Framingham State University

Framingham State University (FSU), located in Massachusetts, is about 20 miles from Boston. Although originally an all-women's school, Framingham State now boasts a co-educational student body.

There are a variety of courses on offer, which include: art history, sociology, accounting, fashion design, food sciences, nursing, politics, and finance. 

The university has a variety of research centres and institutes, including the John C. Stalker Institute of Food and Nutrition, the Centre for Social Research and the Christa Corrigan McAuliffe Centre for Education and Teaching Excellence, named after a graduate who was killed in the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986. 

The 73-acre campus has a library called the Henry Whittemore Library, which has over 200,000 volumes and access to over 70,000 electronic journals. 

The university offers around 50 clubs and organisations for students to enjoy, which include: A Cappella, Art Club, Chemistry Club, Comic Book Club, Craft Club, Dance Club, Entrepreneurship Club and Symphonic Band. While there are also a variety of extracurricular events for students to attend, which include lecture series and film screenings.

Sustainability is key to the university’s ethos and in 2007 the school signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment. Moreover, FSU has previously been named as a Green College by the Princeton Review.

There are also plenty of athletic opportunities to join sports teams. The teams compete in the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference. Men's sports include baseball, cross country, football, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer while women's sports include cross country, lacrosse, softball, basketball, field hockey, soccer, and volleyball. 

Notable alumni include Ruth Graves Wakefield, the inventor of the first chocolate chip cookie – the Toll House Cookie – which she created in 1938, Brian Joseph Moran, an American politician and a member of the Democratic Party, and Jaune Quick–to–See Smith, a Native American contemporary artist.