and draperies that we tend to forget what special combinations of softness and strength can be achieved by combining fibers. Aside from the familiar clothing materials, fibrous structures are the basis for most animal and plant tissues, for the high performance composites that are steadily replacing metals and for many industrial cables, belts and tires. In addition there are rapid developments in smart textiles with electronic functions and in soft electronics. As conventional labor-intensive textile manufacturing becomes a global enterprise, we can see an increasing focus here in Massachusetts on highly technical approaches to the development and design of new fibers, new fabrics and new applications.

Equipment is also available for dyeing small lots of fibers, yarns, and fabrics both atmospherically and under pressure. A variety of chemical finishes can be applied to fabrics to produce various functional properties. Students gain experience with most wet finishing operations and evaluating performance properties during each processing stage.

Most of the research conducted by undergraduate and graduate students, in conjunction with faculty members, is in the area of materials science. The department has purchased about $700,000 in new equipment over the last seven years. UMass Dartmouth is a member of the National Textile Center and shares resources with several other universities in the U.S.

MISSION
The Department of Textile Sciences:
•Supplies appropriately educated and trained, quality graduates at the Bachelor of Science and Master of Science levels for graduate schools or leadership roles in the textile and allied industries,
•Provides research and development capability necessary for sustained improvement and long term growth in the textile sector, and
•Provides outreach programs with specialized expertise to educate and disseminate knowledge and information, and to drive the solution of increasingly complex and textile related problems.

THE PROGRAMS
As of Fall 2005 the department offers two programs for a BS in Materials, a Materials Technology option combining the technology of soft materials with Business and an option in Materials and Biomaterials Engineering.  For course descriptions, see here.

The Textile Chemistry major is not accepting new students.