2023
Research
BU Researchers Help Develop the First Therapies to Treat Sickle Cell Disease
For people with sickle cell disease, a group of inherited blood disorders, there’s new hope. The US Food and Drug Administration has approved two groundbreaking treatments—developed with the help of Boston University researchers.
2023
Sports
Men’s Soccer Wins Patriot League Title
BU men’s soccer team won its first-ever Patriot League title. The Terriers defeated Lafayette, 1-0. The Terriers won the Patriot League regular season with a 10-3-4 record, a 7-1-1 mark in conference play.
2023
Research
BU Ecologist Lucy Hutyra Wins a 2023 MacArthur “Genius Grant”
Lucy Hutyra, a BU College of Arts & Sciences professor of Earth and environment, focuses on understanding the impacts of urbanization on climate and ecosystems. She is one of 20 fellows who has received a MacArthur “Genius Grant.”
2023
Firsts, Leaders, Presidents
Boston University Names Melissa L. Gilliam 11th President
Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam, the executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University and a distinguished educator, scholar, research scientist, and physician, will be Boston University’s 11th president. She takes office on July 1, 2024. A national leader in faculty recruitment and student success and a champion of diversity and inclusion, Dr. Gilliam is also a professor of obstetrics and gynecology and of pediatrics. Her appointment caps a yearlong search that yielded close to 400 potential candidates from around the world.
2023
Research
Researchers Find Way to Tweak Immune System to Fight Tuberculosis
A Boston University–led research team has found a way to tweak immune cells to better fight tuberculosis that could be ready for clinical trials as soon as 2024. The researchers identified the genetic signatures of white blood cells and then tested the ability of different compounds to transform vulnerable cells into more resilient ones.
2023
Research
BU Ignition Awards Accelerate Products for Repairing Damaged Teeth, Fighting Cancer, and More
The BU Ignition Awards are designed to accelerate promising new science and technology. Among the 2023 winners are a tooth-saving formula, AI-powered reading tool, and cancer-fighting technology. Award winners receive coaching and support to bring their innovations to market.
2023
Research
BU Dark Matter Researcher Wins Award for Contributions to Experimental Physics
The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has named Boston University physicist Alex Sushkov to its 2023 cohort of Experimental Physics Investigators. The recognition is given to a select group of distinguished scientists who the organization hopes will make “extraordinary contributions to the field of experimental physics.” Sushkov will receive $1.25 million over five years to support his work on an imaging technique used to study the nuclei of atoms.
2023
Leaders, Presidents
Kenneth W. Freeman, President Ad Interim
2023–Present Kenneth W. Freeman, dean emeritus and professor of the practice at Questrom School of Business, and University vice president and associate provost, has been appointed as interim president starting August 1, 2023. In his 13 years at Boston University, Freeman has filled a number of roles: respected professor, transformative dean, valued mentor, forward-thinking academic innovator, and a skilled and rock-steady vice president during a period of crisis. As BU’s acting leader, Freeman will hold all the powers of the president’s office, and be entrusted to provide leadership to deans, faculty, students, and all key stakeholders, while continuing the initiatives already in process that are core to BU’s 2030 Strategic Plan.
2023
Leaders
New Dean of Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences
After a national search that yielded more than a dozen qualified finalists, Jack Dennerlein was named dean of Sargent College on July 26, 2023. His official tenure begins August 1, 2023. The former dean, Christopher A. Moore, announced his retirement in fall 2022.
2023
Leaders
Incoming Newbury Center Faculty Director Wants to Improve Higher Ed Access for First-Gen Students
Anthony Abraham Jack, a well-known higher-education researcher and author starts at Boston University in fall 2023. He will be an associate professor of higher education leadership in the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development and faculty director of the Newbury Center—which serves and celebrates first-generation students on campus. Maria Dykema Erb will continue as the Newbury Center director. She and Jack will run the center jointly.
2023
Leaders
As University Librarian, Mark Newton Will Lead Effort to Reimagine BU’s Library Program
Mark Newton has been appointed to the position of University Librarian. As University Librarian, he will lead the BU libraries’ transition to 21st-century knowledge repositories. Newton succeeds K. Matthew Dames, the University Librarian from 2018 to 2021.
2023
Leaders
Leading Texas Scholar Is New Dean of the School of Social Work
Barbara Jones is the new dean of the School of Social Work. She was previously associate dean for health affairs at the University of Texas Austin Steve Hicks School of Social Work and chair of the department of health social work at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School. She succeeds Jorge Delva, who will join the SSW faculty after a sabbatical.
2023
Research
Royal Society of Chemistry Honors BU’s Mark Grinstaff
Chemist, biomedical engineer, and William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor Mark Grinstaff has won the Royal Society of Chemistry’s Centenary Prize in “recognition of brilliance in research and innovation.” The Centenary Prize is given to “outstanding chemists, who are also exceptional communicators, from overseas,” according to its website.
2023
Leaders
Engineering Dean Named Interim University Provost
College of Engineering Dean Kenneth Lutchen has been named Boston University’s interim provost and chief academic officer after Jean Morrison stepped down. Lutchen, who is a professor of biomedical engineering, says he is “deeply honored” by the new assignment.
2023
Commencement
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav Tells Graduates to Pursue Their Passion
“Show up.” Those two words are the most important advice for success, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and President David Zaslav (LAW’85) told Boston University graduates and guests at Sunday’s 150th Commencement. The ceremony turned occasionally raucous, with protests inside and outside Nickerson Field, in support of the ongoing writers strike in Hollywood and condemning the choice of Zaslav as the University’s speaker because of his role in the contract negotiations.
2023
Learning
Travis Roy Foundation Endows Sargent College Scholarship
The Travis Roy Foundation has given $1 million to Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences to create the Travis M. Roy Endowed Scholarship Fund. The fund will provide annual scholarships to one or more graduate students studying occupational or physical therapy at the College. Paralyzed by a crash into the boards during his first BU hockey game, Travis Roy (COM’00, Hon.’16) devoted his life to helping those with similar injuries.
2023
Leaders
New Dean of Students Appointed
Jason Campbell-Foster will serve as Boston University’s next Dean of Students, assuming a role he’s held on an interim basis since July 2022. Campbell-Foster emerged as the top candidate after a competitive, yearlong national search. Campbell-Foster joined BU as senior associate dean of students in 2019—a role that quickly expanded with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which he oversaw the University’s student-centered response.
2023
Commencement
CFA’s Karin Hendricks to Receive the 2023 Metcalf Cup and Prize
A College of Fine Arts associate professor and chair of music education, Karin Hendricks has been named this year’s winner of the Metcalf Cup and Prize, the University’s highest award for teaching. Gregory Melchor-Barz, director of CFA’s School of Music wrote in support of her nomination and praised her crucial contributions to the success of her program: “The department is now considered nationally and internationally as one of the top music education programs for undergraduate and graduate study.”
2023
Research
FDA Clears Bionic Pancreas Developed in BU Lab for People with Type 1 Diabetes
A bionic pancreas—a wearable, pocket-sized, automated insulin delivery device—that was first developed in a Boston University lab has been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The iLet Bionic Pancreas is now commercially available, bringing fresh hope to the almost two million Americans with type 1 diabetes.
2023
Leaders, Presidents
Robert A. Brown Reflects on 18 Years as BU President
“When I came to Boston University in 2005, I joined a university in turmoil caused by a failed presidential search that exposed weak leadership and broken governance. A university with a dedicated and talented faculty and staff, and an aspiring and engaged student body—but with little thought about, or unity around, the prospects for the future. From this beginning, we have developed a vision of Boston University as a wonderfully interconnected private research university committed to inclusive excellence, but grounded in a gritty pragmatism that faces head on what is needed to make this vision a reality,” says President Brown.
2023
Firsts
Inaugural Class of BU Computing & Data Sciences Majors
The Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences graduated its first class of undergraduates. There are 190 students enrolled in CDS’ undergrad degree program and 10 in the CDS PhD program. The new MS in Data Science program is accepting applications for fall 2023. Associate Provost for Computing & Data Sciences Azer Bestavros said he expects 60 to 70 students to receive their BS in the next academic year, with an average of 120 to 150 in subsequent years.
2023
Research
Ji-Xin Cheng Named BU’s Innovator of the Year
Moustakas Chair Professor in Photonics and Optoelectronics Ji-Xin has been named the 2022 Boston University Innovator of the Year. The College of Engineering professor of biomedical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and materials science and engineering has a long list of trailblazing achievements, including inventing a way to use blue light and hydrogen peroxide to treat a drug-resistant skin infection called MRSA, finding molecular signatures associated with aggressive cancers for treatment and diagnosis, and creating novel imaging techniques using infrared light to see molecules inside living cells.
2023
Learning
Wheelock’s Grace Kim Named Provost’s Scholar-Teacher of the Year
Grace Kim was awarded the 2023 Provost’s Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award. The award recognizes scholars who excel as teachers inside and outside the classroom and who contribute to the art and science of teaching and learning. The award recognizes Kim for helping her students create meaningful connections by “making psychology, itself, more relevant for a dynamic, racially diverse society.”
2023
Learning, Research
CAS’ Renato Mancuso Wins Gitner Family Award
Renato Mancuso was awarded the Gerald and Deanne Gitner Family Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology. Mancuso received the award for designing a system that enables students to submit their coding assignments via a web-based interface and then view how their submission performs and compares to classmates’ work.
2023
Leaders
Wheelock’s Melissa Holt to Lead Kilachand Honors College
Melissa Holt is associate professor of counseling psychology and associate dean for faculty affairs at Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. Her three-year term as Kilachand’s leader begins July 1, 2023. Holt, Kilachand’s third director, succeeds two-term director Carrie Preston, professor of English and women’s, gender, & sexuality studies at the College of Arts & Sciences and a professor at Kilachand.
2023
Sports
Tara Watchorn (Sargent’12) Named Head Coach for Women’s Ice Hockey
Former Terrier star defender and Olympic gold medalist Tara Watchorn (Sargent’12) has been named the new head coach of the BU women’s ice hockey program. Watchorn replaces her former coach, Brian Durocher (Wheelock’78), who retired in February after heading the program since its inception in 2004.
2023
Philanthropy
2023 BU Giving Day Raises More Than $3.8 Million
Boston University’s ninth Giving Day brought in more than $3.8 million from more than 12,000 donors, supporting more than 450 causes across campus. Gifts came from all 50 states, and from 48 countries.
2023
Community
New Council Will Give BU Staff More Voice in Policy, Decisions
President Robert A. Brown has approved the formation of a new group called the Staff Advisory Council, with the purpose of giving a united voice to the University’s 6,300 staff members who want to make sure they are being heard by administrators as much as students and faculty when it comes to major decisions being made by BU leadership. The council will be made up of 30 members, elected to three-year terms. All of them will be staff level or first-line supervisors—no high-level positions, vice presidents, or senior leaders will serve.
2023
Learning
Comics Artist Joel Christian Gill Launches BU’s New Visual Narrative MFA Degree
Joel Christian Gill is the director and a faculty member—along with Paul Karasik, lecturer in art—of BU’s new Master of Fine Arts in Visual Narrative program. There are about 10 such MFA programs in the country, he says. The program drew 11 students for last fall’s debut. They study with Gill in a third-floor classroom at the 808 Gallery. The degree is for illustrators interested in producing media such as comics and graphic books, picture books, and animation.
2023
Community
Boston University Opens New LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center
Following months of preparation, and years of student advocacy, Boston University will soon be opening a professionally staffed campus resource center for LGBTQIA+ students. The center, tentatively named the LGBTQIA+ Student Resource Center, will be housed at 808 Commonwealth Avenue, near existing spaces like the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and the LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff.
2023
Research
BU Researchers Join $100 Million Effort to Fight Future Deadly Pathogens
Boston University researchers are joining a $100 million effort to advance our understanding of dangerous pathogens—and help spur new ways to defeat or at least contain them. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Emerging Pathogens Initiative, which is pulling in 70 scientists from 29 organizations, will include 7 BU researchers, who will be part of teams working on the next generation of RNA-based antiviral therapies and investigating microscopic pathogenic parasites called protozoa. BU’s share of the funding will be $16 million.
2023
Research
BU Finds CTE in Nearly 92 Percent of Ex-NFL Players Studied
According to new figures released by the Boston University CTE Center, 345 former NFL players were diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), out of 376 former players who were studied, a rate of 91.7 percent. To put those numbers in perspective, a 2018 BU study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (less than 1 percent) showed signs of the progressive degenerative brain disease. And that lone CTE case? A former college football player.
2023
Research
BU Researchers Named AAAS Fellows
Every year, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) honors scientists across the country for their pioneering or outstanding contributions to their disciplines. BU’s 2023 honorees are astrophysicist Catherine Espaillat, chemist Malika Jeffries-EL, and electrical engineer Vivek Goyal.
2023
Research
BU’s Christopher Chen Elected a National Academy of Inventors Fellow
Christopher Chen, a Boston University biomedical engineer, has been named a National Academy of Inventors fellow in recognition of a career filled with patents and inventions—many building toward potentially lifesaving breakthroughs. In 2022 alone, Chen cofounded a regenerative medicine company—securing $110 million in funding to boost its organ-healing technology—and helped build a miniature beating heart that could speed efforts to repair damage from a heart attack. To be nominated for a fellowship, inventors must have a track record of “outstanding contributions to innovation” and be a named inventor on patents.
2023
Research
NEIDL Researchers Discover New SARS-CoV-2 Weak Spot—Which Could Inspire Improved Vaccines
In a Boston University–led paper published online in Nature, an international team of researchers identify the mutations that help Omicron dodge prior immunity and show that a previously unheralded virus protein—known as NSP6—might be an essential factor in the variant’s lower disease-causing potential, or its pathogenicity. A draft containing some of the paper’s early results previously made international headlines when a series of false reports sensationally misconstrued its findings. But the study’s senior author, BU virologist Mohsan Saeed, says this research could have a major positive impact, potentially helping provide a new target for vaccines and therapeutics.
2023
Research
Two BU Researchers Receive over $1 Million Each from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
In an effort to take biological imaging to the next level, two Boston University College of Engineering researchers are spearheading projects aimed at finding better ways to visualize the cellular mechanisms that drive our everyday life. Ji-Xin Cheng and Lei Tian will each receive more than $1 million in funding from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, a highly competitive program, to develop new methods for seeing cells, molecules, proteins, and neuron networks in real time.
2023
Research
Mayors Address Climate Crisis in Report from BU’s Initiative on Cities
A report released January 17 by Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC), titled “Mayors and the Climate Crisis,” asked elected city leaders about their views on climate change and what, if anything, their communities should do to address the issue. The report is the first in a two-part series of survey results from the 2022 Menino Survey of Mayors. For the survey, IoC staff interviewed mayors of 118 cities across the United States with populations of more than 75,000 residents.
2023
Learning
BU Online Programs among the Nation’s Best, for Tenth Consecutive Year
A trio of online master’s degree programs—criminal justice, computer information technology, and business—at Boston University’s Metropolitan College have been ranked by U.S. News & World Report among the country’s best for the 10th year in a row. U.S. News bases its rankings on students’ opportunities to interact online with professors and one another; faculty’s academic credentials; diversity of online learning technologies, coupled with out-of-class resources for learning, career guidance, and financial aid; assessments from academic peers; and the “proven aptitudes, ambitions, and accomplishments” of students in the programs.
2022
Leaders
Two BU Named Professorships, Last Awarded Decades Ago, Have New Appointees
The Metcalf Chair, recognizing an internationally known scholar in mathematics, science, or engineering, has been awarded to David Boas, a College of Engineering professor of biomedical, electrical, and computer engineering, and director of the Neurophotonics Center. Ran Canetti, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of computer science and director of the Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security, has been chosen for the Wang Professorship, awarded for distinguished scholarship and teaching in natural sciences, mathematics, computer science, or engineering. Both professorships are for five-year renewable terms and support the recipients’ research and scholarship.
2022
Campus
BU Unveils Iconic Center for Computing & Data Sciences
City and University leaders cut a ribbon for the ceremonial opening of Boston University’s Center for Computing & Data Sciences, an architectural showpiece and a shining example of sustainable design. The Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences will work to use cutting-edge technology to build a better, more equitable world through learning and collaboration that crosses boundaries between disciplines.
2022
Leaders
Artist Gets Up Close and Personal for Annual University Lecture
Josephine Halvorson, a College of Fine Arts professor of art and chair of the School of Visual Arts graduate studies in painting program, will deliver the annual University Lecture, titled “Making Space for Wonder: In Person and Up Close.” Established in 1950, the University Lecture honors members of the Boston University faculty engaged in outstanding research. Faculty tapped to deliver the lecture over the years have represented the full spectrum of disciplines at BU and share a common commitment to excellence in scholarly inquiry and discovery.
2022
Community
Students’ Pronouns and Gender Identities Change in BU’s Updated Data System
Terriers now have the option of updating the University Directory with pronouns and display names—how they identify and wish others to identify them, as opposed to their legal names. They may also choose to provide their gender identities (which won’t be displayed in the Directory). Legal names will remain unchanged in BU’s records. The change is the first in a long-planned modernization of the 40-year-old Student Information System (SIS), the information technology systems that store student data about numerous interactions with the University.
2022
Leaders
BU Virtual Will Chart BU’s Online Learning Future
Wendy Colby is the University’s inaugural vice president and associate provost for BU Virtual. Colby oversees a new department dedicated to working with BU’s schools and colleges on identifying and implementing opportunities to expand online education. The new unit brings together under one umbrella the design, development, and delivery of a complete portfolio of online graduate and certificate offerings from across BU, ranging from online master’s programs in social work and computer science to criminal justice and others.
2022
Leaders
A New Era for BU Board of Trustees: New Chair and Vice Chairs
Trustees Cynthia Cohen (MET’77) and Malek Sukkar (ENG’92) were elected vice chairs at the board’s September meeting, joining Brown and board chair Ahmass Fakahany (Questrom’79) as trustee leaders. The board’s top priority at the moment is finding BU’s next president.
2022
Leaders
Associate Provost for Community and Inclusion to Focus on Accountability, Civil Discourse
Victoria Sahani is named the new associate provost for community and inclusion. Sahani’s appointment comes after a national, monthslong search for a new associate provost. The role is a component of the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan, a set of five priorities meant to guide the school through the rest of the decade. The position serves two of the University’s priorities: diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and a culture of community, or the idea that BU is “big yet small.”
2022
Learning
BU Climbs in U.S. News & World Report National College Rankings
Boston University moved up one spot, to number 41, in the latest U.S. News & World Report ranking of National Universities, while the Questrom School of Business saw a big jump among business schools and the University overall climbed in the innovation category, according to the list.
2022
Leaders
For Initiative on Cities Leader, Urban Geography Is People
Loretta Lees is named the new faculty director of Boston University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC). IoC describes itself “as a hub for urban related research and teaching across the University, engaging urban leaders, policymakers, academics, and students from around the world to work toward sustainable, just, and inclusive urban transformation.” Its best-known efforts include the annual Menino Survey of Mayors and its City Leadership Summits.
2022
Philanthropy
Lifelong Friendship Behind $100 Million Gift to Medical School
Lifelong friends Aram V. Chobanian (Hon.’06) and Edward Avedisian (CFA’59,’61, Hon.’22) will now be connected forever as the namesakes of BU’s medical school. Thanks to a $100 million gift from Avedisian that will support scholarships, endowed faculty chairs, and cutting-edge research and teaching, the school is being renamed the Boston University Aram V. Chobanian & Edward Avedisian School of Medicine.
2022
Leaders
Ebola Vaccine and Treatment Pioneer to Direct NEIDL
Nancy J. Sullivan, a nationally renowned infectious diseases expert and chief of the Biodefense Research Section at the federal government’s Vaccine Research Center, has been named the new director of Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL). Opened in 2009, NEIDL is a leading academic research center that allows scientists to study infectious diseases and pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, Ebola, and Zika, in a protected environment.
2022
Leaders
Africa Scholar Named Dean of Pardee
Scott Taylor, a scholar of African politics and vice dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, is the new dean of BU’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. Taylor assumed his new role September 1, succeeding Pardee’s inaugural dean, Adil Najam. The school was founded in 2013 through a $25 million gift from the late Frederick S. Pardee (Questrom’54,’54, Hon.’06), who gave a second $25 million gift in 2018.
2022
Leaders
New Director for the Hariri Institute for Computing
On July 1, Ioannis Paschalidis became the new director of the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering. Paschalidis, a College of Engineering Distinguished Professor of Engineering and of computing and data sciences, will oversee the institute’s move into a new, eye-arresting building (the largest on the Charles River Campus), the Center for Computing & Data Sciences. Paschalidis replaces Eric Kolaczyk, who is leaving BU after almost a quarter of a century.
2022
Sports
Casey Brown Named Women’s Soccer Head Coach
Brown (CGS’08, COM’10), a former player and assistant coach, returns to BU as women’s soccer head coach. She replaces Nancy Feldman, who retired in April 2022 after a legendary career that included 27 years leading the program.
2022
Commencement
BU’s 149th Commencement Sizzles
Boston University’s 149th Commencement was held on a sweltering Sunday: May 22, 2022. Despite the heat and humidity, family and friends cheered on the 3,648 undergrads and 4,113 advanced degree candidates. This year marked the first traditional Commencement since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
2022
Leaders, Learning
LAW Clinical Professor Awarded Metcalf Cup and Prize
Constance A. Browne wins the 2022 Metcalf Cup and Prize. She teaches in the Civil Litigation & Justice Program clinic, supervising students as they represent low-income clients in unemployment, disability, housing, and other cases through Greater Boston Legal Services. The winner receives the University’s top honor and $10,000.
2022
Philanthropy, Research
CARB-X wins $370 Million to Fight Antibiotic Resistance
CARB-X, a nonprofit global partnership that channels funding and expertise to companies for new antibiotics, vaccines, and rapid diagnostics, is receiving up to $370 million in additional funding from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and Wellcome, a global charitable foundation.
2022
Sports
Men’s Lacrosse Wins First Patriot League Title
For the first time in program history, the men’s lacrosse team wins the Patriot League. The Terriers claim their first trophy just one month shy of the ten-year anniversary of head coach Ryan Polley’s appointment.
2022
Sports
Jay Pandolfo Named Men’s Ice Hockey Head Coach
Former Terrier star and Boston Bruin Jay Pandolfo (CAS’96) replaces Albie O’Connell (CAS’99) to become the 13th head coach of the men’s ice hockey program, after less than a year as associate head coach. Pandolfo returned to BU in July 2021 after five seasons as assistant coach with the Boston Bruins.
2022
Campus, Learning
BU’s New Robotics Lab Fosters Student Innovators
BU undergraduates and master’s students will explore robotics at a new College of Engineering lab. The $8.8 million, 2,000-square-foot Robotics and Autonomous Systems Teaching and Innovation Center, at the site of the former CVS at 730 Commonwealth Ave., will open in summer 2023.
2022
Research
NASA Boosts BU-led Effort to Model Solar System’s Protective Bubble
The SHIELD (Solar wind with Hydrogen Ion Exchange and Large-scale Dynamics) DRIVE Science Center has been awarded a new five-year grant to advance its breakthrough work in heliophysics. The funding will also support the team’s efforts to diversify the field of space physics.
2022
Learning
University’s Admission Rate Drops to 14 Percent
The Class of 2026 stands to be BU’s strongest ever, with just 14 percent of a record 80,794 applicants admitted to a class of 3,100 freshmen. Over the past decade, BU’s admittance rate has dropped from 46 percent in 2012 to 14 percent in this year’s admissions season.
2022
Learning
Graduate Programs Advance in 2023 U.S. News Rankings
Several BU schools rose in the latest rankings of best US graduate schools by U.S. News & World Report, with the School of Medicine notching the largest leap for its primary care program.
2022
Research
Institute for Sustainable Energy Focuses on Equity in Climate Change Fight
Social scientist and internationally renowned climate change expert, Benjamin Sovacool is the new director of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE), a hub for sustainable energy research and equitable policy solutions that benefit every part of the world in a fair and just way.
2022
Campus, Philanthropy
Renovated Groce Pépin Culinary Innovation Laboratory Now Cooking
The renamed Groce Pépin Culinary Innovation Laboratory received more than $200,000 in renovations, the first in 30 years. The space boasts a new granite countertop, stainless steel stove, glass door fridge, and commercial sink station, along with five overhead cameras and wall-mounted monitors that enhance visibility of demonstrations, for culinary arts students on-site and online.
2022
Leaders, Learning
BU’s Innovator of the Year Uses History to Shape Future
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Selim Ünlü is named Boston University’s 2021 Innovator of the Year. He relays the importance of science history to students, adding context to the advanced technology students use today and illustrating the impact of iterative innovation.
2022
Sports
BU Claims 31st Beanpot Championship
For the first time since 2015, the Terriers earned their 31st Beanpot title.
Albie O’Connell (CAS’99) had been waiting four years to lift the trophy as the head coach of his alma mater, where he won four consecutive Beanpot titles as a player.
2022
Philanthropy, Research
Effort to Synthesize Lung Tissue Wins Funding
A bold, early-stage project aiming to develop lab-grown lungs has been awarded $1.5 million over three years from the Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group. The effort will be led by researchers at Boston University’s College of Engineering and School of Medicine.
2022
Leaders
Veteran Educator and Philanthropist Joins Board of Trustees
M. Lee Pelton, who spent almost half a century in higher education, capped by the presidencies of two schools, has been elected to BU’s Board of Trustees for a two-year term. Pelton has been president and CEO of the Boston Foundation, a philanthropy with $1.6 billion in assets supporting nonprofits, companies, and donors in greater Boston.
2022
Learning
BU’s Entrepreneur Education and Alumni Earn High Rankings
Boston University ranks among the best universities in the world for entrepreneur education, according to two sources. Princeton Review puts BU at 25th among universities with graduate programs in entrepreneurship, and PitchBook ranks BU at 34th in the firm’s top 50 undergraduate and MBA programs that produce successful entrepreneurs.
2021
Leaders
Board of Trustees Appoints New Chair and New Member
Ahmass Fakahany (Questrom’79), founder and CEO of Manhattan-based Altamarea Group, will lead the Boston University Board of Trustees beginning in September 2022, succeeding Kenneth Feld (Questrom’70). The board also welcomed new trustee Kenneth Lin (CAS’98), founder and CEO of the personal finance website Credit Karma, who was elected in September.
2021
Campus, Community
BU Distributes Federal Rescue Plan Money to Students
The University is distributing almost $21 million in federal aid to students financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The money comes from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, included in the American Rescue Plan enacted by Congress and President Joe Biden in March 2021.
2021
Learning
School of Public Health to Offer Online Master’s
Boston University’s School of Public Health will offer an online Master of Public Health starting in January 2023, building on the success of the Online MBA launched by Questrom School of Business in 2020. The MPH will be offered in partnership with the online education company edX. “The online master’s in public health…will allow us to reach students we might not otherwise be able to reach,” says Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer.
2021
Sports
New Coach for Women’s Basketball
New women’s basketball coach Melissa Graves inherits a group that reached its first-ever Patriot League championship game under head coach Marisa Moseley (CAS’04), who led the team to new heights after coaching at BU for only three years. The squad placed second in the 2021–2022 Patriot League preseason poll. Formerly an assistant coach and the recruiting coordinator at Wake Forest, Graves is eager to build on the team’s impressive foundation.
2021
Philanthropy
$8 Million Gift from Richard Shipley to Expand Technology’s Role in Education
An $8 million gift from Richard Shipley (Questrom’68,’72), a BU trustee emeritus, will help the University expand digital learning, a goal outlined in its 2030 Strategic Plan. Shipley’s gift will fund the Shipley Center for Digital Learning & Innovation, an all-University resource, which will be associated with the Center for Teaching & Learning and will be overseen by the associate provost for digital learning and innovation.
2021
Research
New Center for Innovation in Social Science
The new Center for Innovation in Social Science, according to Deborah Carr, founding director, is “a one-stop shopping point” for learning about social science research, events, education programs, internships, media coverage, and collaboration opportunities. The center is among the “cornerstone initiatives” of the CAS Strategic Plan for Arts & Sciences.
2021
Commencement
Class of 2020 Gets Long-Awaited Send-Off
The COVID-postponed 147th Commencement was held on Nickerson Field on October 3. “COVID robbed you of a traditional senior year,” Dr. Victor J. Dzau (Hon.’20), president of the National Academy of Medicine, said in his Commencement address to the 1,818 graduates who returned for the long-awaited ceremony. They traveled from 46 states and represented 61 countries. “You have already demonstrated incredible resilience and fortitude,” Dzau said. “You have prevailed and are here today with each other.”
2021
Research
Antiracism Center Director Ibram X. Kendi Wins “Genius” Grant
The National Book Award–winning historian and scholar, whose research and gift for communicating ideas with policymakers and everyday people alike have made him a leader of a national movement around antiracism, has been selected as a 2021 MacArthur fellow. Kendi joined BU in 2020 and is a College of Arts & Sciences professor of history and the University’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. He, along with the other 24 fellows, receives a no-strings-attached $625,000 award spread over five years, in recognition of their exceptional creativity, achievements, and promise for future contributions.
2021
Campus
School of Dental Medicine Celebrates Completion of Expansion and Renovation
The University celebrated the opening of the redesigned and expanded Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine. The three-year $115 million project incorporates state-of-the-art technologies in the education programs for future dentists and the treatment facilities they use to provide care for patients from nearby Boston neighborhoods. The updated and expanded patient treatment center is equipped with new dental chairs in 100 patient treatment spaces, digital radiography equipment, and a team of lab technicians to assist faculty and students.
2021
Community
New LGBTQIA+ Center for Faculty & Staff and New Director
The center is one of the University’s 2030 Strategic Plan components. University Provost Jean Morrison and Vice President and Associate Provost for Community and Inclusion Crystal Williams wrote that the center will “serve as a hubway for our workplace community, bringing together LGBTQIA+ colleagues from our Charles River, Medical, and Fenway Campuses through programming, events, and shared gathering space.” Debbie Bazarsky has been named the new director of the center. Bazarsky has spent two decades in the diversity and inclusion field, at Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, Princeton, and Ohio State University.
2021
Campus
First Day Back for Fully Residential Campus
September 2 marks the first day back to a fully residential campus for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country and emptied the campus in March 2020. In-person classroom instruction returns, student clubs and organizations can meet in person, workouts at FitRec can resume, and gathering with friends in University dining halls and at BU Athletics events is again possible. In an effort to stop the spread of COVID, masks and weekly COVID tests are still a part of everyday life.
2021
Philanthropy
MassMutal Donates $1 Million to Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences
MassMutual’s donation is the first partnership for the fledgling academic unit. The money will be spread out over three years, with two primary purposes: to create the MassMutual Professor of the Practice Fund and to launch the MassMutual Fund for the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, which will aim to hire a program manager and software engineer to support experiential learning activities; organize diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the center; and award approximately six $10,000 MassMutual Externship stipends to undergraduates.
2021
Community
BU to Require Faculty, Staff to Get Vaccinated against COVID-19
“We all share responsibility for the health of the Boston University community,” President Robert A. Brown wrote in a letter to employees. “We previously mandated that all our students be vaccinated for the fall 2021 semester. It is critically important that our faculty and staff are also vaccinated. We hoped to accomplish the goal of community-wide vaccination without a mandate but kept the option of requiring vaccination open if we did not reach our goal.”
2021
Learning
BU Launches Data Science As an Undergraduate Major
Drawing on various topics in traditional STEM disciplines, the new Bachelor of Science in data science, available in fall 2022 and offered by the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (CDS), provides students with the foundational knowledge and practical training in algorithmic and statistical data analysis, machine learning, and software engineering—crucial competencies in a world increasingly defined by computation, big data, and artificial intelligence.
2021
Campus, Community
Return to Campus on June 14
Campus repopulation at 50 percent capacity begins June 14. During a recent webinar-style Town Hall to prepare for the gradual return, President Brown acknowledged faculty and staff anxiety and emphasized the importance of vaccinations. The findings from the Committee on the Future of Staff Work were sent out in late June.
2021
Commencement
Commencement 2021
Boston University’s 148th Commencement was unique but a great success. Because of the need for social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic, two separate ceremonies were held: one for advanced degree graduates in the morning, one for graduating seniors in the afternoon. There was no procession or family and friends allowed in the stands, but both ceremonies were livestreamed.
2021
Research
BU Launches Infectious Diseases Policy Center
Founding Director Nahid Bhadelia says the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases Policy & Research will create important and accurate knowledge about emerging infectious diseases and share it with public health experts, lawmakers, and the general public—a crucial need at a time when misinformation has endangered human health globally.
2021
Campus, Firsts
BU Declares Juneteenth an Official University Holiday
BU’s decision to add Juneteenth as an official holiday is part of an ongoing effort to make BU “the diverse, equitable, and inclusive community that best embodies our values,” President Robert A. Brown announced in a letter to the University. Juneteenth, long celebrated in the African American community, is traditionally observed on June 19, marking the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in America—in Texas, where the holiday began—were told they were free.
2021
Community, Learning
St. Elizabeth’s Joins List of MED Teaching Hospitals
As part of an agreement between the University and Steward Health Care, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton will become BU’s newest teaching hospital. The five-year partnership deepens and expands the existing relationship between BU and St. Elizabeth’s in a way that benefits students, faculty, and patients.
2021
Philanthropy, Research
BU and Red Hat Extend Partnership for Cloud Research
BU and Red Hat, the world’s leader in open-source solutions, extend their partnership for five years. The renewal includes Red Hat donating software subscriptions valued at $551.9 million and committing $20 million to fund research and education in open source and emerging technologies. The Collaboratory, as the partnership is called, began in 2017 with $5 million in grants from Red Hat.
2021
Campus
BU Requires Students to Get COVID-19 Vaccine
Students enrolled in fall semester classes are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. BU joins schools across the country taking this same step to return campus life to normal after more than a year of disruption from the pandemic.
2021
Sports
Kevin Nylen Named Men’s Soccer Head Coach
After a three-year stint as the head coach of Florida International University’s (FIU) men’s soccer team, Kevin Nylen takes the helm of Men’s Soccer at BU. His former team made the Conference USA tournament all three seasons under his direction and made the NCAA Tournament during his first season in charge. Five of his former players were drafted by Major League Soccer teams.
2021
Leaders
Wheelock’s Interim Leader, David Chard, Appointed New Dean
David Chard, who led Wheelock College of Education & Human Development as interim dean since the merger of BU’s School of Education and Wheelock College, has been appointed dean of the college. “Lucy Wheelock viewed education as a path to a better society,” Chard says of the 19th-century early education pioneer who founded what became Wheelock College. “BU Wheelock College will be at the vanguard of this important work.”
2021
Research
New Wheelock Policy Center Examines Educational Inequities
The Wheelock Educational Policy Center (WEPC), a new interdisciplinary hub for research, will inform policy decisions that impact educational outcomes for historically marginalized students. The center’s research will focus on rethinking policies that have contributed to persistent inequities within the education system for students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners, among others.
2021
Leaders
Sujin Pak Appointed New Dean of the School of Theology
Sujin Pak is the new dean of the School of Theology, the oldest United Methodist Church seminary in the United States. Pak hopes to focus on LGBTQIA+ inclusion, visibility for STH faculty’s academic and social justice work, and silver linings taken from remote learning.
2021
Campus, Community
BU Gives First COVID-19 Vaccines
Nearly a year after Student Health Services began fielding calls about strange flu-like symptoms, BU began the painstaking process of inoculating as many as 45,000 people—students, faculty, and staff—across its campuses against COVID-19.
2020
Community, Learning
Student COVID-19 Safety Campaign Gets National Recognition
F*ck It Won’t Cut It, the student-led campaign to encourage students to take preventive measures against COVID-19 to stay safe on campus, gains national attention from public health leaders. The American Marketing Association asked the student team to lead a virtual audience engagement session at its 2020 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and the group spoke at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webinar for university administrators and health staff.
2020
Community
BU-Supported Wind Farm Generates Clean Electricity
BU is buying clean energy from the South Dakota wind farm that the University enabled, fulfilling a goal of our Climate Action Plan. BU will buy 205,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually for 15 years from wind farm developer, builder, and operator ENGIE North America. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says BU has the largest single, active, clean power purchase agreement out of the 126 colleges and universities in the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, a consortium of organizations that voluntarily commit to clean power.
2020
Campus, Community
Newbury Center Will Support First-Generation Students
BU announces a new support hub for first-generation students from matriculation through graduation. The Newbury Center is named for and endowed by a contribution from Newbury College, which closed in 2019 after more than half a century serving students of all backgrounds, 70 percent of whom were first in their families to go to college. At BU, about 17 percent of undergraduates and 18 percent of the freshmen are first-generation college students.
2020
Philanthropy, Research
Rockefeller Foundation Awards $1.5 Million to BU Antiracism Center
The Rockefeller Foundation, a global science-driven philanthropy founded more than a century ago, is giving the BU center $1.5 million over two years to tackle questions around racial disparities in the United States—and to provide solutions. While most of the grant is unrestricted, a significant portion will fund the center’s COVID-19 Racial Data Tracker.
2020
Community, Leaders
New Trustees Committee on Diversity and Inclusion
The Board of Trustees has created a new Diversity and Inclusion Committee to further the University’s antiracism agenda. The committee’s creation comes in a year of racial introspection for the University, and the country.
2020
Global, Learning
Ascending the Ranks of Times Higher Ed
BU advanced 7 spots, to number 54, in the latest Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings. The London-based magazine and data analyst compared more than 1,500 universities in 93 nations. THE lauded the University’s prodigious faculty scholarship, small student-to-teacher ratio, access to varied cultural events, research productivity, robust study abroad program, and diverse international student population.
2020
Campus
Launch of Phase 4: Implementation of Strategic Plan
The new Strategic Plan establishes a vision for the future of Boston University, and a set of measurable goals to guide institutional investments between now and 2030. BU’s strategic priorities are: a vibrant academic experience; research that matters; diversity, equity, and inclusion; community, big yet small; and global engagement. BU is entering Phase 4 of the Strategic Plan, which will run through early 2021, and will engage stakeholders across BU to develop specific actions to turn the plan into reality.
2020
Campus
2020’s Historic Move-In
During BU’s longer-than-usual 2020 Move-In, students have mostly positive things to say about their return to residential life. They admit to being leery about the future of the fall semester, given that many schools have pulled back on plans to reopen and are now opting for fully online teaching and learning.
2020
Philanthropy, Research
Twitter and Square Cofounder Donates $10 Million to BU Antiracism Center
Jack Dorsey, Twitter and Square cofounder, donated $10 million to Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, just six weeks after it was launched by leading scholar Ibram X. Kendi. Of the total gift, $9 million will go to the center’s endowment and $1 million will be available for immediate use, allowing the center to hire staff and fund its first research and policy teams on COVID-19 racial disparities.
2020
Leaders
BU Creates Senior Diversity Post, Taps Longtime Trustee
President Robert A. Brown announced that Andrea Taylor will relinquish her seat on the Board of Trustees and start her new position as BU’s first senior diversity officer on August 17. Her new post is a leadership position, reporting directly to the president, who, in collaboration with other University leaders, will advance an agenda of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
2020
Campus
BU Children’s Center Gets Expanded Home, Now Accepts Infants
In its new home in a completely renovated early-20th-century mansion in Brookline’s historic Cottage Farm neighborhood—within walking distance of the George Sherman Union—the new Children’s Center has triple the space of its old home at 32 Harry Agganis Way, allowing an increase in the number of children it can serve and enabling it to begin caring for infants (starting at eight weeks old) and younger toddlers. The center accepts children up to those entering kindergarten.
2020
Research
BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories Tackles COVID-19
NEIDL scientists are working to develop a vaccine for the virus that has killed more than one million people worldwide. Doctors are just beginning to understand its intricacies—how it affects patients, how it is transmitted, and who is at greatest risk of complications and death—as well as its long-term effects. Led by director Ronald Corley, a School of Medicine professor, NEIDL researchers have been working with live samples of the novel coronavirus since March and often collaborate with the wider research community.
2020
Sports
Patriot League Cancels Fall Sports Seasons
After weeks of striving to maintain a fall sports season by reducing travel and altering schedules to accommodate risks caused by the coronavirus, Patriot League officials announced that all fall sports schedules have been canceled, but that teams will still be allowed to practice and train. The decision was a painful blow for more than 100 BU student-athletes and coaches across soccer, field hockey, and cross country teams.
2020
Philanthropy, Research
Vertex Foundation Gives $1.5 Million to BU Antiracism Center
The gift will support the center’s research and data collection to identify innovative policies that may reduce or eliminate racial disparities in the United States. To help the center enhance relationships in, and dialogue with, the community, the foundation’s donation will also support the center’s annual public symposium on a topic relating to antiracism. The nonprofit Vertex Foundation is a long-term source of charitable giving and part of the corporate giving commitment of Boston-based global biotechnology company Vertex Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
2020
Community
Pain, Anger, and Hope as BU Comes Together to Talk Race and Racism
Amid a charged national climate, almost 5,000 students, faculty, staff, and alumni logged on for the BU Day of Collective Engagement: Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles—an array of webinars held following weeks of national protests over recent, high-profile police killings of Black people across the country. While the current protests were front of mind for many, conversations also focused on effecting change in hiring, curriculum, and other areas within the academy.
2020
Commencement
Class of 2020 Commencement Planned for May 2021
Boston University will give the Class of 2020 “an appropriately festive, in-person Commencement” in May 2021, “on or around” the same weekend it says farewell to the Class of 2021, President Robert A. Brown announced. BU’s original plan to hold the 2020 event in August or early fall of 2020 proved not to be feasible, due to ongoing concerns about the safety of mass gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.
2020
Campus, Learning
BU Campuses to Reopen with In-Person Classes in Fall
The residential experience of Boston University will resume this fall, President Robert A. Brown announced in letters to new and returning students. But, he wrote, it will be a “very different campus,” than what students, faculty, and staff are accustomed to—with COVID-19 testing and tracing, a blend of in-person and remote teaching and learning, redesigned experiences inside campus residences, dining halls, classrooms, and labs, and daily activities where masks and social distancing are expected.
2020
Leaders, Research
Ibram X. Kendi to Join BU and Launch BU Antiracism Center
One of the nation’s leading scholars and historians of racism will join Boston University’s faculty on July 1 and launch the BU Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi, 37, is the author of the 2019 best-selling book How To Be an Antiracist. He won the National Book Award in 2016 for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. The new center will foster collaborations across the University; build multidisciplinary problem-centered research teams, and collect, organize, and utilize data on racial inequity.
2020
Campus, Learning
BU Excels in Latest Grad Rankings from U.S. News & World Report
Several BU schools and programs advanced in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of the country’s best graduate schools. The School of Law jumped 3 spots to number 20 among 198 law schools. Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation's Occupational Therapy program retained its first-place ranking. Sargent’s Speech-Language Pathology program jumped 2 spaces, to number 10. Questrom School of Business full-time MBA program rose 2 spaces to 48th, among 477 business schools ranked.
2020
Campus, Community
BU to Set Up COVID-19 Testing for Students, Faculty, and Staff
Boston University announced plans to set up its own COVID-19 testing program this fall for faculty, staff, and students—a critical step toward repopulating its residential campus. Samples will be tested for the coronavirus at a lab inside the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. Specialized robots will help speed the process, and results will be delivered electronically.
2020
Commencement
2020 Metcalf Cup and Prize Conferred on LAW’s Sarah Sherman-Stokes
Sarah Sherman-Stokes teaches students how to be immigration lawyers by being immigration lawyers. They represent immigrants in court under her supervision. They visit detained clients in jail. Sherman-Stokes’ teaching—and action—has helped win national recognition for BU’s immigration law program and the University’s most prestigious award for educators. A gift from the late Arthur G. B. Metcalf (Wheelock’35, Hon.’74), a BU Board of Trustees chair emeritus and former professor, funds the Metcalf Cup and Prize and the Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching, created in 1973 and presented at Commencement.
2020
Commencement, Firsts
MED Class of 2020 to Make History with Early Graduation
Lending new credence to the school’s informal motto, “frontline medicine,” MED’s Class of 2020 will graduate a month earlier than scheduled so these new MDs can do their part to combat the coronavirus pandemic—and without the glory and ritual of an in-person convocation. Instead, they will graduate remotely, with a virtual—and memorable—ceremony conducted via Facebook Live.
2020
Campus, Learning
President Brown Outlines BU’s Path Forward
A system for rapid testing and contact tracing. Technology for remote and in-person teaching and learning. New and better hygiene and public health practices on campus. Keeping our campus community together while we’re apart. Our whole effort, President Brown says, is focused on restoring the residential campus for teaching and research. “We will bring back the residential environment of BU and it will be as strong as ever.”
2020
Commencement
Commencement Postponed
Prioritizing safety amid the pandemic, Boston University is postponing its 147th Commencement scheduled for May 2020, to either late August or early fall, President Robert A. Brown announced. For the 7,200 soon-to-be graduates, it is emotionally wrenching news and the deferral of a milestone moment in their young lives.
2020
Campus
BU Students Go Remote, Online Teaching and Learning Extend through Spring
March 16 marks the beginning of something no other students have experienced in the 181-year history of the University: a mostly empty campus, with teaching and learning being done remotely from offices, living rooms, kitchens, and bedrooms around the world because of the fast-spreading coronavirus. Boston University will extend remote teaching and learning through the spring semester for its 35,000 students and 4,000 faculty.
2020
Firsts, Sports
Men’s Basketball Upsets Colgate, Wins First-Ever Patriot League Championship
Boston University Men’s Basketball clinched a 64-61 victory over Colgate University, winning the 2020 Patriot League Tournament, their first championship since joining the league in 2013. Third-seeded BU defeated the top-seeded Raiders in a thrilling game on Colgate’s home court and is slated to advance to their first NCAA Tournament appearance since 2011.
2020
Global
Coronavirus Impacts BU Study Abroad
University officials have kept up frequent contact with students studying abroad and their families, partner institutions, and staff members about the status of classes, travel plans, and emerging needs related to COVID-19. The unpredictable nature of the pandemic has meant that countless contingencies must be accounted for, including when students find themselves at the center of where an outbreak occurs or experience difficulty returning home or to their original host site.
2020
Leaders, Research
Eric Kolaczyk Named New Director of Hariri Institute
College of Arts & Sciences Professor of Mathematics and Statistics Eric Kolaczyk will replace the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering’s founding director, Azer Bestavros, who was recently appointed associate provost of the new Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. Kolaczyk’s work across bioinformatics, computational neuroscience, and even social work has earned him an international reputation. His appointment further strengthens BU’s position in the burgeoning fields of computing and data sciences.
2020
Campus, Community
Expanded Thurman Center Gets a New Look on Campus
The relocated and expanded Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground (HTC) opens at 808 Commonwealth Ave., the latest addition to a culture and arts city block that includes CitySpace, the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre, and CFA’s Production Center. With windows looking out on Comm Ave and the BU Bridge, HTC’s increased visibility - both literal and figurative – is wholly intentional, redoubling the University’s commitment to frank discussion and the cross-pollination of ideas. Balancing public spaces like a performance venue and open floor plans with private spaces like a tech-free meditation room, the new, larger HTC comforts and invigorates students in ways impossible in its former space.
2019
Campus, Research
BU’s Center for Computing & Data Sciences Breaks New Ground by Design
The energy-efficient Center for Computing & Data Sciences taps a geothermal well underground as a natural energy source. With state-of-the-art insulation and natural light, the 345,000-square-foot building will be warm in winter and cool in summer, all without using fossil fuels. It has also been designed to be resilient to coastal flooding.
2019
Leaders, Research
Azer Bestavros to Lead BU’s Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences
A William Fairfield Warren Professor who gained international prominence as the founding director of BU’s Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, Azer Bestavros has been named associate provost for computing and data sciences.
2019
Firsts, Research
BU’s First Computational Artist-in-Residence Reinvents Invention
Francisco Alarcon, BU’s inaugural computational artist-in-residence, works with ENG and CFA students to explore the use of software algorithms, graphic design, fabrication tools, and cutting-edge robotics to create multidisciplinary artwork projects. This new residency is a partnership between the BU Arts Initiative and the Hariri Institute, with additional support from Innovate@BU, CFA, the School of Visual Arts, and BU Spark!
2019
Leaders
Margaret Low Named General Manager and CEO of WBUR
With the completion of the CitySpace venue, BU builds on its reputation as a cultural destination with live-events programming. Low brings expertise as a leader of live-events strategy at The Atlantic, senior vice president for news at NPR, and senior producer for All Things Considered.
2019
Leaders
Board of Trustees Welcomes New Members
Cynthia Cohen (MET’77), Michael D. Fricklas (LAW’84), and Jane Moncreiff join the board, along with Nathaniel Dalton (LAW’91), who becomes a regular member after serving ex officio while chair of the Board of Overseers. “New members bring new insights and perspectives from their professional lives and their interest in higher education,” says President Robert A. Brown.
2019
Research
ENG’s Muhammad Zaman Addresses the Global Refugee Crisis in 2019 University Lecture
Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Muhammad Zaman and his lab collaborate with partners at BU and institutions around the world to develop cheap, easy-to-use computational tools and experimental methods to improve education, medicine, and overall quality of life in under-resourced nations and communities of people who have been displaced.
2019
Leaders, Research
LAW’s Danielle Citron Named a MacArthur Fellow
Danielle Citron, whose pioneering and policy-shaping work in countering hate crimes, revenge porn, and other cyberspace abuses has made her one of the nation’s leading privacy and constitutional law scholars, has been named a 2019 MacArthur Fellow, an award often referred to as a “genius grant.”
2019
Campus
Board of Trustees Green-Lights University’s Investments in Data Sciences
The board approved construction of the 19-story Center for Computing & Data Sciences, which will be the tallest building on campus and will bring the Hariri Institute for Computing and the mathematics and statistics and computer science departments under one roof. The trustees also approved formation of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, which will serve as an interface between the traditional academic departments and faculty and students interested in computing and data sciences.
2019
Campus, Philanthropy
Comprehensive Campaign Final Tally: $1.85 Billion
Far surpassing its original goal of $1 billion, the campaign drew to a close in September, demonstrating the tremendous generosity and collective will of the BU community. More than 175,000 people donated to the campaign, which was launched to support financial aid, faculty and research, and facility improvements.
2019
Learning
BU Leaps 13 Spots in Times Higher Education World University Rankings
London-based THE, a magazine and data analyst of higher education, assessed almost 1,400 institutions around the world. the University earned distinction on the global stage, advancing 13 spots to 61.
2019
Learning
BU Advances in U.S. News & World Report Rankings
BU is on the move, up two spots to number 40 in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of National Universities. BU also climbed a notch in the magazine’s ranking of Most Innovative Schools.
2019
Learning
BU Boosts Financial Aid to 100 Percent of Calculated Need
In a continuing effort to make a BU education affordable and create a more socioeconomically diverse campus, the University is expanding its financial aid program to meet the full need for all domestic students who qualify for financial aid, starting with the freshman class entering in fall 2020.
2019
Learning
Questrom to Launch Online MBA via edX
The University is investing in the capability to deliver high-quality, large-enrollment online graduate programs, which could be key in the near future, says Jean Morrison, BU provost and chief academic officer. Created in 2012, the edX platform has more than 21 million registered users, representing every country in the world, who have enrolled in more than 75 million courses. The online MBA was designed from the ground up for the global online learner.
2019
Leaders, Philanthropy
Karen Engelbourg Named Senior Vice President for Development & Alumni Relations
As vice president for development, Karen Engelbourg managed individual giving during the wildly successful $1.85 billion comprehensive campaign (the fundraising target was reset after gifts surpassed the initial $1 billion goal), overseeing a 90-person team. She was chosen as the next senior vice president for development & alumni relations as a result of a national search conducted by a six-member committee of trustees and senior leaders.
2019
Campus, Research
BU Establishes New Data Sciences Faculty Unit
The new Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences will bolster University efforts to hire and retain faculty across all disciplines that intersect with computing and data sciences. Another aim of the new unit is to facilitate educational and research programs that attract ambitious and accomplished undergraduate and graduate students and prepare them for careers of the future.
2019
Leaders
New College of Communication Dean Mariette DiChristina
The first woman to lead Scientific American, a globally respected publication since its founding in 1845, Mariette DiChristina (COM’86) was also the executive vice president of its parent company, Springer Nature, overseeing Nature and related journals. As editor in chief and senior vice president of Scientific American, she increased digital traffic by more than 500 percent and won a National Magazine Award.
2019
Leaders
Stan Sclaroff Named Dean of Arts & Sciences
Stan Sclaroff has distinguished himself in a number of leadership roles since joining the CAS faculty in 1995. An internationally respected scholar, he founded the computer science department’s Image & Video Computing group, studying machine learning, human-computer interaction, and computer vision (which seeks to automate functions performed by the human visual system). He served as dean ad interim of CAS—the largest of BU’s 17 schools and colleges—since 2018.
2019
Commencement
National Academy of Sciences President Tells Grads Truth Still Matters
Commencement speaker Marcia McNutt (Hon.’19) was the first woman elected president of the National Academy of Sciences and the first female editor in chief of the Science journals. She has led responses to global catastrophes such as earthquakes in Japan and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. McNutt is a vocal critic of “junk science”: “Whether the issue is healthcare, economics, education, or immigration, your University education arms you with the skills to determine who and what to trust.”
2019
Leaders
Kenneth Elmore Named a Pillar of Higher Education
Associate Provost and Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore (Wheelock’87) is among 17 professors and administrators nationwide who have been named Pillars of the Profession by the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators, a Washington, D.C., student affairs organization. The award honors educators of “sustained professional distinction” and “significant lifetime contributions,” as recognized by colleagues, students, or friends.
2019
Sports
Women’s Hockey Wins Beanpot
The women’s ice hockey Terriers won the 41st Women’s Beanpot Tournament, their first Beanpot championship since becoming a varsity team in 2005. BU seized the title with a 3-2 sudden-death overtime win over the Harvard Crimson.
2019
Campus, Community
A New Venue in a New Hotbed for Culture
WBUR, Boston’s National Public Radio station, housed at Boston University, opens a new cultural events space. In an area that is fast becoming a hotbed for the arts, CitySpace—on Comm Ave near the College of Fine Arts and new Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre—will produce up to 200 programs a year, including debates, interviews, readings, theatrical performances, and family programming, with all events streamed live and archived for on-demand access.
2019
Sports
New Coach, New Attitude for Women’s Basketball
Marisa Moseley (CAS’04) was a defensive star and team captain who, in 2003, helped lead the Terriers to their only NCAA tournament appearance. Moseley, who coached with Geno Auriemma at UConn, is the first alumna to lead BU’s program. To her, excellence begins with instilling a sense of pride and meaning in everything the players do, no matter how trivial.
2018
Community, Learning
BU Boosts Effort to Recruit Low-Income Students
BU joins American Talent Initiative (ATI), an alliance of colleges and universities with a shared commitment to improve opportunities for accomplished students from low- and moderate-income households. ATI hopes to expand its membership to all US colleges and universities with six-year graduation rates consistently above 70 percent.
2018
Learning, Philanthropy
Trustee Richard Cohen’s Challenge Bolsters Need-Based Financial Aid
Cohen (CGS’67, Questrom’69) pledges to match, dollar for dollar, new or increased gifts for need-based undergraduate financial aid—doubling their impact—up to a total of $1 million. Donors who take the Cohen Challenge help the University in its ongoing quest to make undergraduate education affordable for all students.
2018
Campus, Philanthropy
Alum Pardee Pledges Another $25 Million for Global Studies
Five years after donating $25 million to endow the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Frederick Pardee (Questrom’54, Hon.’06) committed additional support for developing the next generation of global leaders through education and research. His gift could pave the way for a stand-alone building for the school he helped to create.
2018
Leaders
Creative Writing Program Instructor Sigrid Nunez Wins National Book Award
Writer-in-Residence Sigrid Nunez has won the National Book Award for Fiction for The Friend, a New York Times best seller. Nunez has taught MFA students in the Creative Writing Program since 2011. The Friend is her eighth book. Along with the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award is considered the highest literary honor a published work can receive in a given year.
2018
Firsts, Research
First Woman Named BU’s Innovator of the Year
ENG’s Xin Zhang won the faculty award for “world-class research into inventions and innovations that benefit humankind”—for her work with metamaterials: small-scale structures that react to electromagnetic or acoustic stimulation. From improving the resolution of MRI scans to building better pressure sensors for oil wells to developing noise-filtering technology, Zhang’s discoveries offer real-world applications.
2018
Campus
University Develops Strategy for Coming Decade
Students, faculty, staff, and the community help draft a new 10-year strategic plan, which outlines how the University spends its money and which activities it undertakes. Informed by current concerns such as federal funding for research, diversity on campus, rising operational costs, and building on academic excellence, the plan articulates goals and outlines steps for achieving them.
2018
Campus, Learning
BU to Build New Data Sciences Center
Aiming to become a leader in a booming field, BU plans to build an iconic new 17-floor tower that will bring math, statistics, computer science, and the multidisciplinary Hariri Institute under one roof. BU’s evolving computational science curriculum, renowned faculty and staff, and proposed Charles River Campus building at the corner of Comm Ave and Granby Street (where a parking lot now sits) will assure BU’s place in the vanguard of the field.
2018
Campus, Philanthropy
Dahod Family Alumni Center Opens in BU Castle
The center’s grand opening during Alumni Weekend showcases the facilities and gathering places for alumni, along with new Alumni Association offices. With a newly renovated pub, now called Fuller’s BU Pub, the iconic Castle provides a draw for alums to come home to BU. More than 800 donors supported the enhancement, including BU Trustee Shamim Dahod’s (CGS’76, CAS’78, MED’87) $2 million gift, along with other remarkably generous contributions.
2018
Campus
University Announces Massive Wind Power Purchase
Boston University will buy nonpolluting power from a South Dakota wind farm for 15 years beginning in 2020, a major step to advance our Climate Action Plan. Increasing energy efficiency, using renewable sources, and the greening of our campuses are essential to our goal of reducing BU’s carbon emissions to zero by 2040.
2018
Campus, Research
BU’s Rise in Rankings Powered by Innovation, Collaboration
Boston University was named one of the most innovative national universities for the first time in the 2019 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings. BU also climbed to 36th in Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education rankings. New models for education and research “are paying off in terms of novel experiences for our students and faculty, and hopefully will lead to some groundbreaking discoveries that will have an impact on society,” says Vice President and Associate Provost for Research Gloria Waters.
2018
Campus
Modernizing Myles Standish
BU’s oldest dorm has become its newest dorm. Myles Standish Hall, housing 730 students, has undergone a $133 million, LEED-registered renovation, which increased the number of single bedrooms. The redo also includes modern amenities, study rooms, a game room, music practice rooms, a community kitchen, and a new public park with maple and elm trees and benches that invite students and the community.
2018
Firsts, Leaders
Questrom School of Business Appoints New Dean
Susan Fournier, a marketing and management professor at BU for 13 years and leading international expert on brand marketing, becomes the next dean of the Questrom School of Business. Dean Fournier is the first woman to lead the school. As dean, she says, she will work to increase interdisciplinary programming, ensure Questrom’s financial security, and offer coursework aligned with both students’ and employers’ needs.
2018
Firsts, Research
NEIDL Receives First BSL-4 Pathogens
Boston University’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) has begun work with its first Level-4 pathogens, the Ebola and Marburg viruses. Ebola has become a global public health threat, infecting and killing thousands during the 2014 outbreak. There is no available FDA-approved vaccine or therapy for Ebola, or the related Marburg virus. NEIDL researchers are excited to begin work with these pathogens, which could speed the development of remedies.
2018
Firsts, Learning
BU Hub Starts in Fall 2018
Boston University’s incoming freshman class in 2018 will be the first class to register for the new BU Hub. This new University-wide general education program “ensures that all undergraduates, no matter their major, develop intellectual capacities that will teach them to thrive throughout their lives,” says Hub managing director Amanda Urias.
2018
Campus, Leaders
University Creates New Data Department
The new Analytical Services & Institutional Research department (ASIR), combining the institutional research department with information services and technology, will improve analysis of data sources relevant to the University, such as social media, devices connected to BU’s network, and digital scholarship and research. Universities are analyzing data more and more to better serve student needs and guide institutional strategic planning.
2018
Campus, Leaders
K. Matthew Dames Appointed New University Librarian
A nationally recognized scholar in copyright law and innovator in library sciences, new University Librarian K. Matthew Dames’ priorities include increasing access to scholarship and strengthening ties to Boston. He says the University’s desire to be a cultural institution at the center of Boston was one of the things that most attracted him about the job.
2018
Community, Philanthropy
BU Awards Merit Scholarships to BPS Grads
For Thomas M. Menino and Community Service Award Scholars, BU grants four-year support to Boston public high school graduates matriculating at the University, covering the full cost of tuition without loans. More than a third of incoming Menino and Community Service scholars are the first in their families to attend college, and almost half of those are first-generation Americans.
2018
Research
BU Opens Lung Cancer Center on Medical Campus
A new Johnson & Johnson Innovation Lung Cancer Center on the Medical Campus, resulting from a partnership between the University and Johnson & Johnson Innovation, is aimed at speeding development of cancer interventions and cures. BU researchers will work closely with members of Johnson & Johnson’s Lung Cancer Initiative to develop biomarker-based early-screening tests for lung cancer, as well as therapeutics to arrest or eradicate the disease in its earliest stages.
2018
Sports
Albie O’Connell Named New Men’s Hockey Head Coach
Once a Terrier, always a Terrier. As an undergrad, O’Connell (CAS’99) had 108 career points and led his team in scoring as captain his senior year. He played in two Frozen Fours and won a Hockey East title. Considered one of the NCAA’s top recruiters as a coach, O’Connell returned to BU in 2014. During his tenure as associate head coach, BU finished as the national runner-up in 2015, collecting the Beanpot and Hockey East titles. The Terriers reached the NCAA quarterfinals in 2017 and 2018. O’Connell calls his promotion to head coach “the opportunity of a lifetime.”
2018
Campus, Community, Firsts
BU-Wheelock Merge to Create New College
BU and Wheelock College join to become the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development. BU’s newest college combines the doctoral programs and research capabilities of BU’s School of Education with the early childhood expertise of Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies.
2018
Leaders, Learning
Noted Scholar of Inequality to Lead School of Law
Angela Onwuachi-Willig, renowned legal scholar and expert in racial and gender inequality as well as civil rights law, is named LAW dean. Drawn by BU’s history of access and diversity, Dean Onwuachi-Willig is expected to increase the school’s current focus on interdisciplinary scholarship, social justice, and public service.
2018
Commencement, Leaders
US Rep. John Lewis to 2018 Grads: Be Bold and Courageous
Congressman John Lewis (Hon.’18) (D.-Ga.), BU’s 2018 Commencement speaker, urges BU graduates to “get out there and vote like you’ve never voted before.” Lewis, a legendary civil rights leader and one of the original 13 Freedom Riders, draws a standing ovation, saying “Be optimistic, don’t get lost in a sea of despair, but be bold, be courageous, and all will work out.”
2018
Community, Global, Leaders
MLK, 50 Years Later
The BU community reflects on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (GRS’55, Hon.’59) 50 years after his death. Through a series of videos and essays compiled by BU Today, BU faculty, students, staff, and alumni discuss what Dr. King means to them.
2018
Leaders, Research
U.S. News Rankings: BU Grad Schools among Nation’s Best
Several University schools advance in nationwide rankings of the country’s best schools. Among the highlights: both the School of Social Work and School of Public Health rank at #10, and BU Law’s programs in healthcare law and tax law rank at #4 and #7, respectively.
2018
Firsts, Global
BU Opens New Global Development Policy Center
Former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks at the opening of BU’s new Global Development Policy Center, housed at the Pardee School of Global Studies. The center’s mission is “to advance policy-oriented research on financial stability, human well-being, and environmental sustainability across the globe,” says center director Kevin P. Gallagher, a Pardee School professor of global development policy.
2018
Leaders
New BU LA Programs Head
Charisse McGhee-Lazarou, former vice president of NBC’s primetime programs, becomes head of BU’s Los Angeles Programs, which provide internship-based experiences in the entertainment industry for BU students. She plans to create an innovative, modern program that prepares students for and helps them navigate an ever-changing and challenging field.
2018
Sports
BU Student and Alums Skate for Olympic Gold
BU student Jordan Greenway (CGS’17, CAS’19) joins alums Matt Gilroy (MET’09) and John McCarthy (CAS’09) representing Team USA in ice hockey at the PyeongChang Olympics in South Korea, along with Team USA assistant coach Scott Young (CAS’87, MET’18). Also skating for more Olympic gold as part of Team Canada are alums Jennifer Wakefield (CAS’12) and Marie-Philip Poulin (CAS’15). Poulin scored the gold medal–winning goals in both 2010 and 2014.
2018
Campus, Leaders
New CFA Dean Is Arts Historian and Advocate
BU names Harvey Young as the new dean of the College of Fine Arts. Young, a prominent theater historian and arts advocate and author of the award-winning book Embodying Black Experience, champions transformative experiences of the arts and plans to promote and expand BU’s reputation in the arts.
2018
Campus, Leaders
Jorge Delva Is New Dean of School of Social Work
A prolific author and researcher and a nationally recognized expert on the economically disadvantaged, Jorge Delva joins BU as the new dean of the School of Social Work. His goal is for SSW to become the school of choice for students pursuing a top-notch education in social work research and practice.
2017
Firsts, Research
NEIDL BSL-4 Lab Gets Green Light
The University receives final approval from the Boston Public Health Commission to conduct research at Biosafety Level 4 at BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. This authorization paves the way for BU researchers to study Ebola, Marburg, and other BSL-4 pathogens at the Medical Campus facility.
2017
Community
BU Trustees Approve Aggressive Climate Action Plan
The BU Board of Trustees approve a Climate Action Plan to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions across Boston-area campuses and fund broad infrastructure improvements in preparation for flooding or heat surges in the coming decades. The plan recommends new building efficiencies, changes to renewable energy sources, and ways to make climate change a bigger part of the University’s curriculum and research.
2017
Campus, Philanthropy
New Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre Opens
BU officially opens a new 75,000-square-foot theater complex, which houses the 250-seat Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and the CFA Production Center. The new building is made possible with a $10 million gift from BU trustee Steve Zide (LAW’86), with the theater named to honor of his wife’s parents, Joan and Edgar Booth.
2017
Campus, Global
BU Ranks Sixth Internationally in Employability of Graduates
Times Higher Education says the employability of BU alumni ranks 6th internationally and 5th in the United States, up from 11th internationally and 7th nationally in 2016. In breaking the top 10 globally, the University joins Harvard (2nd), Columbia (3rd), MIT (4th), Stanford (7th), Yale (10th), and the list-topping California Institute of Technology.
2017
Campus, Research
University Launches $20 Million Innovate@BU
Funded by a partnership between the University and a group of alumni, BU creates Innovate@BU with support of $20 million for the first 10 years. The University-wide initiative gives all students opportunities to engage in solving real-world problems and hands-on innovation.
2017
Community, Firsts, Leaders
BU Announces First Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion
BU names award-winning poet Crystal Ann Williams to the newly created position of associate provost for diversity & inclusion. Charged with promoting diversity among the University’s ranks, Williams’ goals include helping Provost Jean Morrison develop practices and programs to further diversify BU’s faculty.
2017
Research
Andrew Emili Heads New Center for Network Systems Biology
Andrew Emili, a professor in the MED biochemistry and CAS biology departments, becomes director of the new University-wide Center for Network Systems Biology. Emili aims “to create a highly collaborative, multidisciplinary research hub that tackles important fundamental questions in the field by forging new links with interested researchers across BU’s campuses, the greater Boston area, and the world.”
2017
Learning
BU Doubles Number of Posse Scholars
The University marks its 10th year of partnership with the Posse Foundation, which sends groups of students to college together, tuition-free for four years, with the idea that a supportive unit is key to future success. With the addition of a California cohort to the University’s long-time relationship with the Atlanta Posse program, BU doubles the number of scholarship recipients from the foundation.
2017
Research
BU Wins $20M for NSF Engineering Research Center
The National Science Foundation awards BU a $20 million, five-year grant to create a multi-institution Engineering Research Center, with the goal of synthesizing personalized heart tissue for clinical use. The grant, which is renewable for a total of 10 years and $40 million, is designed to accelerate an area of engineering research—in this case, bioengineering functional heart tissue—that is likely to spur societal change and economic growth within a decade.
2017
Philanthropy
Trustee Rajen Kilachand Makes Historic Gift
Alumnus and Trustee Rajen Kilachand (Questrom’74, Hon.’14) becomes the largest donor in Boston University history with a $115M gift to support research. Divided into two parts, the first designates $15M to the new Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. The second part creates a $100M endowment called the Rajen Kilachand Fund for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering, which will promote, in perpetuity, groundbreaking research at the intersection of the life sciences and engineering across the University.
2017
Philanthropy, Research
New Kilachand Center Links Key Research Disciplines
Boston University officially opens the $150M Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering, a 170,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art research facility that brings together life scientists, engineers, and physicians from the Medical Campus and Charles River Campus and promises to speed life-changing developments in the fields of human health, environment, and energy.
2017
Sports
BU Athletic Hall of Fame Inducts Six
BU Athletics names six Terrier legends to the BU Athletic Hall of Fame: veteran distance-running coach Bruce Lehane, former Athletics administrator Dick Fecteau (SED’51), and four accomplished athletes, Bob Danville (MET’82), Matt Gilroy (MET’09), Robyn Kenney (CAS’02, GRS’07), and April Setterlund (Questrom’11). All of this year’s athletes earned All-America honors as Terriers.
2017
Commencement
Network Exec to Class of 2017: Write Your Own Life Story
Commencement keynote speaker Bonnie Hammer offers BU grads a storyteller’s advice for post-college life. “When you leave today, you’ll begin to write the most powerful, most meaningful, and most entertaining story of your life,” says Hammer (CGS’69, COM’71, SED’75, Hon.’17), chair of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group. “It’s the story of you.” Over her career, Hammer has overseen USA Network, Syfy, E! Entertainment, Oxygen, and Universal Cable Productions.
2017
Research
New Center to Advance Understanding of the Brain
Boston University creates the Neurophotonics Center and recruits one of the world’s preeminent researchers in the field to lead it. David Boas joins BU from the faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he pioneered new technologies to see deep into the brain. His work has improved our understanding of the organ’s healthy functioning and offers new pathways to understand how strokes, migraines, Alzheimer’s disease, and other neurologic maladies affect it.
2017
Global
Times Higher Ed Names BU “International Powerhouse”
Times Higher Education (THE) names Boston University to a list of 53 “international powerhouse” institutions, based on the strength of the University’s research, from medical to physical sciences. “International powerhouse” means that the school has the best chance of being grouped with—or even ahead of—THE’s most elite global “old stars,” which include the University of Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Princeton.
2017
Global, Leaders, Learning, Research
Rankings Put BU Among Best Nationally, Globally
Boston University continues to climb in the U.S. News & World Report rankings of best graduate schools in the country. Among BU’s professional schools, the School of Education moved up 9 notches, to 36th. Other BU schools that fared well in the 2018 rankings: the College of Engineering placed 34 out of 198 peers, and the School of Law 23rd of 197. BU’s School of Medicine was named 30th best for research and 34th for primary care education out of 118 schools nationally.
2017
Campus, Learning, Philanthropy
$10M Gift Names New CFA Theater
Global financier and BU Trustee Steve Zide (LAW'86) donates $10M to name a new BU theater, which is part of a 75,000-square-foot artistic complex under construction on the Charles River Campus. The gift is a tribute to his theater-loving wife, Janet Zide, and will be named after his in-laws, Joan and Edgar Booth, who brought the joy of stage performance into his family's life.
2017
Learning
School of Hospitality Administration Offers Master’s Degree
To meet the need of the hospitality industry for more job applicants at all levels of employment, the School of Hospitality Administration adds a one-year graduate degree. For the past 36 years, the school has offered only undergraduate programs. “Companies now require those at upper management to have a solid foundation in the business of hospitality,” says Makarand Mody, SHA assistant professor of hospitality marketing. “A master’s degree is becoming the norm, not the exception, for progression in the industry.”
2017
Learning, Philanthropy, Research
Trustee’s Gift Ignites Student Entrepreneurship
BU Spark!, a new incubator for technology-driven student entrepreneurship, comes to life thanks to a $1M gift from the Mullen Family Foundation. Based at the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, BU Spark! will offer programs and resources to help students pursue next-stage development of projects.
2017
Community, Learning, Research
BU and Red Hat Forge $5M Partnership
Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open-source enterprise software, joins the University in a five-year partnership aimed at advancing research into emerging and translational technologies, such as cloud computing and big data platforms. The collaboration will involve researchers from both Red Hat and BU, and will provide opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to drive new ideas and new technologies. The plan includes support for two research labs, one at Red Hat’s new corporate space in Boston’s Seaport District and one on the Charles River Campus.
2017
Philanthropy
$2M Gift Names the Dahod Family Alumni Center
BU Trustee Shamim Dahod (CGS’76, CAS’78, MED’87) and her husband, Ashraf Dahod, donated $2M toward a new alumni center. The Dahod Family Alumni Center will be housed on the second and third floors of the BU Castle, along with the Alumni Relations office. The gift bolsters a $9M top-to-bottom restoration project of The Castle, preserving its distinctive architecture and décor.
2017
Global, Learning
BU Grads Ranked Among the World’s Most Employable
The employability of BU graduates is ranked 11th in the world and 7th in the nation, according to Times Higher Education. The 2016 Global University Employability Ranking survey queried the opinions of thousands of management-level recruiters and managing directors of international companies.
2016
Global, Leaders, Research
University Lands 32nd in U.S. News Global Rankings
BU places 32nd in this year’s assessment of global universities by U.S. News & World Report. The University matched last year’s ranking despite increased competition from a pool of universities that was expanded by one-third. BU also earns high marks in several academic disciplines. In a field of 200 programs evaluated, BU ranked 38 in neuroscience and behavior, 43 in molecular biology and genetics, and 56 in immunology. In a field of 400 programs evaluated, BU ranked 26 in physics and 63 in biology and biochemistry.
2016
Leaders, Research
Award–Winning Professor Takes Over at Kilachand Honors College
Carrie Preston, an associate professor of English and director of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at CAS, takes the helm of Kilachand Honors College, succeeding founding director Charles Dellheim who led the school since 2011. Preston is the recipient of a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, the CAS Wisneski Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the University’s United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award. She also received the national De La Torre Bueno Prize, given to a dance studies book, for Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance (Oxford University Press, 2011). “I hope to develop a curriculum that attends to issues of diversity and multiplicity, prejudice and power, in a global context,” Preston says.
2016
Leaders, Research
Surgeon and Former US Health Official to Lead New Health Innovation Institute
Jonathan Woodson, a vascular surgeon and former Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs for the US Department of Defense, is tapped to lead the University’s new Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy, based in the Questrom School of Business. Woodson, who served with the DOD from 2010 to 2016, assumes the Larz Anderson Professorship in Management and Professor of the Practice. A collaborative endeavor, the new institute will focus on expanding health system research initiatives, deepening connections between scholars, policymakers, and corporations, and advancing curricular initiatives across the University.
2016
Campus, Leaders
Trustees Adopt Broad Climate Change Strategy
Expanding the University’s efforts to curb the impact of climate change, locally and globally, the Board of Trustees approves a broad strategy, including the avoidance of investments in companies that extract coal and tar sands oil, the most carbon-intensive fuels. The board also authorized a Climate Action Plan that will map out goals and timetables for greater energy efficiency, green energy use, and climate research and education on campus. President Brown announces he intends to fold these efforts and goals into the University’s Strategic Plan.
2016
Leaders, Research
University Continues Climb in U.S. News & World Report Rankings
Boston University reaches an all-time high in the 2017 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings, moving up two notches to tie for number 39 among national universities and continuing a sustained rise in reputation across the board. The University’s overall jump echoes widespread gains in graduate program rankings for several BU schools and colleges, released by U.S. News the previous March.
2016
Campus
BU Sells Kenmore Square Properties
Boston University reaches an agreement to enter into a long-term ground lease for nine Kenmore Square properties with Related Real Estate Fund II. Related Beal, a real estate developer with deep Boston roots, will redevelop the buildings. The deal, expected to close in the fall of 2016, includes the sale of 310,000 square feet of commercial space on the north side of the square.
2016
Research
$350M to Combat Antibiotic Resistance
As part of a sweeping effort to solve the critical problem of antibiotic resistance, the US Department of Health & Human Services announces that it has selected the Boston University School of Law (LAW)—and Kevin Outterson, a BU professor of law—to lead a novel $350 million trans-Atlantic public-private partnership to spur the preclinical development of new antibiotics and antimicrobial rapid diagnostics and vaccines.
2016
Leaders, Learning
Digital Education Leader to Move University Beyond MOOCs
Chrysanthos Dellarocas, the Richard C. Shipley Professor of Management at the Questrom School of Business, is named to the new position of Associate Provost for Digital Learning and Innovation. He had been leading the Digital Learning Initiative (DLI), the team that, in part, developed the massive open online courses (MOOCs), the popular computerized classes that can reach a global student audience. In his new post, Dellarocas will oversee the DLI and two other University groups: the Center for Teaching & Learning and the educational technology team in Information Services & Technology.
2016
Commencement
Former CBS Executive Tells Graduates How to Survive Career Anxiety
Former CBS Entertainment Chair and BU Trustee Nina Tassler (CFA’79, Hon.’16) addresses the Class of 2016, along with thousands of friends and family at this year’s Commencement ceremony. Tassler, the longest-serving woman leader in broadcast history, focuses her talk on her lifelong career anxiety, and credits BU with teaching her the skills to reinvent herself and survive in a tough business. Whether “taking a Holocaust class taught by Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74) or listening to lectures by Edward Albee (Hon.’10) or even attending a rally protesting tuition hikes . . . my goals were shifting, and the person I always felt I was, was evolving, too.”
2016
Philanthropy, Research
Shipley Foundation Gives $10.5M to Redirect Fight against Prostate Cancer
Richard Shipley, a BU trustee, technology investor, and former CEO, gives the School of Medicine $10.5 million to create a prostate cancer research center on the Medical Campus, along with a website devoted to treatment options. The Shipley Prostate Cancer Research Center will focus on personalized medicine, seeking genomic approaches to determine which cancers are aggressive and need to be removed or radiated and which are not, eliminating unnecessary treatment with devastating side effects.
2016
Learning
Innovative University-Wide General Education Program Proposed for 2018
The proposal calls for BU undergraduates to develop core skills, knowledge, and habits of mind through both coursework and cocurricular programs that will prepare them to succeed. Called the BU Hub, the proposal is the work of a 14-member faculty task force that solicited input from hundreds of members of the University community in dozens of meetings over 15 months.
2016
Leaders
Prominent Energy Expert Tapped to Lead New Institute for Sustainable Energy
Peter Fox-Penner is taking the helm at the University’s new Institute for Sustainable Energy, where he will spearhead efforts to expand the school’s education programs in sustainability. Before arriving at BU, Fox-Penner was a principal and chairman of the Brattle Group, where he advised major US power companies and grid operators, government agencies, and international clients on electric power and environmental policy issues.
2016
Campus, Community
Thurman Center Turns Up Volume on Cultural, Racial Conversations
After meeting with numerous students, including leaders of groups representing communities of color and LGBTIQ students, President Brown establishes a task force to raise the profile of the Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground and make it even more impactful when it comes to cultural and racial discussions. To kick off the initiative, a series of community listening sessions is launched.
2016
Learning
New MED Curriculum Aimed at Stemming Explosive Rise in Opioid Misuse
To address the opioid overdose crisis in Massachusetts, Governor Charlie Baker had asked the deans of the commonwealth’s four medical schools (BU School of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Tufts University School of Medicine, and University of Massachusetts Medical School) for help in designing a list of core competencies needing to be covered during medical school to help combat prescription drug misuse, addiction, and overdose fatalities.
2016
Leaders, Philanthropy
Board of Trustees Elects Kenneth Feld Its New Chair
Kenneth Feld (Questrom’70), who chairs the $1.5 billion Campaign for Boston University and is one of the University’s most generous benefactors, is elected by the Board on December 10, 2015, and will officially begin his term in September. Feld succeeds Robert A. Knox (CAS’74, Questrom’75), who has served as Board chair since 2008.
2016
Leaders
Tanya Zlateva Appointed Dean of Metropolitan College
With more than 25 years of experience as a faculty member and administrative leader at MET, Dr. Zlateva, the interim dean since 2013, was seen as having the knowledge, capability, and vision to shape MET’s future as an innovator at the forefront of continuing education within an increasingly competitive environment.
2016
Campus, Community, Philanthropy
University Commits $50 Million for CFA Renovations
The University is bringing the theater arts program back to Comm Ave after a 33-year residence at the Boston University Theatre on Huntington Avenue. To that end, a new studio theater and a production facility will be built on the 808 block and a makeover of 855 will replace its forbidding street-level concrete façade with arched windows.
2015
Campus, Community, Research
New Military Health Center Up and Running
In light of the still largely unmet health needs of US service members and the breadth of expertise at BU, the School of Medicine launches the Center for Military & Post Deployment Health, which will coordinate the University’s many and various military-focused research and service projects.
2015
Global, Learning, Research
BU Ranks #32 in Global Universities, Says U.S. News & World Report
BU jumps five spots in the latest ranking of the best “global universities” by U.S. News & World Report, rising to 32 from last year’s 37. It is the magazine’s second annual compilation in this category, and “affirms how competitive we continue to be among the world’s premier research universities,” says Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer.
2015
Campus, Community
University Sells BU Theatre
In a move that concludes a mutually rewarding 33-year partnership with the highly regarded Huntington Theatre Company, the University decides to sell the 890-seat theater on Huntington Avenue and move College of Fine Arts production, design, and black box facilities to the Charles River Campus.
2015
Philanthropy
Campaign for Boston University Goal Boosted to $1.5 Billion
The singular success of the Campaign for Boston University, which had raised $888 million of its $1 billion goal two years before its scheduled close in 2017, persuades the Board of Trustees to boost the campaign’s goal to $1.5 billion and extend its run through 2019.
2015
Learning
BU Ranks in Top 50 Universities Nationwide
Boston University moves up one notch, from 42 to 41, in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of the nation’s colleges and universities. BU is also named to the lists of “high school counselors’ top college picks,” “foreign student factor,” and “best colleges for veterans.”
2015
Community, Learning, Philanthropy
Yawkey Foundations Gift Goes to Work
Over the summer, the Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Program provides stipends for 14 BU sophomores and juniors. The program, which pays a stipend of $1,500 for an internship during the academic year and $3,000 for a summer internship, is funded by the Yawkey Foundations, which pledged $10 million in September 2014.
2015
Learning, Research
A CFA Center for All Things Beethoven
The new College of Fine Arts Center for Beethoven Research, a resource for all things Beethoven and a magnet for scholars from around the world, has been a work in progress since 2012. The center, based in the School of Music department of musicology and ethnomusicology, features a digitized library and is collaborating with Beethoven centers around the world to host events and conferences.
2015
Commencement
Meredith Vieira Urges Students to Embrace Nonconformity
Journalist and TV host Meredith Viera tells a Commencement crowd of 25,000 that being open to new possibilities isn’t always easy but warns: “Don’t ever be a conformist for convenience’s sake.”
2015
Leaders
Ann Cudd Appointed Dean of College of Arts & Sciences
Vice Provost of the University of Kansas Ann Cudd takes over as dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences on August 1. Cudd, a philosopher who studies oppression, adamantly opposes the idea of downplaying the liberal arts for more professionally oriented fields like business and technology. She believes the humanities teach us how to look at society differently and ask ourselves the tough ethical questions.
2015
Campus, Philanthropy
Welcome the Questrom School of Business
The School of Management is renamed the Questrom School of Business in recognition of a $50 million gift to the School from Allen Questrom (Questrom ’64), retired chief executive officer of several of the nation’s largest department and specialty stores, and his wife, Kelli. The gift, given through the Allen and Kelli Questrom Foundation, is the largest in Boston University’s history, endows 10 faculty chairs, and enables planning to establish a new graduate program facility.
2014
Learning, Research
University to Expand Big Data Expertise
The University Provost launches a data science faculty hiring initiative to bolster BU’s leadership in the burgeoning field and advance the University’s focus on interdisciplinary research. With more and more disciplines seeking to harness the power of data science, BU will hire up to six data scientists over the next three years in such areas as computer science, statistics, and systems engineering. Data scientists use mathematical models to analyze voluminous data and draw knowledge from it that can be used in a variety of applications, from health care and business to design and communications. The new faculty members will augment ongoing hiring in data-science-related disciplines.
2014
Campus, Research
New Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation
President Robert A. Brown announces a new, state-of-the-art Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering (CILSE) to give science a more prominent address on the University’s main thoroughfare. Breaking ground in spring 2015, this $140 million, nine-story research facility, scheduled to open in 2016, will bring together life scientists, engineers, and physicians from the Medical and Charles River Campuses. The building will be dedicated to systems neuroscience, cognitive neuroimaging, and biological design. With shared, flexible lab spaces, meeting rooms, and other common areas, CILSE is being designed to encourage the kind of collaborative, interdisciplinary research that will be the hallmark of 21st-century science. The center will contain lab space for approximately 160 researchers, postdoctoral students, and staff, 270 graduate students, and additional space for future faculty.
2014
Leaders
New Dean Chosen for College of General Studies
Natalie McKnight, who for the past year had served as interim dean of BU’s College of General Studies, is named dean by President Robert A. Brown and University Provost Jean Morrison. McKnight, a member of the CGS faculty since 1990, had held a number of key leadership positions within the college. As dean, McKnight will oversee the second largest undergraduate college at BU, with approximately 1,150 students.
2014
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Systems Neuroscience
As brain science takes a prominent position on the nation’s research agenda, BU launches a new interdisciplinary research center to explore the roots of psychiatric diseases and neurological impairments.
The Center for Systems Neuroscience (CSN) is led by Michael Hasselmo, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of psychological and brain sciences. The inaugural director, Hasselmo says the center’s researchers will work to further enhance the understanding of how brain systems mediate behavior. “We plan to build on the exciting research of neuroscience faculty at Boston University,” he says. “And we will foster new collaborations to generate experimental and computational advances in the field.”
2014
Leaders
Sargent College Welcomes VA Specialist Christopher Moore
Veterans Affairs official Christopher Moore is the new dean of BU’s Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences. For the past three years, Moore managed the VA’s Sensory Systems and Communications Disorders Program, and he spent the previous four years as a scientific review officer at the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders.
2014
Leaders
Sandro Galea is New Dean of School of Public Health
Internationally respected physician and epidemiologist Sandro Galea will lead BU’s School of Public Health starting January 1, 2015. Galea is known for his research linking health to issues like poverty and lack of education and was named one of Time’s epidemiology innovators in 2006.
2014
Leaders
Pardee School of Global Studies Names Adil Najam Dean
The new Pardee School of Global Studies, dedicated to improving the human condition around the world, names its new leader. Inaugural dean Adil Najam is a professor of international relations and an expert in international diplomacy. Najam was also the director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future from 2007 to 2011.
2014
Campus, Learning, Philanthropy
New Pardee School of Global Studies Opens
The Pardee School of Global Studies is BU’s newest college and has the simple yet monumental mission of improving the human condition around the globe. It was founded with the $25 million donation of Frederick S. Pardee (Questrom’54, ’54, Hon.’06) and offers five majors: international relations, Asian studies, Middle East and African Studies, European Studies, and Latin American studies.
2014
Commencement
Mass. Governor Urges Grads to Be Present for Others
At the University's 141st Commencement at Nickerson Field, Deval Patrick advises graduates that life’s journey is often more important than getting the answers and that real human connection requires intimacy. “Sometimes, the open-ended question is not about getting to the answer, but rather about the journey, and Google has little to do with that,” the governor said. “Real human connection, the nuance of empathy and understanding, is often more gradual and elongated than Twitter. It requires intimacy. And I worry that the demands of constant communication and infinite information through social media are crowding out intimacy.” The governor concluded his Commencement address by asking a promise of his listeners: “Sometime today, put your tablet or smartphone aside, look your Mom and Dad in the eye, and tell them that you love them. Hold your roommate’s hand and tell them you appreciate them for helping get you through to today.…Thank one of your teachers in person. Be present—and see what a difference it makes in your lives and the world.” His remarks earned a standing ovation from the graduates and guests.
2014
Campus, Learning
BU to Launch Joint MD/JD Program
Boston University will offer a joint Doctor of Medicine (MD) and Doctor of Law (JD) degree program starting in fall 2014, becoming only the second New England university, along with Yale, to offer the dual degree. The new program will be highly selective, initially accepting two students a year.
Citing the increasing interaction between the fields of health and law and recent changes to government regulations and health policy, MED and LAW administrators believe that the program will appeal to students interested in health care administration, health care legislation, medical licensing, and intellectual property issues focusing on medical research.
2014
Campus, Learning, Research
EPIC Welcomes Industry to BU
Companies like Apple and GE are bringing high-tech facilities back home from overseas. While a positive development, the problem is now there aren’t enough engineers trained in highly technological methods. The Engineering Product Innovation Center (EPIC) helps fill that void.
Funded through the University, ENG alumni and friends, and a $18.8M gift, the College of Engineering is transforming its curriculum so that all students, regardless of major, will graduate with a thorough understanding of how to develop new products, from concept and design through manufacturing and delivery. EPIC’s 15,000-square-foot space houses a computer-aided design (CAD) studio, demonstration areas, fabrication facilities, materials testing, and project management software. The facility has a flexible design and offers students supply chain management software, 3-D printers, robotics, laser processing, and around-the-clock digital access to the studio’s online resources.
“We’re hoping to set a standard for the training of engineers for the future manufacturing economy in this country,” says EPIC Director Gerry Fine, an ENG professor of the practice.
2013
Campus, Community, Global, Learning
New Initiative on Urban Life
Outgoing Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, whose leadership transformed Boston, joins the BU faculty as codirector of the Initiative on Cities (IoC), which will convene the best current and former leaders of cities to share with academics and scholars from around the world their practical knowledge of how urban areas drive growth. The IoC will be affiliated with BU’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and Graham Wilson, a College of Arts & Sciences professor and chair of political science, will codirect the IoC.
“Cities are the engines that drive regional growth,” says Menino. “Jobs, economic development, housing, and education all contribute to their success or failure, but it’s the leadership of those cities that makes the difference.”
2013
Campus, Sports
Let Games Begin on New Balance Field
Over the summer, West Campus students watch a tired brick building and a parking lot transform into a 110,000-square-foot athletic field and state-of-the-art underground parking facility, made possible by a $3 million donation from Brighton-based shoe manufacturer New Balance. Returning students discover the bright green New Balance Field, which is dedicated by the Board of Trustees in a ceremony on September 19.
The new field essentially doubles BU’s playable green space and makes it possible to bring field hockey back to campus and to add men’s lacrosse to the roster of Terrier varsity teams, as well as to provide practice space for varsity teams and the more than 8,000 students who play intramural and club sports.
2013
Campus
BU Appoints First Chaplain for International Students
The Rev. Brittany Longsdorf starts in June as the University’s first chaplain for international students, embodying what she calls “a true spirit of hospitality that I think is theologically backed.” (Hospitality is both an injunction and a path to reward in the Bible, as exemplified in a story in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus offers God’s kingdom to those who welcome the stranger.)
2013
Campus, Leaders, Research
University Jumps in U.S. News & World Report Rankings
Boston University jumps 10 positions, from 51 to 41, in U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of the nation’s colleges and universities, and now appears on a short list of “Up and Comers,” chosen for their “promising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty, student life, campus, or facilities.” The publication makes special note of BU’s robust undergraduate research program as well as its extensive study abroad opportunities, and it cites the undergraduate business and engineering programs as among the best.
2013
Community
Lu Lingzi Memorial Scholarship Honors Slain Student
Just days after the Boston Marathon bombing, BU Trustee Kenneth Feld (SMG’70), chair of the Campaign for BU, proposes establishing the Lu Lingzi Memorial Scholarship Fund. Thanks to support from more than 1,300 individuals across the globe, the scholarship fund named for Lu reaches its $1 million goal in record time.
“This tragedy reflected the best and the worst of humanity,” says Senior VP for Development & Alumni Relations Scott Nichols. “You see this horrific, senseless terrorist act and then you see the response from total strangers worldwide.”
The Lu Lingzi Memorial Scholarship Fund endows two scholarships for graduate students.
2013
Commencement
TFA’s Kopp Rallies Grads
Wendy Kopp developed the idea for a national teacher corps as her senior thesis. Just a year later, her vision became Teach For America, an organization that trains recent college graduates to teach in some of the nation’s most needy public schools.There’s no how-to guide for how to change the world,” Kopp said at BU’s 140th Commencement. “We are making progress today not because of a big idea, but because of a big commitment. Because we plunged in and embraced the journey of constant learning and improvement.”
2013
Campus, Learning
BU Joins Online Education Group edX
In May, BU joined edX, the Harvard- and MIT-led online learning platform that shares the University’s commitment to using technology’s benefits for students on campus as well as off. The partnership gives BU professors more flexibility in designing their courses and discerning which educational methods work best with students.
2013
Campus
Mayor Approves Master Plan
In May, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino (Hon.’01) signed off on the Charles River Campus Institutional Master Plan (IMP), clearing the way for a series of strategic changes on BU’s Charles River Campus that will reflect the University’s growth and prominence and improve its standing in the future.
2013
Campus, Community, Research
State OKs NEIDL Research Levels
In March, the Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs gave approval for BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) to conduct research at Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) and Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4). The Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) certificate clears the way for the issuance of final state permits for the project.
2013
Campus
Moody’s Upgrades BU’s Bond Rating
The rating agency recently raised the University’s bond rating to A1 from A2. The upgrade “reflects BU’s sustained improvement in its student market and research profile following years of strategic governance and leadership changes that have elevated BU to a more competitive position,” Moody’s wrote in a report on its decision. “The University is also beginning to generate philanthropic support more in line with its size and prominence and has launched its first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign.”
2013
Global, Learning
Study Abroad Expands
BU offers programs in more than 30 cities on 6 continents across the globe, with concentrations ranging from anthropology to public health to finance. This year, 7 new programs were offered in locales such as Washington, DC, Zanzibar, Rio de Janeiro, Shanghai, Dakar, and Paris.
2013
Leaders
New SHA Dean
Arun Upneja takes over the reins at SHA after 15 years as associate dean for academic affairs at Pennsylvania State University’s Schreyer Honors College and professor of hospitality management at Penn State’s School of Hospitality Management, where he established new interactive honors programming for students and faculty.
2013
Campus
Record-Setting Applicant Pool
Some 52,532 students applied for admission at Boston University, a nearly 20% spike over last year’s record of 44,006 applicants. The University saw a 19% increase in applications from African American students and Hispanic and Latino students, and a 39% increase from international students.
2012
Research
Association of American Universities
BU was invited to join the Association of American Universities (AAU), an elite organization of 61 other leading research universities in the United States and Canada. "Boston University’s admission to the AAU is first and foremost an acknowledgment of the quality and productivity of our outstanding faculty,” says Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer.
2012
Campus, Philanthropy
Campaign for Boston University Is Announced
The community holds a dazzling, celebratory gala to mark the formal announcement of the Campaign for Boston University—BU’s first major comprehensive fundraising effort. With an ambitious goal of raising as much as $1 billion for financial aid, faculty support, research, and facility improvements, the campaign will place the University on a list of just 53 universities that have attempted 10-figure fundraising initiatives. More important, it will help elevate the University’s academic standing, extend its global impact, and make the BU experience more accessible for students across the broadest possible socioeconomic spectrum.
2012
Campus, Philanthropy
Kilachand Honors College Students Get Their Own Home
The Kilachand Honors College receives another $10 million donation from Rajen Kilachand (Questrom’74), who donated $25 million last year and renamed the University Honors College for his parents, Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand. The newest gift will renovate Shelton Hall, now known as Kilachand Hall, as a dorm for Kilachand Honors students.
2012
Campus, Philanthropy
Redstone Gives $18M to School of Law
The Viacom executive chairman’s gift will kick-start the construction of an addition to LAW’s main tower at the center of the Charles River Campus. The addition will bear the media giant’s name. “I feel a very close relationship with Boston University,” says Redstone (Hon.’94).
2012
Campus, Learning, Research
BU to Establish Autism Center of Excellence
The National Institutes of Health announces an award of $10 million to establish an Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) at Boston University. The five-year grant will fund research devoted to the least probed aspects of the increasingly common disorder—autism spectrum disorder—which remains baffling for scientists. With the NIH funds, the BU center, which will marshal researchers from several fields to study autism and language, is the first federally designated center in the nation established to address the critical needs of this largely neglected end of the autism spectrum.
2012
Campus, Philanthropy
Center for Student Services Opens
The University invests roughly $70 million in new summer construction, renovations, and technology upgrades. Among the most anticipated projects on the Charles River Campus is the Center for Student Services. The building is now home to six academic advising programs, including the Educational Resource Center, the Center for Career Development, and several College of Arts & Sciences programs, as well as a new dining hall that can accommodate more than 1,000 students.
2012
Sports
First Men’s Varsity Lacrosse Coach Named
Five months after announcing plans to establish a Division I varsity men’s lacrosse team, BU taps 11-year coaching veteran Ryan Polley as the new team’s head coach. Polley spent the last six seasons as an assistant coach at Yale. He helped the Bulldogs claim the 2012 Ivy League tournament title with wins over lacrosse powerhouses Princeton and Cornell, earning the team its first NCAA bid since 1992. BU currently has a club team, which plays in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association’s Pioneer Collegiate Lacrosse League, finishing this past season with a 2–10 record. Lacrosse was officially designated as a club sport in 1972.
2012
Sports
New Sports League
The University accepts an invitation to join the Patriot League, beginning with the 2013–2014 academic year. BU will leave the America East conference, of which it was a founding member in 1979. The University will be the ninth full member of the Patriot League, which, like America East, is a Division I conference. Division I is the highest competitive level recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). “We are very impressed by the academic quality of the institutions in the Patriot League and by the league’s commitment to student athletics while effectively competing at the NCAA Division I level,” President Brown says.
2012
Campus, Philanthropy
State-of-the-Art Med Dorm a Game-Changer
A nine-story building is now home to 208 medical students. The $40 million project was in the works for more than five years, since the MED dean’s advisory board decided to make it more afforable to attend BU’s medical program, which is among the 10 most expensive nationwide.
2012
Philanthropy
First Knox Professorship
The Robert and Jeanne Knox Foundation gives BU $2.5 million to create a professorship. School of Public Health Professor Jonathon Simon is named the inaugural Robert A. Knox Professor. Simon, who leads BU’s Center for Global Health & Development (CGHD), has spent a quarter-century battling childhood illnesses and death in the developing world. The focus on urban health, Knox says, is appropriate for big-city BU, “which in some ways has in its own DNA the problems of living in an urban environment.”
2012
Commencement
Google Chairman Addresses Grads
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, delivers the 139th Commencement address. “You can write the code for all of us,” Schmidt says. “You’re connected to each other in ways those who came before you could never have dreamed of.” While he has spent most of his life in the technology sector, Schmidt also urges students to have “real” conversations with friends and family. “Life,” he says, “is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. Life is not about your friend count. It’s about the friends you count on.”
2011
Campus, Learning, Philanthropy
Kilachand Honors College Opens
Kilachand Honors College welcomes its first class of 75 entering freshmen. The new four-year, campuswide program replaces the University Professors Program. Students will study in cross-disciplinary classes and intensive seminars and tackle a senior research project during their undergraduate studies.
2011
Campus, Community, Research
Green Light for Biosafety Lab
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs announces a draft decision allowing researchers to conduct lower-level biosafety research in BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) on the Medical Campus in Boston’s South End. The first research scheduled for the state-of-the-art facility are two projects involving nonpathogenic tuberculosis.
2011
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
Global Urban Health Program Launched
The Center for Global Health & Development at BU launches a Global Urban Health program that will expand its research agenda addressing issues affecting global populations. The initiative, led by Professor Jonathon Simon, further establishes BU’s role as a major research university.
2011
Philanthropy
$25 Million Gift Largest in BU History
Rajen Kilachand (Questrom’74), a Dubai-based global entrepreneur, pledged $25 million to support the Honors College, whose full name will become the Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand Honors College in memory of his parents.
“His magnificent gift will create an endowment for the Kilachand Honors College that will increase the quality of this innovative program and the range of opportunities it offers for all future generations of Boston University students. Equally as important as his gift, which is the largest in the history of the University, is his insightful understanding of the enduring importance of undergraduate education, both to him and to the University.” — Robert A. Brown
2011
Campus, Research
Rafik B. Hariri Institute
The Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering begins its mission of creating a community of scholars “who believe in the transformative potential of computational perspectives in research and education.” The institute was initiated in 2010 with Trustee Bahaa Hariri’s (SMG'90) pledge of $15 million for interdisciplinary collaboration.
2011
Campus
Footbaths for BU’s Growing Muslim Population
Since 2007, the number of Middle Eastern students at the Center for English Language & Orientation Programs—many of them Muslim—has grown by 175 percent. Muslims are required to perform ablution—the washing of hands, face, and feet—before prayer, but until recently had no choice but to wash in bathroom sinks. The footbaths are a first for the University and considered cutting-edge compared to peer institutions nationwide.
2011
Learning, Research
New Residency in Addiction Medicine
BU is one of 10 institutions around the country to introduce an accredited residency program in addiction medicine.
2011
Commencement
Katie Couric Keynote
From morning TV host to pioneering evening news anchor and charity fundraiser, Katie Couric has traveled the length of American celebrity, a breadth of experience she drew on as the speaker at BU’s 138th Commencement.
“While getting out of your comfort zone can be, well, uncomfortable…today is just the first of many graduations in your life.” — Katie Couric
2011
Leaders
New Provost Named
Jean Morrison is appointed University Provost and Chief Academic Officer. Morrison, a metamorphic petrologist, was previously executive vice provost for academic affairs and graduate programs at the University of Southern California before coming to BU, and she has been a professor of earth sciences and director of the Women in Science and Engineering program at USC since 1988.
2010
Leaders
Hospitality Has New Dean
Christopher Muller is appointed dean of the School of Hospitality Administration. As the new dean, he will bring to the program a decidedly holistic approach—a mix of educational, entrepreneurial, and philosophical. Muller follows James Stamas, who successfully expanded and modernized the School over his 15-year tenure.
2010
Leaders
New Leader at SMG
Kenneth W. Freeman takes the helm as dean of the School of Management. Best known as a turnaround expert, shepherding Quest Diagnostics from a problem-plagued upstart to the world’s leading medical testing company, Freeman succeeds Louis E. Lataif (SMG’61, Hon.’90), who led the School for 19 years.
2010
Leaders
CFA Names New Dean
Benjamín E. Juárez considers himself a conductor first, and with good reason: he’s led orchestras in venues from Shanghai to the Champs-Élysées. Now, he’ll take a new podium as dean of the College of Fine Arts. Juárez succeeds Walt Meissner (CFA’81), who had been dean ad interim for eight years.
2010
Commencement
Class of 1970 Commencement
Nearly 300 members of the Class of 1970 returned to campus from near and far to reunite with classmates and stand shoulder-to-shoulder in full regalia with the 2010 graduating class. Forty years before, during a time of national turmoil, many universities, including Boston University, cancelled final exams and commencement ceremonies due to safety concerns. In 2010, BU was honored to host a weekend of commencement celebrations, including a Service of Remembrance. Swaying back and forth during their private convocation ceremony, the Class spontaneously sang "All we are saying, is give peace a chance," by John Lennon.
“It surprised even me, but I came to tears at the thought of having a commencement for our class...” — Class of 1970 Alum
2010
Commencement
Eric Holder Keynote
Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, delivers the University’s 137th Commencement address. The nation's top cop saluted the progress the country has made in areas such as race relations as he received an honorary Doctor of Laws, invoking both his status as the nation's first African-American attorney general and the fact that the country and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have black chief executives.
“Today’s challenges spur tomorrow’s hope.” — Eric Holder
2009
Philanthropy
Leventhals Pledge $10M
Alan M. and Sherry M. Leventhal pledge $10 million to BU, a contribution intended to motivate substantial parallel gifts for student financial aid and professorships.
“Their timely gift, at a critical phase in the University’s history, will bolster our promise to raise the necessary funds to ensure access for qualified students and to enhance our world-class faculty.” — Robert Brown
2009
Campus
Student Village 2 Opens
The new dorm stands at 33 Harry Agganis Way, on the street named after Red Sox first baseman Agganis (SED’54), BU’s most celebrated athlete. And no, it’s not coincidence that the street address and the number Agganis wore on his jersey are identical. That said, the new building’s formal name seems unlikely to stick; pretty much everyone has adopted the nickname StuVi2 for the new high-rise.
2009
Global, Research
Global Health Mission Expands
With a fresh $10 million funding commitment from President Robert A. Brown, a new name, and proven staying power in the battle to improve health in the world’s poorest communities, the Center for Global Health & Development at Boston University’s School of Public Health is poised to expand its mission and impact.
2009
Commencement
Michael Capuano Keynote
Congressman Michael Capuano addresses the Class of 2009, gathered at Nickerson Field for the University’s 136th Commencement. Capuano, who represents the Commonwealth’s Eighth District (which includes Boston University) in Washington, DC, expresses confidence in the graduates’ abilities, but warns them to resist the temptation to focus only on personal success and material comfort.
2009
Sports
BU Hockey Captures Every Tournament Crown
BU Hockey captures every crown possible—the Ice Breaker, the Denver Cup, the Beanpot, the Hockey East regular season and the Hockey East tournament—en route to the program's fifth national championship. Senior co-captain Matt Gilroy becomes the second Terrier to win the Hobey Baker Memorial Award as college hockey's best player.
2009
Campus
First Geothermal Building
From the outside, 888 Commonwealth Avenue looks like an ordinary building. But 1,500 feet below the street is the core of Boston University’s first geothermal building, the home of BU's International Education Center. Six wells harness the earth’s energy to warm and cool the 95,000-square-foot space—without the use of fossil fuels—and allow for a 3,500-square-foot roof garden in the heart of the city.
2008
Community
Chelsea School Project Ends
Boston University returns management of the Chelsea School System to the City of Chelsea, after 20 years of work and cooperation between Chelsea and Boston University.
2008
Leaders
BU Prof Wins Nobel Prize
Osamu Shimomura, a School of Medicine adjunct professor of physiology and a senior scientist emeritus at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., is one of three winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His research on jellyfish has revolutionized the world of biology.
“If you find an interesting subject, go study it. Don’t stop. There is difficulty in any research—don’t give up until you overcome that.” — Osamu Shimomura
2008
Leaders
Jeffrey Hutter Dean of SDM
Jeffrey Hutter, professor of endodontics and the Herbert Schilder Chair of the endodontics department, is appointed dean of the Goldman School of Dental Medicine. Hutter hopes to continue many of the initiatives started under the leadership of the late Spencer Frankl, who was SDM dean for more than 30 years.
2008
Leaders
STH Appoints New Dean
Mary Elizabeth Moore is appointed dean of BU’s oldest school, the School of Theology. Moore’s research focuses on eco-feminist theology and spirituality, sacramental teaching, and reconciliation theory and practice, and she is an ordained deacon in the United Methodist Church.
2008
Leaders
Tom Fiedler Is COM Dean
The College of Communication welcomes back one of its own, appointing as the new dean Tom Fiedler, the former executive editor of the Miami Herald. Fiedler succeeds Tobe Berkovitz, who was named dean ad interim in September 2006 following the resignation of Dean John Schulz.
2008
Research
Concussion Research
The University launches the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy which links concussions to depression and dementia in athletes and soldiers. The center's research helps lead to significant rule changes in the National Football League and other professional sports.
2008
Commencement
Lawrence Lucchino Keynote
Commencement speaker Lawrence Lucchino, President and CEO of the Boston Red Sox, delivers an address titled, "Life is not about warming yourself by the fire, life is about building the fire."
“Perhaps most memorably, the Boston University Class of 2008 as freshmen and as seniors helped propel the Red Sox to two World Series Championships in your four years here in town. Unprecedented!” — Lawrence Lucchino
2008
Leaders
SED Names New Dean
Hardin L. K. Coleman, a leading University of Wisconsin–Madison educator and psychologist who specializes in preparing school counselors for culturally diverse settings, is named dean of the School of Education. He succeeds Dean ad interim Charles Glenn (SED'87).
2008
Research
1st Genetic On/Off Switch
Jim Collins, a biomedical engineering professor, applies dynamical systems theory to the workings of physiological systems to develop the world’s first genetic toggle switch. The switch, a molecular device that can turn genes off or on, gives researchers a chance to observe how genes interact with different cells throughout the body, in both healthy and diseased systems.
2007
Campus
Choosing to Be Great: BU Launches 10-Year Strategic Plan
The Strategic Plan, titled "Choosing to Be Great: A Vision of Boston University—Past, Present, and Future," sets goals to be carried out over the next decade, with an initial focus on augmenting the programs that are seen as BU’s current strengths and a longer-term plan for recruitment and expansion throughout all schools and colleges. While the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the College of Fine Arts, the School of Law, the School of Management, and the School of Medicine are all identified as key players in the early stages, broader goals include more research funding for students across the University and continued renovations of both residential and community facilities for use by students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
“The great strengths of Boston University are the breadth of excellence stored in its faculty, coupled with its focus on rigorous and well-delivered education. What has emerged is a plan that builds on this foundation, strengthens it, and leverages it to move toward a uniquely broad, but also collaborative University.”—Robert A. Brown
2007
Commencement
Steven Chu Keynote
Speaking to over 5,700 Boston University graduates and 20,000 guests at Nickerson Field at the 134th Commencement, alternative energy scientist and Nobel Laureate Steven Chu underscores that solving the energy problem is the most important challenge ahead. Chu cites that sustainable energy development as crucial to the world's future and counts on technology to mitigate effects of climate change.
“And now you will be able to invest this knowledge and experience not only in attaining your personal goals but in helping your community realize the ultimate promise of democracy: That the combined knowledge and experience of all the people can shape a more just and more secure society." — Steven Chu
2007
Leaders
CAS Has First Woman Dean
Virginia Sapiro, a political scientist and women’s studies scholar, is named dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. She is the first female dean in the College’s 134-year history. During her tenure at University of Wisconsin, she chaired both the political science department and the women’s studies program and was interim provost and vice chancellor of academic affairs.
2007
Research
Center for Neuroscience
The Center for Neurocience is a University-wide initiative to advance cutting-edge interdisciplinary, collaborative research and education on the neural basis of behavior and cognition. Researchers pursue experimental and theoretical-computational approaches that span molecular, cellular, systems, behavioral, and cognitive levels of analysis. The goal is to expand the understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of brain function and to translate these advances into practical applications, including treatment of neurologic and psychiatric disorders and the development of new directions in educational practice.
2007
Learning
Truman Scholar Selected
Meghan Desale, CAS'08, is named a 2007 Truman Scholar, one of 65 students chosen by the Truman Foundation. Starting in Fall 2008, she attends the School of Medicine as a student in the University’s Seven-Year Liberal Arts/Medical Education Program.
2007
Community, Research
SPH Receives Grant for Emergency & Disaster Response
Boston University School of Public Health receives a $2.5 million grant from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to coordinate an effort to improve emergency and disaster response among public health and medical care providers throughout Boston and the metropolitan area.
2007
Campus, Philanthropy
Endowment Reaches $1 Billion Mark
The University’s endowment reaches the $1 billion mark for the first time.
2007
Campus, Learning
Development of Honors Program Started
The University announces the development of a new University-wide honors program and the phasing out of the University Professors Program as a freestanding unit.
2006
Commencement
Leslie Moonves Keynote
Commencement speaker Leslie Moonves, president and CEO of CBS Corporation, tells the crowd that although he lives his life by programming, the graduates should do as he says, not as he does.
“Don’t plan. Look on life not as a fully programmed schedule but as a search. Always keep your options, and your heart, open.”—Leslie Moonves
2006
Leaders
Lutchen Appointed Dean of ENG
Kenneth Lutchen has been a faculty member at BU since 1984. Before being named Dean of Engineering he was Chair of Biomedical Engineering from 1998 to 2006. He has published over 120 peer-reviewed journal articles and has advanced novel experimental, imaging, and computational-based methods for intracellular through whole-organ structure-function relations governing lung disease.
2006
Community, Leaders
George Bush appoints President Brown to Council of Advisors
Boston University President Robert A. Brown is appointed by President George W. Bush to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (2006–2008). Bush reestablished the council in 2001 in an effort to maintain a steady stream of expert advice from the private sector and the academic community on a wide range of scientific and technical matters.
“It is an honor to be selected to advise the government in setting priorities in science and technology for the future of the country,” says Brown. “I view the continued development of our scientific capabilities, through education and new research, as critical to our nation’s standard of living and our economic future”—Robert A. Brown
2006
Campus, Learning
SHA Gets a New Home
The new SHA building is dedicated on September 27, 2006. The new SHA building is dedicated in style, with Boston University President Robert A. Brown as the keynote speaker. "The dedication opens the doors to a new era for the School."
2005
Leaders, Presidents
Robert A. Brown, Tenth President
from 2005–2023
Robert A. Brown, a distinguished chemical engineer and former provost at MIT, became president of Boston University in September 2005. During his tenure, Brown has strengthened the core missions of undergraduate, graduate, and professional education, interdisciplinary work, and research and scholarship across all 17 schools and colleges. He oversaw the implementation of the University’s strategic plan and first major fundraising campaign. Under Brown’s leadership, the University was invited in 2012 to join the Association of American Universities, an organization of leading research universities in the United States and Canada. His 18-year legacy includes dramatic growth in sponsored research, a more diverse student body and faculty, a robust endowment, an exciting new building for data science, and a clear path for the future.
2005
Commencement
Hamid Karzai Keynote
Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, delivers the Commencement Keynote Address.
“Dear graduates, I say again, that your values must continue to guide you, as you embark on your new journey and assume greater responsibility. Our world will remain stratified and divided by exclusively narrowly defined interests unless you seek to build bridges of understanding and cooperation." — Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan
2005
Leaders
New MED Provost and Dean
Dr. Karen Antman is recognized internationally as an expert on breast cancer and other malignancies. Best known among oncologists for developing a standard treatment regimen for sarcomas, as well as her team’s research on blood growth factors, Dr. Antman comes to BU from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
2005
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
Women’s Health Interdisciplinary Research Center
The Women's Health Interdisciplinary Research Center (WHIRC) promotes interdisciplinary research on women's health at the Medical Campus by bringing bench scientists, clinical investigators, and public health researchers together to determine collaborative research directions and obtain funds.
2005
Campus, Learning
The Institute for Athletic Coach Education
The Institute for Athletic Coach Education (IACE) in the School of Education at Boston University focuses on the need for education and training for youth sport coaches. The institute aims to provide present and future youth sport coaches with learning opportunities and resources to help them better understand their role and fulfill their responsibilities as leaders and educators in the community.
2005
Campus, Learning, Research
The Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security
The Center for Reliable Information Systems & Cyber Security (RISCS) promotes and coordinates research and education in system reliability and information security by emphasizing a multidisciplinary approach that includes fields as diverse as reliable and secure computations, engineering, economics, ethics, and law. Current research areas include cryptology, network and software security, software safety, economic and game-theoretic approaches to Internet computing, database security, robust monitoring, and fair and secure file sharing.
2005
Campus
Third BioSquare Building Addition
Boston University, Boston Medical Center, and developer Spaulding & Slye Colliers celebrate the opening of a new building at BioSquare in Boston’s South End. The eight-story, 160,000-square-foot laboratory is the third component of the two-million-square-foot biomedical research park, which at 14 acres is Boston’s largest.
“BioSquare is a thriving development, as this latest addition to its state-of-the-art biomedical research facilities affirms. Boston University is proud to partner with the City of Boston and with Boston Medical Center in helping to grow this important sector of our local and regional economies.” — Robert Brown, Boston University President
2005
Community, Learning
Tulane University Students Enroll for the Fall Semester
Boston University opens its doors to Tulane University students when they are unable to go back to school in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina damage.
2005
Campus, Philanthropy
BU Opens New Buildings
Agganis Arena and the Fitness & Recreation Center open. The Florence & Chafetz Hillel House opens as the center for Jewish life on campus. The Life Science & Engineering Building opens. Graduate housing opens at 580 Commonwealth Avenue.
2005
Community, Learning
Online Degree Completion Program Established
The University initiates its online undergraduate degree completion program, allowing those with an AA or the equivalent credits to earn a Bachelor of Liberal Studies in Interdisciplinary Studies.
2004
Commencement
J. Craig Venter Keynote
J. Craig Venter, a visionary scientist and entrepreneur who was a principal leader in the effort to decode the human genome, delivers the Commencement address at Boston University’s 131st Commencement exercises at Nickerson Field. More than 20,000 guests watch 5,776 students receive their degrees in the largest graduation ceremony in New England.
“New areas of science and subsequent advances are fraught with ethical and social issues with which we must all grapple. Healthy debate is good for society, however it can only happen in a science-literate world." — J. Craig Venter
2004
Campus, Research
Center for the Assessment of Pharmaceutical Practices
The Center for the Assessment of Pharmaceutical Practices opens with the overarching goal to promote the safe and effective use of medications for the nation's public health through research, education, and consultation. The Center offers opportunities for collaboration and development in research and education related to pharmaceutical practices. The center also has a number of educational programs and offers consultative services.
2004
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Biomedical Imaging
The Center for Biomedical Imaging houses a new 3 Tesla Philips MRI scanner for functional, structural, and spectroscopic human and animal studies.
2004
Campus, Sports
Nickerson Field, Home of the Boston Cannons
The Boston Cannons of the Professional Men’s Lacrosse League set up home at Boston University's Nickerson Field; they remain here for three seasons. In 2007, they move to Harvard Stadium.
2004
Leaders
Board of Trustees Governance Changes
The Boston University Board of Trustees adopts sweeping governance changes in the areas of Board structure and term limits, conflict of interest, and Trustee qualifications. These new governance policies are a national model for colleges and universities.
2003
Commencement
George F. Will Keynote
George F. Will delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
“Today the principle that individuals should be judged on their individual merits, not on their membership in this or that group, is still under attack. The attack is against a core principle of an open society—the principle of careers open to talents. Today there are pernicious new arguments for treating certain groups of Americans as incapable of doing what Sam Lacy knew Jackie Robinson could do: compete."—George F. Will
2003
Learning, Research
Nutrition & Fitness Center
Located at Sargent College Clinical Center, BU’s Nutrition & Fitness Center (BUNFC) is established to expand a successful pilot nutrition and physical activity program developed for BU faculty and staff. Integrating the latest developments in scientific research and culinary art, BUNFC helps people achieve realistic health goals.
2003
Research
Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences
The Institute for the Advancement of the Social Sciences serves to advance the study of human affairs in all their variety, i.e., the study of human societies and cultures as they existed in the past and as they exist today through modern culture and nationalism.
2003
Research
Center for Global Christianity & Mission
The Center for Global Christianity & Mission at the Boston University School of Theology explores the most important development in Christianity during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the shift of Christianity's demographic center to the southern hemisphere and parts of Asia. The total number of Christians worldwide continues to grow, even as the European and North American component of the world church has shrunk to less than one-third of the total.
“The center seeks to address several critical aspects of Christianity’s 'shift southward' in the twenty-first century. First, Christianity must be understood as a multi-cultural and global movement, an enduring theological tradition that finds new life in the lived realities of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Second, the dramatic growth of world Christianity begs for analysis of the missionary dimension in all churches, as initiators rather than receptors of mission outreach. Third, growing churches are in need of theologically trained leaders, ranging from seminary professors, to grassroots leaders of indigenous churches. And finally, persons being educated to lead religious communities need to incorporate the understanding of these realities into their ministry and outreach."—Dana L. Robert and Prof. M. L. Daneel, Co-Directors
2003
Campus, Research
Center for Chemical Methodology & Library Development
The Center for Chemical Methodology & Library Development opens at Boston University. It is a new center funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) focused on the discovery of new methodologies to produce novel chemical libraries of unprecedented complexity for biological screening.
“The primary goal of CMLD is to build a better library, but ultimately the molecules housed there will be useful in medicine and in answering basic questions in biology. 'We’re not trying to set up a small pharmaceutical company here at BU,' says Schaus [library developer]. 'We’re actually interested in making compounds that you can use to study biological functions.'”—BU Bridge article
2003
Community
Hotel Commonwealth Opens
The Hotel Commonwealth opens on BU's campus in Kenmore Square. To promote the revitalization effort for Kenmore Square, BU signed on to the hotel project as a financial partner.
2003
Leaders, Presidents
Aram V. Chobanian, Ninth President
from 2003–2005
A world-renowned cardiologist, longtime faculty member, and onetime dean at Boston University School of Medicine, Aram V. Chobanian was appointed president in 2005 (after serving as president ad interim since 2003). Chobanian played a leading role in the merger of Boston City Hospital with Boston University Medical Center Hospital to create Boston Medical Center. His leadership was also instrumental in the development of the BioSquare Research Park and the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories. He assumed his new position at a time of crisis associated with a failed presidential search and problems in University governance. He strengthened the ties between the University and its various constituencies, including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, and kept the University moving forward to fulfill its academic mission.
2002
Commencement
Jon Westling Keynote
BU President Jon Westling tells the Class of 2002 to build on the nation's democratic institutions in his Commencement speech.
"If you want to continue to live in a free and tolerant society, you will have to do a lot more than praise the idea of diversity."—Jon Westling
2002
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Geriatric Social Work
The Institute for Geriatric Social Work is dedicated to strengthening the workforce for an aging society through educational innovation, workforce change, and research. Located at Boston University School of Social Work, IGSW builds upon the School's historical commitment to the field of aging and current strength in gerontological teaching, research, and training. Through innovative and wide-ranging education and training efforts, IGSW helps practicing BSW and MSW social workers—the large majority of whom have received little or no geriatric training—acquire the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to meet the needs of older adults and their family members.
2002
Campus, Learning, Research
Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies
The Center for Judaic Studies (later renamed the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies) coordinates with and supports all academic programs relating to Jewish studies and sponsors lectures, conferences, publications, and cultural programs featuring the films, theater, and music of Jewish studies. Wiesel (Hon.’74), a 1986 Nobel laureate for peace, BU’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, and a UNI professor of philosophy and religion, has taught at the University since 1976. A recipient of 110 honorary degrees and more than 120 other honors, Wiesel has also received many awards for his writings, which include such nonfiction works as the autobiographical Night (1960), The Jews of Silence (1966), and Souls on Fire: Portraits and Legends of Hasidic Masters (1972).
2002
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Memory & Brain
The Boston University Center for Memory & Brain (CMB) is established as a center of excellence in research, training, and teaching in the cognitive neuroscience of memory. The small core group of neuroscientists who compose the CMB complement each other in technical abilities and share the specific interest of characterizing brain mechanisms of memory. The center pursues complementary and collaborative studies aimed at describing the "circuit diagram" for memory in the human brain, teaches at all levels, and trains neuroscientists in this field.
2002
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling
The Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM) opens as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Center. The center's goal is to understand our dynamic sun-earth system and how it affects life and society
"We will not only do new science, but we will also build a robust and operationally useful forecasting tool for both civilian and military space weather forecasters and create novel education programs that will give students at all levels a better understanding of the geospace environment."—W. Jeffrey Hughes, Director
2002
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Information & Systems Engineering
Information and systems engineering research at Boston University is strong and accomplished but also spread across departments, colleges, and schools within the University. The Trustees approve the new CISE in order to foster greater interactions among researchers speaking the same technical language across diverse application domains. CISE provides a home across departments for faculty and students interested in information and systems engineering methodologies and their relevance to application domains encompassing the analysis, design, and management of complex systems.
"As the communications, computing, and information revolution has taken hold, applications encompassing the analysis, design, and management of complex systems have focused research and education on information and systems engineering. Under the leadership of Boston University faculty across multiple departments, this interdisciplinary area has flourished." — David Castanon and Yannis Paschalidis, Co-Directors
2002
Campus, Community, Learning
Athletic Enhancement Center
A division of the Sargent College Clinical Center and an outgrowth of the BU Physical Therapy Center, the Athletic Enhancement Center (BUAEC) strives to improve athletic performance and prevent injuries in youth, high school, and adult athletes while also providing a training venue that allows young adults to develop life skills and positive character traits. The center is the Northeast's most complete athlete development facility. Programs are designed to increase strength, power, energy system resources, flexibility, and mental toughness, resulting in players who are stronger, quicker, and less at risk for injury.
2002
Campus
Student Village Construction Continues
John Hancock Student Village construction continues on the site of the former Commonwealth Armory.
2002
Campus, Sports
Track & Tennis Center
In October, Boston University’s Track & Tennis Center opens, providing a new athletic and recreation facility for the Boston University community. The 83,000-square-foot facility is designed to be one of the best such facilities in the country. Some features include four tennis courts, a fixed-bank 200-meter track, a 1,500-person seating capacity, and premiere space to hold national competitions. The facility also houses BU’s Track & Field and Tennis teams and is a practice venue for other Terrier athletic teams and organizations.
2001
Commencement
Sila Calderón Keynote
Sila Calderón, the first woman governor of Puerto Rico, speaks at Commencement. President Jon Westling says, "All but two of the governments on the two continents are led by men. It seems fitting, then, that the first female graduation speaker in the University's history should also be the first woman to lead her people. And it is with great pride that I announce that the speaker at the University's Commencement exercises in 2001 is Her Excellency Sila M. Calderón, governor of Puerto Rico."
"Image: a bird is one of the most amazing creatures in the universe. We marvel at its freedom to fly to the most far away places. Yet, we forget that for it to have that sense of unimpeded liberty, this tiny living thing is constantly battling much greater forces than itself: the wind, the rain, all kinds of tempests that threaten every part of its journey…Yet, it goes on…and on…and prevails against great odds. Be not afraid to lift your wings and let your spirits soar. Dream and do. Aspire and accomplish. Let that strength of character shine through. Enjoy life and, above all, be true to your soul."—Sila Calderón
2001
Research
Management of Variability Program
The high cost of health care places a great burden on the competitiveness of many major American manufacturing and other businesses. In response to cost-reduction pressures from corporate leaders, health care managers often respond in ways that negatively impact quality of care. Such responses fail to recognize a source of great waste in the health care delivery system: excessive variability in the processes used to provide care. The Management of Variability Program develops, implements, and evaluates methods to reduce this type of artificial management variability and better manage "natural" variability. The premise is that researching the reduction of process variability has as much potential for reducing costs and improving quality as approaches like cost-effectiveness analyses of new technologies, practice guidelines, and provider profiling. Its importance lies in the fact that individual institutions alone cannot support this type of research, even though its results will be of great benefit to individual institutions and the health care system as a whole.
2001
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
International Center for East Asian Archaeology & Cultural History
The International Center for East Asian Archaeology & Cultural History (ICEAACH) opens to serve an international array of scholars and students pursuing the study of East Asian archaeology, art history, anthropology, history, religion, cultural heritage management, and related fields. An important aspect of ICEAACH's mission is to engage the public; it actively creates outreach and teacher training programs to more broadly promote academic research on East Asia’s cultural heritage to the public.
2001
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for the Study of Human Resilience
The Institute for the Study of Human Resilience explores human resilience through research, practical application of our findings, and sharing information with affected people, their families, helping professions, and policy makers.
2001
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Business & Technology
The Institute for Business & Technology is founded to promote research and teaching related to business law issues generated by a technology-driven global economy.
2001
Campus, Commencement, Learning, Research
Center for Neurorehabilitation
Comprised of a team of researchers and clinicians with expertise in rehabilitation and movement science, the Center for Neurorehabilitation conducts research and runs clinical and educational activities in a single location, all with the goal of directly impacting the quality of rehabilitation provided to persons with neurological disorders. The center offers physical therapy services for people with Parkinson's disease and other neurological diagnoses.
2001
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Excellence in Teaching
The Center for Excellence in Teaching is established to promote and support exemplary teaching, facilitate the continued professional development of faculty as teachers, and introduce new faculty to the culture of excellence in teaching at Boston University. The center is a forum for exploring the methods, tools, and spirit of inquiry central to the teaching and learning processes. By cultivating teachers who transmit their own passion for an area of inquiry and curiosity about what remains to be discovered, the center encourages teachers to motivate students to participate actively in their own education and to guide them on their way to becoming lifelong learners.
"The purpose of this center is to assist faculty and teaching fellows with resources, encourage them to excel as teachers, and underscore the importance of excellence in teaching."—Provost Dennis Berkey
2001
Campus
Student Village 1 Completed
Boston University completes construction of a new Student Village residence hall. The 817-bed dormitory allows the University to house more than 75 percent of the undergraduates who need housing, a longtime goal of the University.
2001
Campus, Sports
Nickerson Field, Home of the Boston Breakers
Nickerson Field becomes home to the Boston Breakers, the first professional women’s soccer team in Boston. To accommodate the team, the field receives a makeover, including a new artificial surface, a renovated grandstand, and new lighting and sound systems. Due to financial constraints, the Breakers as well as the women’s soccer league later disband.
2000
Commencement
Tom Wolfe Keynote
Celebrated novelist, journalist, and commentator Tom Wolfe speaks at Commencement.
"In his novels, frequently compared to the work of Charles Dickens, Mr. Wolfe has led his readers through the thickets of greed and honor, love and suspicion, that sometimes seem to be the natural habitat of the modern American. There is no writer living today better prepared than Mr. Wolfe to cast a discerning eye on the world."—President Westling
2000
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future
The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future is established. Defined by its longer-range vision and not confined to any particular set of issues, the center seeks to identify, anticipate, and enhance the long-term potential for human progress through research, education, and outreach.
2000
Campus, Learning, Research
Editorial Institute
The Editorial Institute opens with the conviction that textually sound, contextually annotated material is central to the intellectual life of many disciplines. The institute promotes critical awareness of editorial issues and practices and offers training in proper editorial methods.
2000
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
Center for International Health & Development
The Center for International Health & Development (CIHD) is an applied research institution committed to changing society through research that treats health as a medical, social, and economic issue. CIHD works with developing and transitional country scientists to carry out policy- and program-relevant research on issues critical to their countries, helping them use the information generated to improve the health and well-being of their populations. To accomplish its mission, CIHD draws on a broad network of researchers from across Boston University, including the Schools of Public Health and Medicine, School of Management, College of Arts & Sciences, and College of Communication.
"Whether it is through our efforts to improve maternal and child health, confronting the two major scourges of HIV and malaria, or working with scientists, policymakers, and managers around the globe to deepen the evidence base for public health initiatives, the center's work is driven by a deep commitment to use the power of science to promote social change and improve the health of populations worldwide."— Dr. Jonathon Simon, Director of CIHD
2000
Campus
Student Village Breaks Ground
Student Village construction begins.
2000
Global, Learning
Journalism Study Abroad Program Established in DC
Boston University students travel to DC under COM’s Journalism Study Abroad Program, founded by Linda Killian (CAS’80, COM’80), a former editor at NPR’s All Things Considered. The program places students in the Washington bureaus of national news organizations such as ABC, NBC, NPR, the Boston Globe, and USA Today.
2000
Sports
Beanpot Record Established
The Boston University ice hockey team wins an unprecedented 6th straight Beanpot tournament.
1999
Commencement
Henry Kissinger Keynote
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger focuses on leadership in his address to more than 5,400 graduates and 20,000 guests during the 126th Boston University Commencement.
"The task of any leader is to take a society from where it is to where it has never been, which is a lonely task, requiring much courage. That too is the challenge before us. And this is why John Silber has been such an inspiration to me."—Henry A. Kissinger
1999
Campus, Global, Research
Sherr Laboratory Formed
The Sherr Laboratory opens in the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health. The laboratory employs state-of-the-art cellular and molecular technologies to research three specific areas of basic and applied science: Apoptosis, Breast Cancer, and Cancer/Amyloid Immunotherapy.
1999
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Astrophysical Research Formed
The Institute for Astrophysical Research (IAR) opens with a mission to promote and facilitate both research and education in astrophysics at Boston University. IAR members carry out research in a wide variety of astronomical fields including star formation, the interstellar medium, galactic structure, stellar variability, active galaxies, high-energy astrophysics, galaxy clusters, gravitational lensing, and dark matter. Graduate and undergraduate students are active, vital participants in IAR's research programs.
1999
Campus, Community, Learning, Research
Center for Cosmetic & Laser Surgery
The Center for Cosmetic & Laser Surgery opens at Boston University. Affiliated with both the Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, the Boston University Center for Cosmetic & Laser Surgery has earned the highest reputation for providing outstanding cosmetic plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures. Its research efforts are constantly pushing forward the science of beauty by developing more effective and less invasive techniques.
1998
Commencement
Gary Locke Keynote
Commencement speaker Gary Locke (LAW'75), governor of Washington and first Asian-American governor in the country, told the 5,000-plus degree candidates who filled Nickerson Field on May 17 that they were the American dream personified.
In 2009, US President Barak Obama chose Gary Locke as his new Secretary of Commerce, and he was sworn into office on March 26, 2009.
"Our family story is no different from the stories of every family here—whether you are a first-generation immigrant or a sixth. Your stories are made of similar journeys—journeys fueled by the American dream of freedom, hope, and opportunity. And this Commencement ceremony is what generation after generation of Americans and people all across the globe have dreamed of and sacrificed for."—Gary Locke
1998
Campus, Community
Learning Resources Network (LERNet) Starts Up
Many BU faculty members currently run educational and enrichment activities for middle- and high-school students to share the University's resources with them and stimulate their interest in various academic disciplines. LERNet is designed to serve as a resource center and clearinghouse to help with ongoing events and to assist faculty who are interested in planning new programs.
1998
Campus, Research
The Historical Society Opens
The Historical Society is an effort to reorient the historical profession and revitalize the teaching and broad dissemination of historical knowledge. The society embraces people of every ideological and political tendency and offers a place to debate those views in the context of historical study.
1998
Campus, Learning, Research
The Center for Congregational Research & Development
The Center for Congregational Research & Development bridges theology and congregational life through research, education, and networking. The work is oriented toward the discipline of practical theology and guided by critical reflection on the actual practice and lived faith of Christians in congregations around the world. The center was later renamed the Center for Practical Theology.
1998
Campus, Research
BioSquare 2 Breaks Ground
In April, BioSquare 2, a 192,000-square-foot building which will include research facilities for the School of Medicine, breaks ground. The building is dedicated in May 2000.
1998
Campus, Philanthropy
DeWolfe Boathouse
Construction begins on a new boathouse, which opens in the fall of 1999.
1997
Commencement
Juan Julio Wicht Rossel Keynote
Jesuit priest Juan Julio Wicht Rossel, S. J., addresses the graduating class at Commencement.
1997
Campus, Research
Quantum Aspects of the World Debuts
Quantum Aspects of the World offers a portal to Boston University courses, support materials, and tools to explore the quantum aspects of the world.
1997
Campus, Community, Research
MAVERIC
The Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center (MAVERIC) is established as one of three epidemiological research centers (ERICs) within the VA’s Cooperative Studies Program (CSP) to conduct observational, population-based research. It is affiliated with the Harvard and Boston University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. MAVERIC's mission is to improve the health of veterans and enhance health care delivery in the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) by promoting the conduct of VA-based population research relevant to the needs of veterans; facilitating the transfer of vital epidemiological information to VHA providers and administrators; and educating the next generation of population researchers. In addition, MAVERIC has supported and participated in several national and local educational activities to develop clinical and scientific researchers practicing in the field.
1997
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute on Race & Social Division
The Institute on Race & Social Division opens in 1997 and operates for five years before shutting its doors in 2002.
1997
Campus, Learning, Research
Health & Disability Research Institute
The Health & Disability Research Institute (HDR), a campus wide, interdisciplinary focal point for health and disability research at Boston University, officially opens. HDR expands upon the scope and strengths of its predecessor, the Center for Rehabilitation Effectiveness at Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, and offers rich opportunities for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty working to develop their research programs in the area of health and disability.
1997
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Dynamics & Control of Smart Structures
The Center for Dynamics & Control of Smart Structures opens and operates for the next six years.
1997
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for BioDynamics
The Center for BioDynamics, a multidisciplinary, interdepartmental center whose mission is to advance training and research at the interfaces among dynamical systems, biology, and engineering, opens its doors.
1997
Leaders
Robert Pinsky Named US Poet Laureate
The Library of Congress names Robert Pinsky, Boston University professor of English and creative writing, the 39th United States Poet Laureate; he is reappointed for a second term in 1998. In 1999, Pinsky becomes the first poet laureate to be asked to serve a third term. His final term is completed in 2000.
1997
Campus, Learning, Research
Photonics Center
The Boston University Photonics Center opens on June 13. The center, located at 8 St. Mary’s Street, is an $80 million state-of-the-art facility dedicated to working with industry partners to develop new products based on photonics—the practical use of light.
1996
Commencement
Chancellor John Silber Keynote
Chancellor John Silber delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1996
Leaders, Presidents
Jon Westling, Eighth President
from 1996–2002
Jon Westling was raised in Yakima, Washington, and graduated from Reed College in Oregon. He received a Rhodes scholarship and studied history at St. John’s College, Oxford University. He served Boston University for more than two decades in a number of positions, including provost, before his appointment as president in 1996. During his tenure, he set six consecutive records for University fund-raising, opened a new complex of apartment-style dormitories, and initiated a dozen major building projects, including new science buildings and recreational and athletic facilities. He emphasized the importance of academic standards in admissions, streamlined bureaucracy in creating the University Service Center, and set a new tone of campus collegiality.
1996
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Anxiety-Related Disorders
The Center for Anxiety-Related Disorders (CARD) opens to study the nature of emotional disorders and to develop and provide effective treatment for adults and children.
1996
Campus, Community
Boston Medical Center
Boston University and the City of Boston announce the merger of Boston University Medical Center Hospital and Boston City Hospital, creating the Boston Medical Center.
1995
Commencement
President John Silber Keynote
President John Silber addresses the graduating class at Commencement.
1995
Campus, Learning, Research
Mass Spectrometry Resource Center
The Mass Spectrometry Resource Center develops and applies mass spectral methods for biology and medicine with a primary emphasis on studies of oligosaccharides and glycoconjugates. The mission is to pursue sophisticated mass spectrometry in an environment with close interaction with life scientists and physicians. Resource faculty are members of the Department of Biochemistry and the Division of Graduate Medical Sciences at the Boston University School of Medicine.
1995
Campus, Learning, Research
Hearing Research Center
The Boston University Hearing Research Center (HRC) opens with twenty faculty members from six departments in four Boston University schools and colleges. The HRC was formed to develop and disseminate knowledge that will improve the nation's auditory health and allow the fullest utilization of the sense of hearing. Research in the Hearing Research Center combines theoretical and experimental studies of auditory processing to understand hearing in both normal and impaired auditory systems.
1995
Campus, Learning, Research
Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center
The Elizabeth Bishop Wine Resource Center—which commemorates Elizabeth Bishop, a wine and culinary arts enthusiast who worked closely with Julia Child—is established for the study of wine and other spirits. The center aims to foster educational programs that explore all aspects of wine—viticulture, enology, wine history, economics, distribution and marketing, pairing wine with food, and the psychological, physiological, and cultural phenomena of wine consumption.
1995
Community
MED Receives Community Service Award
The School of Medicine receives the Award for Outstanding Community Service from the Association of American Medical Colleges for its work in Boston.
1995
Campus, Learning, Research
Fraunhofer Center
The Boston University Production Technology Collaboration and Fraunhofer Resource Center opens at 15 St. Mary’s Street, bringing together academic and industry-based scientists and engineers to offer access to the most advanced manufacturing technologies.
1995
Community, Research
Farouk El-Baz & the Million Man March
Professor Farouk El-Baz resolves the controversy about the crowd size in Washington, DC's "Million Man March" by estimating the number of participants in the march using the same computer techniques applied to counting sand dunes in the desert. He succeeds in conveying the excitement of scientific research and the importance of using advanced technology.
1994
Commencement
Ross Perot Keynote
Ross Perot, the Texas businessman who won 19 percent of the popular vote for President in 1992, addresses Boston University graduates at Commencement.
1994
Campus, Learning, Philanthropy
SMG Gets New Home
Construction begins on the Rafik B. Hariri Building of the School of Management; the building officially opens in October 1996.
1994
Community, Learning
Prison Education Program Continues
With the Crime Control and Prevention Act of 1994, Pell Grants for prisoners are eliminated, and as a result, universities withdraw their prison education programs. Only Boston University continues to operate in prisons, though since 1998 it has focused exclusively on undergraduate courses.
1993
Commencement
Reverend Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood Keynote
The Reverend Dr. Johnny Ray Youngblood, a senior pastor at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in Brooklyn, New York, delivers the main Commencement address to more than 15,000 guests. Boston University confers 2,834 undergraduate and 2,440 graduate and professional degrees at the outdoor ceremonies.
1993
Campus, Learning, Research
The Scleroderma Center
Founded by the late Dr. Joseph Korn, former Chief of the Section and an internationally recognized researcher and clinical investigator in scleroderma research, the Scleroderma Center at Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center is a multidisciplinary program encompassing basic and clinical research and patient care. Dr. Korn’s vision of a comprehensive scleroderma center combining both excellent patient care and cutting-edge research continues in the BU Scleroderma Program today; thanks to research support, patients have many opportunities to participate in novel treatment approaches. The program’s efforts in patient care and research are mutually enhancing and sustaining.
1993
Campus, Learning, Research
University Joins Fraunhofer Society
Boston University enters into a cooperative agreement with a nonprofit consortium of 46 German research institutes known as the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft (Society).
1993
Leaders
Professor Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow, 1976 Nobel Prize winner for Literature, joins Boston University as a professor.
1993
Campus, Community, Learning
BU Academy Opens
Boston University Academy, a college preparatory school, opens under the guidance of President Silber.
1992
Commencement
Mario Vargas Llosa Keynote
Renowned Peruvian novelist and politician Mario Vargas Llosa delivered the Keynote Address at Commencement and urged more than 5,000 graduating Boston University students to go out into the world and make a difference by upholding liberty and fighting against discrimination and violence of all kinds.
"This great university, your alma mater, is an example of the best that our culture has to offer. It has equipped you to face great obstacles in many areas. Stand up to the occasion, and make the world a better place."—Mario Vargas Llosa
1992
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Advanced Biotechnology
The College of Engineering establishes the Center for Advanced Biotechnology, which focuses on developing new methodologies and biological materials.
1992
Leaders
Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott, professor of English, wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.
1991
Commencement
Eduard A. Shevardnadze Keynote
Eduard A. Shevardnadze, the former Soviet Foreign Minister, told Boston University graduates during his Commencement Address that the Cold War had promoted a national psychosis in both the United States and the Soviet Union because "we were capable of destroying all life on Earth." As a result of having survived that War, "the Soviet and Americans are very close to each other spiritually in how they visualize common human horizons," he said, speaking through a translator.
1991
Campus, Learning, Research
Systems Research Center
The Systems Research Center (SRC) opens at the School of Management to promote better understanding of how information technology can be used to improve business performance and create new business opportunities; in 2001, the center becomes The Boston University Institute for Leading in a Dynamic Economy (BUILDE) to explore the effects of emerging information and related technologies on competitive markets and organizations. In 2008, BUILDE is renamed The Institute for Global Work (IGW) with a mandate to foster partnership between industry and academia, and as such works collaboratively with member companies, worldwide academic bodies, and think tanks to generate compelling research that motivates managers to think and work differently on a global scale.
"This Institute seeks to investigate how the reality of global connectivity will impact the way people live, work, and play. We will explore both the opportunities and challenges that arise as organizations seek to initiate innovation on a global scale. IGW faculty believe that the emergence of the global workplace will create enormous opportunities for those who develop the skills to lead in this global marketplace." — John Henderson, Director
1991
Campus, Learning, Research
BioSquare Discovery & Innovation Center
With over 700,000 gross square feet of space, The BioSquare Discovery & Innovation Center offers leading life sciences companies an unparalleled environment designed to foster and support discovery, innovation, and commerce.
1990
Commencement
Louis W. Sullivan Keynote
The Honorable Louis W. Sullivan, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services and BUSM alumnus, addresses the graduates at Commencement.
1990
Campus, Learning, Research
Science & Mathematics Education Center
The Science & Mathematics Education Center strives to improve the quality of formal college and precollege science and mathematics learning, instruction, materials, and curricula, as well as to promote informal and public science education. The Center serves as an umbrella for the precollege and informal science and mathematics education programs already in place within the Boston University community, as well as for future research and development projects in these fields.
1990
Learning
Fast-Track Leadership Institute
The Leadership Institute opens at Boston University School of Management as a high-impact, fast-cycle learning initiative, designed and tailored to maximize the opportunities for executives to discover the new approaches and capabilities they will need to succeed and thrive in the new economy. The institute is designed primarily for managers who are moving into leadership roles with broader, cross-functional responsibilities. Those individuals who are seeking to develop the leadership skills necessary to implement strategies that keep their companies growing and competitive will most benefit from this program.
"While learning what it takes to succeed in the new economy is critically important, the real challenge is uncovering the models, behaviors, and assumptions that are no longer valid and accomplishing the un-learning of them. This can't be taught; it has to be seeded and experienced. The unlearning and learning should be cultivated by engaging leaders in the process of discovery, experimentation, and application."—Lucent Technologies, Director of Technology
1990
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Computational Science
The Center for Computational Science opens to coordinate and promote computationally based research, foster computational science education, and support the expansion of computational resources.
1990
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Advanced Genomic Technology
The Center for Advanced Genomic Technology, which evolved from the Molecular Engineering Research Laboratory (MERL) founded by Charles DeLisi in 1990 as a new interdisciplinary program in Boston University's College of Engineering, opens its doors.
1990
Campus, Learning
SAR Gets Its Own Building
Sargent College moves to its own building at 635 Commonwealth Avenue, the site of the former School of Nursing.
1989
Campus
Center for the Advancement of Ethics & Character
The Center for the Advancement of Ethics & Character serves as a resource for administrators, teachers, and parents as they seek to fulfill their responsibilities as moral educators.
1989
Learning
Executive Development Roundtable
Founded as an "incubator" for developing groundbreaking concepts and best business practices, The Executive Development Roundtable is a partnership between business and academia. EDRT’s members, who represent leading corporate, public, and nonprofit institutions, enjoy the strategic advantage of learning from and contributing to the latest applied research on how successful executives drive their organizations and why executive development remains a key competitive advantage in business today. EDRT provides a collegial and open environment in which upper-level leadership and executive development professionals can discuss best practice solutions, obtain industry-specific benchmarking tools, and obtain the overall professional development necessary to succeed.
1989
Campus, Commencement
Sesquicentennial Commencement
Sesquicentennial Commencement Speakers receiving honorary degrees are President of the United States George H. W. Bush and Francois Mitterrand, president of the French Republic. Also receiving an honorary degree at Commencement is First Lady Barbara Bush, and Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany at the Overseas Program's 25th anniversary commencement in Heidelberg.
1989
Campus
Sesquicentennial Celebration
Boston University celebrates its Sesquicentennial with over 40 events throughout the year highlighting the historic moments of the first 150 years since its founding. Special events during the year included: Founders’ Day formal opening symposium, numerous exhibitions, concerts, and conferences, gala dinner and reunion, School of Theology religious service, Boston University Symphony performance at Carnegie Hall, Sesquicentennial Commencement and special overseas commencement, as well as a Convocation of Presidents that included presiding heads of universities and colleges throughout the world.
1988
Commencement
Professor Carlo Rubbia Keynote
Nobel Laureate and Professor Carlo Rubbia delivers the keynote address at Commencement. Rubbia, together with Simon van der Meer, received the 1984 Nobel Laureate in Physics.
1988
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Space Physics
The Center for Space Physics opens to explore and research space physics, including space plasma physics, magnetospheric physics, ionospheric physics, atmospheric physics, and planetary and cometary atmospheric studies. Students in astronomy, applied physics, and engineering conduct research through the center, which also serves as the coordinating mechanism for grants and has a 20-inch telescope at McDonald Observatory.
1988
Community, Learning
Chelsea School Project
At the request of beleaguered Chelsea officials, Boston University agrees to manage the city’s failing schools for 10 years, an unprecedented—and as yet unduplicated—move by a private university. The management plan, known officially as the Boston University/Chelsea Partnership, calls for sweeping changes in curricula, teacher training, school policies, and facilities. The goal: to make Chelsea schools "a model for excellence in urban education." The Boston University/Chelsea Partnership continued until 2008.
1988
Community
BU Student Food Rescue
The Student Food Rescue is founded by a group of Boston University student volunteers and becomes an integral part of the Boston University Community Service Center. Volunteers collect nearly 150,000 pounds of food annually from local restaurants, supermarkets, bakeries, grocery surplus facilities, and coffee shops each week and distribute it to area meal programs, food pantries, and shelters.
1987
Commencement
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist Speaks to Graduates
Ignoring a sprinkling of protesters during Commencement, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court William H. Rehnquist urges graduates to value and use their spare time wisely.
"Time is a wasting asset, and most of us realize it only too late to avoid spending a lot of it unwisely. Like any free-market economist, you ought then to look at what else might be done with the marginal few hours at the end of the week that aren't really necessary to earning a living."—William H. Rehnquist
1987
Learning
Warren O. Ault’s 100th Birthday
Professor Emeritus Warren O. Ault addresses 300 guests at a campus celebration of his 100th birthday on April 4th. For fifty-two years—full time from 1913 until 1957 and part time until 1965—Professor Ault was the avatar of teaching excellence at Boston University.
1986
Commencement
John Silber Keynote
President John Silber delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1986
Campus, Learning
Howard Thurman Center
Boston University's cultural center, The Howard Thurman Center is based on the "common ground" philosophy of Dr. Howard Thurman. The center hosts cultural programs, activities, and services designed to build community through self-exploration and shared experiences.
1986
Campus, Community, Learning, Research
Alcohol & Drug Institute for Policy, Training & Research
The Alcohol & Drug Institute for Policy, Training & Research consists of experts on alcohol and drug issues associated with urban and multicultural populations. The institute sponsors professional seminars and conferences, conducts research on policy-relevant issues, and works with social service agencies to respond to the needs of addicted clients.
1986
Community
The League (Now the Community Service Center)
The Community Service Center (CSC), originally called “The League,” is founded by a group of Boston University students to create a structure through which they can actively address issues faced by the community in which the University is located. Student volunteers address issues of critical concern such as youth education, the AIDS pandemic, the destruction of the environment, and providing food and shelter for the poorest among us. Through the supervision, training, and support of the center, the energies of young people create affordable housing, provide companionship to elders, and tutor recent immigrants in English as a second language.
1986
Leaders, Learning
Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel, Boston University Professor of Humanities, wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Wiesel (born Eliezer Wiesel on September 30, 1928) is a Jewish writer, professor, political activist, and Holocaust survivor. He is the author of over 40 books, the best known of which is Night, a memoir that describes his experiences during the Holocaust and his imprisonment in several concentration camps.
1986
Community, Learning, Philanthropy
Medeiros Scholarship Program
Boston University creates the Medeiros Scholarship Program, granting full-tuition awards to students from local parochial high schools.
1985
Commencement
Nicholas Gage Keynote
Boston University alumnus and best-selling author Nicholas Gage delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1985
Campus, Global, Learning, Research
Institute for the Study of Economic Culture
When it opens in 1985, the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture focuses on the relation of culture to economic development; the agenda eventually expands to include social and political issues as these relate to culture. In 2003 the institute combines with the Institute on Religion & World Affairs and becomes the Institute on Culture, Religion & World Affairs (CURA), which researches, publishes, and educates on one of the most strategic questions in the contemporary world: How does culture (in the sense of beliefs, values, and lifestyles) affect economic and political developments worldwide? Since religion is at the core of culture in most of the world, CURA has paid special attention to the role of religion in world affairs. While CURA’s agenda is of obvious academic interest, it increasingly touches on practical policy concerns and seeks to communicate its findings to government, the business community, and the media.
1985
Campus, Learning
Entrepreneurial Management Institute
The Entrepreneurial Management Institute (EMI) offers customized education, training, mentoring, networking, and other tools to help create sustainable enterprises that meet important global needs in sectors such as health care, clean energy, and information systems. In 2007, EMI is renamed the Institute for Technology Entrepreneurship & Commercialization (ITEC). Based at the Boston University School of Management, ITEC is an educational resource for all Boston University students and alumni. For students and faculty seeking to commercialize research conducted at BU, ITEC works closely with Technology Development and together they offer a full complement of legal, financial, and managerial resources to aspiring entrepreneurs.
"The new entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs without borders. They reach across industries, markets, and communities and cross language, cultural, geographic, political, and economic barriers to launch new businesses on new platforms to serve global markets. In doing so, they go above and beyond human imagination—empowering people, engaging societies, and breaking political and geographical boundaries to build sustainable, socially responsible enterprises that solve big problems."—Paul McManus, ITEC Director of International Programs and School of Management Executive-in-Residence
1985
Global, Leaders
World Leaders Forum Established
Under the direction of John Silber, Boston University inaugurates the World Leaders Forum, bringing international leaders and other key policy makers to campus to deliver addresses of political and social importance. Speakers receive an honorary degree from the University.
1985
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Remote Sensing
Professor Farouk El-Baz founds and becomes director of the Center for Remote Sensing. The center uses satellite images and other data from airborne and ground sensors to study the Earth and its resources, particularly groundwater. This research includes monitoring environmental changes due to both natural processes and human activities.
1984
Commencement
Brand Blanshard Keynote
Philosopher and writer Brand Blanshard delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1984
Campus, Learning, Research
NeuroMuscular Research Center
The College of Engineering establishes the NeuroMuscular Research Center (NMRC) to increase knowledge of motor control and improve the quality of health care for neuromuscular-impaired patients.
1984
Campus, Learning, Research
Data Coordinating Center
The Data Coordinating Center specializes in questionnaire and case report form design; implementing study protocols; data management; data entry; and statistical, database, and Web-based programming. Its staff of statistical programmers, database programmers, and data managers are experts in study design, developing computerized and Web-based data collection and tracking systems, quality control procedures, and statistical analysis methods. Data management systems can be custom-designed for projects that involve remote data entry using a Web browser or projects conducted online.
1984
Community, Learning
NNN Established
The School of Public Communication first hosts Neighborhood Network News, broadcast nightly on Boston Cable Channels 3 and 8.
1983
Commencement
Dan Rather Keynote
Dan Rather, journalist and news anchor of the CBS Evening News, delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1983
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Jewish Law
Dedicated to conducting scholarly research, publishing material on Jewish law, and providing continuing education in this specialized field, the Institute for Jewish Law seeks to make publications available in English that focus on the analysis of contemporary issues using traditional Jewish sources. Neil Hecht, a tenured member of the law faculty, is the founding director of the institute, which has published over thirty volumes and conducts annual joint conferences with Harvard Law School on a variety of Jewish law topics.
1983
Campus, Learning, Research
Science Building Opens
The Arthur G. B. Metcalf Center for Science & Engineering is opened.
1982
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Literacy & Language
Started in 1982 and later renamed the Center for the Study of Communication & the Deaf, The Institute for Literacy & Language engages in both applied and theoretical research to benefit the Deaf and their families. Faculty and students focus on three major research themes: the acquisition of signed languages, the impact of language on the education of the Deaf child, and the developmental assessment of bilingual approaches to the education of Deaf children. Community services focus on projects assisting the hearing parents of Deaf children and on workshops and presentations to area agencies. The center has recently begun to create assessment instruments to determine ASL development in Deaf children.
1982
Commencement
Jim Wright Keynote
The Honorable Jim Wright, Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1982
Campus, Community, Learning
Huntington Theatre Company First Season
The Huntington Theatre Company begins its first season in collaboration with the Boston University Theatre.
1981
Commencement
President John Silber Keynote
President John Silber delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1981
Campus, Research
Human Resources Policy Institute
The Human Resources Policy Institute (HRPI) is founded to study the latest developments in human resource management issues and serve as an information resource for the BU community. School of Management faculty, graduate students, and fellows partner with top-level human resources executives from member companies, discuss the latest trends, benchmark best practices, and sponsor faculty and doctoral-level research.
1981
Campus, Learning
Hotel & Food Administration Program
Metropolitan College prepares to open the Hotel and Food Administration Program, the predecessor of the School of Hospitality Administration. The program becomes a school in 1992.
1980
Commencement
William E. Simon Keynote
The Honorable William E. Simon, former Secretary of the Treasury, delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1980
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for the Classical Tradition
The Institute for the Classical Tradition is founded by Professor Meyer Reinhold. The International Society for the Classical Tradition, which is based at the Institute for the Classical Tradition, is also the editorial base of the Society's journal, the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT).
1980
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Enterprise Leadership
The Center for Enterprise Leadership opens. A partnership of academics and senior executives dedicated to research, communication, and learning with respect to fundamental problems of product and service supply in a global economy, the center would operate for the next fifteen years.
1980
Community, Global, Sports
Miracle on Ice
The US Olympic Hockey Team wins the gold medal. Among the team members are four Boston University players: Captain Mike Eruzione, Jim Craig, Dave Silk, and Jack O'Callahan. The winning game is played on February 24, 1980. This game is known as the "Miracle on Ice" and is portrayed in the Disney movie Miracle.
1980
Community
Evergreen Program
The Evergreen Program offers the opportunity for older members of the community to attend Boston University lectures.
1979
Commencement
Edward M. Kennedy Keynote
The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy, Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1979
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation
The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation, a research, training, and service organization dedicated to improving the lives of persons who have psychiatric disabilities, opens. The center adheres to the most basic of rehabilitation values: First and foremost, a person with psychiatric disabilities has the same goals and dreams as any other person. Its mission is to increase the likelihood that a person with psychiatric disabilities can achieve these goals by improving the effectiveness of people, programs, and service systems.
1979
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Energy & Environmental Studies
The Center for Energy & Environmental Studies is established as part of the College of Arts & Sciences to educate, research, and train in the fields of energy and environmental analysis. The center is multidisciplinary and problem-oriented; its educational programs are based on the philosophy that students need a solid training in traditional disciplines as well as a set of integrative courses that expose them to the broad and systematic nature of environmental problems. This approach also informs the center's research programs, which investigate some of the planet's most challenging environmental issues.
1978
Commencement
William Miller Delivers the Keynote
Federal Reserve Board Chairman G. William Miller delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1978
Campus, Research
Anna Howard Shaw Center
The Anna Howard Shaw Center opens at Boston University to promote structures and practices that empower women and to honor diversity. Named after the Reverend Doctor Anna Howard Shaw (STH 1878), a Methodist minister, medical doctor, and suffragist, the center is designated as the women’s center for the Northeastern Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church ten years after its founding. Ecumenical, the center’s primary activities are in research, education, support, and advocacy.
"When Margaret Wiborg was hired as director of the Shaw Center in 1984, she fashioned her role as 'identifying the needs and finding the people and the money to do something about it.' One of the needs she identified was finding more role models for female students. 'Many women told me they had never had the opportunity to hear other women preach,' Wiborg says. That led to the creation of Women and the Word, the center's national preaching event, held each spring. Bishops, teachers, artists, and theologians serve as the primary leadership as women get to hear other women preach." — BU Bridge
1977
Commencement
John Silber Commencement Keynote
President John Silber delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1976
Commencement
William V. Shannon Keynote
William V. Shannon delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1976
Campus, Learning, Research
Makechnie Study Center
The Media Resource Center, a support facility offering media services for students, faculty, and staff including classroom media support and media production as well as technical support and instruction, opens at Sargent College. The center is later renamed the George K. Makechnie Study Center (MSC). Through the production of digital educational materials, the MSC supports and enhances teaching, learning, and research in the health and rehabilitation fields. The center also features four quiet study rooms—each one equipped with hi-definition LCD panels for viewing course-related media and developing PowerPoint presentations for classes—so students can work in groups without disturbing others.
1976
Campus
Towers First Coed Dorm
The Towers residence hall admits men, becoming the University’s first coed dormitory.
1975
Commencement
Al Ullman Keynote Address
The Honorable Al Ullman, Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1975
Campus, Learning, Research
Slone Epidemiology Center
A public health research organization, the Slone Epidemiology Center studies the possible health effects of medications and other variables in adults and children. A staff of approximately 100 includes specialists in epidemiology, adult and pediatric medicine, nursing, pharmacy, biostatistics, and computer science. Slone researchers use a variety of epidemiological tools, including case-control and follow-up studies, clinical trials, surveillance studies, risk management studies, and population-based surveys.
1975
Campus, Learning, Research
The Health Policy Institute
The Health Policy Institute opens at Boston University. HPI today consists of the Management of Variability Program, the Health Care Entrepreneurship Program, Scholars in Health Policy Research Program, and the Center for Educational Development in Health. HPI is also affiliated with the Boston University Health & Disability Research Institute.
1975
Campus, Global, Learning
CELOP Opens
The Center for English Language & Orientation Programs (CELOP) opens.
1974
Commencement
President John Silber’s Commencement Keynote
President John Silber delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1974
Campus, Learning, Research
Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute
The Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute of Boston University Medical Center advances research, treatment, and education in the broad area of heart and vascular disease by providing a unified structure that integrates the components of basic science, clinical investigation, medical education, patient care, health-policy planning, and community research. The Institute has been designated a Specialized Center of Research in Hypertension and a Specialized Center of Research in Ischemic Heart Disease by the National Institutes of Health’s Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which indicates that the Institute serves as a site for important medical research in the national interest. The Institute was also named a Center for Cardiovascular Proteomics through support from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.
1974
Campus, Learning, Research
The Gerontology Center
Created by School of Social Work professor Louis Lowy and School of Medicine professor F. Marott Sinex, the Gerontology Center is affiliated with the Geriatrics Section at Boston Medical Center and Boston University School of Medicine, and offers training opportunities in geriatric medicine and dentistry. School of Medicine Associate Professor Thomas Perls directs the world’s largest genetic study of people over 100 years old, and after analyzing the genomes of 308 centenarians and their siblings, discovers a “genetic booster rocket” for longevity. Amazingly, Perls and his researchers pinpoint a region on human chromosome 4 that is likely to contain a gene or genes associated with extraordinary life expectancy.
"With scientists at a company called Centagenetix in Cambridge, we’ve been working to find the gene that plays a role in life span."—ProfessorThomas Perls
1973
Commencement
Octavio Paz Keynote
Octavio Paz delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1973
Commencement
Metcalf Cup and Prize First Awarded
The Metcalf Cup and Prize and the Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching are first awarded. These teaching honors are created by an endowment from the late Dr. Arthur G. B. Metcalf, Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees.
1973
Community, Philanthropy
Boston Scholars Program Initiated
The Boston Scholars Program is initiated and provides full-tuition scholarships and pre-college courses for local high school students.
1972
Commencement
John H. Knowles Keynote Address
President of the Rockefeller Foundation John H. Knowles delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
1972
Community, Learning
Prison Education Program
The Boston University Prison Education Program, founded by labor organizer, tenant activist, and poet Elizabeth Barker, offers its first credit-bearing college courses at MCI/Norfolk prison. The program strives to provide the means whereby, through education, students currently imprisoned can become informed, successful, and contributing citizens. Students who earn 30 to 60 credits can apply the credits towards a Boston University bachelor’s degree and even go on to pursue a master’s degree. In 1991, the Prison Education Program expands to include MCI/Framingham, the only penal institution in Massachusetts for women. Boston University continues to be nationally recognized for its contribution to the lives of prisoners in the program, and by extension, its contribution to the prisons they inhabit, the families they left behind, and the communities to which they will return.
1971
Leaders, Presidents
John Silber, Seventh President
from 1971–1996
Texas native John Silber graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio and earned a PhD in philosophy from Yale University. Appointed Boston University president in 1971, Silber took charge of an institution in financial and educational disarray. His first task was to balance the budget. He also hired distinguished new faculty, raised admissions standards, expanded the campus, built the endowment, reinstituted academic requirements, and had protesters who broke the law arrested. His actions during the 1970s provoked opposition and controversy but, by the 1980s, even Silber’s critics conceded that he had transformed Boston University. Among his other notable achievements were managing the school system of neighboring Chelsea for 10 years and establishing the Prison Education Program and Boston University Academy. In March 1994, he announced that he would step down on May 31, 1996, to become Chancellor.
1971
Campus, Leaders, Research
BU doctors become co-directors of the Framingham Heart Study
In 1971, Boston University doctors become co-directors of the Framingham Heart Study, a landmark series of physical exams and lifestyle interviews that began in 1948 with 5,209 residents of Framingham, Mass. After more than 60 years, the study is one of the largest and longest-running epidemiological research projects in the world.
1971
Leaders
John Silber Inaugurated as President
John Silber is inaugurated as President of Boston University; his inaugural address is entitled "The Pollution of Time." Silber succeeds in persuading the graduating class to wear academic dress and argues that the ceremony and its trappings are important symbols of tradition in defiance of the day's "instant culture."
1971
Campus, Learning
University Professors Program Created
The University Professors Program (UNI), an interdisciplinary program for gifted students, is created. The first course is taught in 1972.
1971
Sports
Men’s Hockey First NCAA Championship
The Terrier hockey team wins the NCAA Championship, its first of four over the next quarter-century.
1971
Learning
First Rhodes Scholar
Richard Taylor (COM'73) becomes Boston University’s first Rhodes Scholar.
1971
Campus, Sports
Brown Arena Opens
Walter Brown Arena opens.
1970
Campus, Learning, Research
Institute for Philosophy & Religion
A unique, interdisciplinary forum dedicated to studying issues at the intersection of philosophy, religion, and public life, the Institute for Philosophy & Religion is conceived by a group of philosophers (called The Personalists) who were among Martin Luther King, Jr.'s teachers when he was a PhD candidate at Boston University. Over the years the institute's programs reflect broad concerns such as promoting social justice, founding pluralistic societies, and exploring the deepest questions about life as reflected in theological and philosophical discourse. Established with the cooperation of three academic units of Boston University—the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Religion, and the School of Theology—the institute is envisioned as a home for serious philosophical and religious reflection and hosts a popular lecture series on issues that cross boundaries between academic disciplines and between scholars and the educated public.
1970
Campus
Creation of the Daily Free Press
In May, two newspapers merge to become the Daily Free Press as students respond to the Kent State shootings; final exams and graduation are cancelled. The "Freep," which captures the event in its first issue, currently enjoys the longest continuous run of any publication at the University.
1969
Community, Learning, Research
BU Marine Program
The Boston University Marine Program is founded at Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
1968
Campus, Learning, Research
Center for Educational Development in Health
The Center for Educational Development in Health is invited to move from the Harvard School of Public Health to the Health Policy Institute at Boston University. The CEDH team has taught courses on Educational Design and Evaluation at Harvard and Boston University since 1968 and authored several highly regarded, widely used texts on competency-based education and training.
"The wealth of this course is as a candle hidden under a bushel. I submit that this course should be known and readily available through the whole university as an 'inter-school' program….To briefly relate my personal experience, teaching is no longer arbitrary. Given a subject to teach, a lecture to present, a course to plan, there are logical and systematic approaches to these problems which firstly are student centered." — Elliott V. Miller, MD, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital
1967
Campus, Learning
Center for Science & Medical Journalism
The Center for Science & Medical Journalism at Boston University College of Communication is dedicated to improving the quality of science and medical journalism worldwide. Students and veteran journalists are trained to recognize, investigate, analyze, and explain scientific and medical findings and issues.
"Typically students in this program are very intelligent people with amazing backgrounds. Because of this, I always feel compelled to have my ideas very together when I come to class, especially if I'm presenting something. My classmates as much as my professors have pushed me to be a better student."—Steven Bedard, Class of '00, is now a content developer for WGBH Interactive, the online extension of WGBH-TV Public Television to Boston.
1967
Leaders, Presidents
Arland F. Christ-Janer, Sixth President
from 1967–1970
Arland Christ-Janer, a native of Nebraska, attended Yale Divinity School and the University of Chicago Law School. He served as president of Cornell College in Iowa until his appointment in 1967 to the presidency of Boston University. Christ-Janer took office at a time of social unrest. The week of his inauguration, the Students for a Democratic Society declared a Stop the Draft Week. Soon after, an African American student organization issued a list of demands and staged a nonviolent sit-in at the President’s office. Christ-Janer agreed to all their demands, but campus demonstrations and radical student actions continued. After serving for three years, Christ-Janer resigned in July 1970. Commencement that year was canceled because of the threat of violent protests.
1966
Campus, Learning, Research
Mugar Library Completed
The Mugar Memorial Library is completed.
1966
Campus
Charles River Campus Completed
The consolidation of all the schools and colleges onto the Charles River Campus (except the schools of Medicine and Dental Medicine) is completed, ending a 28-year effort through the terms of two University presidents.
1965
Campus
Warren Towers Opens
Warren Towers opens.
1965
Campus, Learning
MET Established
Metropolitan College is opened.
1965
Commencement, Global
First Overseas Commencement
The first Overseas Program Commencement is held in Heidelberg, Germany in June. The program is the first to offer graduate degrees to members of the US Army in Europe.
1965
Firsts, Learning, Research
First Cancer Research and Teaching Lab Created
Boston University is the first university to combine a cancer research and teaching laboratory.
1964
Global, Learning
Overseas Program Begins
The Overseas Program offers its first course. The International Relations Program begins with 34 students in the spring of 1964. The first Boston University professor assigned overseas is Assistant Professor Stephen Anderson.
1963
Campus, Research
Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center
The Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University seeks to capture and document history by collecting the manuscripts from individuals who play significant roles in the fields of journalism, poetry, literature and criticism, dance, music, theater, film, television, and political and religious movements. Renamed the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center in 2003 to honor its founder, the center strives to preserve the documents and make them readily available to researchers while administering all legal copyrights and restrictions, and presenting extensive exhibitions, seminars, and tours for students, parents, alumni, various visiting groups, and members of the public.
1963
Campus, Learning
ENG Building Opens
The College of Engineering, successor to the College of Industrial Technology, opens a new building at 110 Cummington Street.
1963
Campus
GSU Opens
The George Sherman Union is opened; the cornerstone was laid in 1961.
1963
Community
MLK Jr Delivers “I Have a Dream”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Boston University alumnus, delivers his famous “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington, the then-largest civil rights demonstration in US history.
1963
Campus, Learning
School of Dentistry Opens
Boston University is the first university to open a graduate school in dentistry. In 1996, the School of Graduate Dentistry is renamed the Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine after its founding dean.
1963
Campus, Learning
Astronomy Major Offered
Astronomy is first offered as a major, leading to the creation of the Astronomy Department in 1966.
1961
Campus, Learning
Six-Year Liberal Arts/Medical Degree Program Established
Boston University is the first university to establish a combined six-year liberal arts/medical degree program.
1961
Global, Learning
International Student Training at SED
The first US professional training for international student advisors is offered by the School of Education.
1959
Sports
First Seven Feet High-Jump
Boston University’s John Thomas becomes the first person to high-jump seven feet.
1958
Campus, Learning, Research
Law-Medicine Research Institute
Recognizing the widening scope of the medico-legal field, Boston University establishes the Law-Medicine Research Institute. A public service organization dedicated to defining health law and its role in public policy decisions and developing effective teaching modalities in health law at the graduate level, the institute is renamed the Center for Law & Health Sciences in 1970 to convey the field's expanding range. In 1977, the center's core faculty members move to Boston University Medical School to form the Health Law Section—later the Health Law Department—at the new School of Public Health. The department is renamed the Department of Health Law, Bioethics & Human Rights in 2003 and is the successor and current incarnation of the original Law-Medicine Institute.
1958
Campus, Learning, Research
Boston University Fights Cancer with Groundbreaking New Center
The Cancer Research Center, an innovative effort dedicated to research and discovery. The center's research activities are organized into four programs: three are laboratory-based (Tumor Immunology/Lymphoid Malignancy Research, Cell Cycle Control and Signaling Research, and Hormone-Responsive Cancers Research) and one is population-based (Population Science—Cancer Disparities). Investigators from across the board collaborate on these themes, allowing greater opportunity for interdisciplinary and translational research.
1958
Campus, Learning
Robert Lowell Poetry Workshop
BU hosts a most remarkable poetry workshop when Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and George Starbuck gather for instruction by poet Robert Lowell, who began teaching at Boston University in 1954.
1956
Campus
BU Women’s Guild Established
The Boston University Women’s Guild is established in 1956 by Dean of Women Elsbeth Melville “to unite the women of Boston University in fellowship and acquaint them with the purposes and activities of the University.” The guild sponsors events to bring BU female faculty and staff together and to raise money for the Guild Scholarship Fund, awarded to female graduate students over the age of thirty.
1955
Leaders
MLK Jr Receives PhD
Martin Luther King, Jr., receives his PhD from Boston University. After receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, he presents his papers to the Special Collections (now called the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center).
1954
Commencement, Sports
Harry Agganis Graduates
One memorable Sunday in June 1954, Harry Agganis hits a home run at Fenway Park for the Boston Red Sox and then races up Commonwealth Avenue to receive his Boston University degree. Known as the Golden Greek, Agganis is a Terriers football, baseball, and basketball standout who rejects an offer from football’s Cleveland Browns to play baseball with the Red Sox. Sadly, a vibrant young life and a promising future are cut tragically short a year later when Agganis dies of a massive pulmonary embolism at the age of twenty-six. Boston University is proud of the Agganis Arena in the Student Village, the most recent tribute to this extraordinary individual who left us far too soon.
1954
Campus, Learning
CFA Established
The School of Fine & Applied Arts, now the College of Fine Arts, opens; the College of Music is absorbed into the new school.
1954
Campus, Community, Sports
Braves Field Becomes Nickerson Field
The University purchases Braves Field, which will become the site of Nickerson Field, the Case Athletic Center, and the West Campus residences.
1953
Campus, Learning, Research
African Studies Center
The African Studies Center, a program making major contributions to our national capacity to acquire and disseminate knowledge about Africa and its affairs, opens at Boston University.
"Those of you who know the African Studies Center well are already aware that it is not a department or just a research center. It is a community that lives each day, actively welcomes newcomers each year, and nurtures a wider set of colleagues around the United States and across Africa. Our sense of ourselves is historical, but grounded in the everyday as well." — James McCann, Director Ad Interim
1953
Firsts, Leaders
First Black Dean Named
Howard Thurman is named Dean of Marsh Chapel, becoming the first black dean in a predominantly white University.
1952
Campus, Learning, Research
Acorn to Oak: The Danielsen Institute
The Danielsen Institute at Boston University opens in 1952 as a multidisciplinary mental health care clinic licensed by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. The Institute is also a training and service center accredited by the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, and offers internship training and continuing education accredited by the American Psychological Association. Albert Danielsen, whose generosity founded and sustains the Danielsen Institute, used the metaphor of an acorn growing into a giant oak to describe what he hoped the institute would become. It is a tree of deep and varied roots—the roots of Albert and Jessie Danielsen, the roots of leadership; the roots provided by Boston University. And from these strong roots grows a great tree that carries on the Danielsen mission of service and growth." — Carole R. Bohn, Executive Director
1952
Campus, Learning
CGS (Formerly CBS) Established
The Junior College, a program based on team-teaching that had formerly been a part of the College of General Education, is established. This school is renamed the College of Basic Studies in 1960 and the College of General Studies in 1992.
1951
Leaders, Presidents
Harold C. Case, Fifth President
from 1951–1967
A Kansas native, Harold Case pursued graduate study at Harvard University, Garrett Biblical Institute, Northwestern University, and Boston University School of Theology. He was a successful minister at several large Methodist churches across the nation before assuming the presidency of Boston University in 1951. Case continued the postwar expansion of the University, building new dormitories and establishing the School of Fine and Applied Arts (now the College of Fine Arts), the College of Engineering, and Metropolitan College. In 1953, he created the African Studies Program and the same year invited the distinguished African American theologian Howard Thurman to be dean of Marsh Chapel.
1950
Campus, Learning
STH Building Dedicated
1950
Campus, Community
WBUR-FM
WBUR-FM goes on the air at 4:00 p.m. on March 1, 1950, as a 400-watt non-commercial educational FM station licensed to Boston University. By 1971, WBUR had enough full-time employees to qualify for status as a public radio station and applied to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) for certification. In 1984, the station won three Associated Press (AP) Awards for news coverage. In May 1987, WBUR won the 1986 George Foster Peabody Award—the most prestigious national award for broadcasters—for Liberation Remembered, a four- part series on the Holocaust. Since then, WBUR has won the Peabody two more times, including an award for Car Talk in 1993.
1950
Campus, Learning
ENG Established
The transfer of the New England Aircraft School to the University leads to the establishment of the College of Industrial Technology, renamed the College of Engineering in 1963.
1949
Learning
Isaac Asimov Becomes a University Instructor
Isaac Asimov becomes a first-year instructor of biochemistry at the School of Medicine. Asimov, the scientist and author, was writing pulp science fiction stories in his spare time at his Somerville home while doing cancer research at the School of Medicine.
1947
Firsts, Learning
Public Relations Degree First Offered
Boston University is the first university to offer a college degree in public relations at its newly founded School of Public Relations. As related programs are added, this school changes names several times, becoming the College of Communication in 1984.
1946
Campus, Learning
School of Nursing Opens
The School of Nursing is opened. To the regret of many proud graduates, because of declining enrollment and the increase in subsidized nursing programs at state colleges and universities, it closes in 1988.
1943
Campus, Community
ROTC Arrives on Campus
The US War Department invites the University to become a contracting agency under the Army Enlisted Reserve Corps Pre-Induction Training Program, also known as ROTC.
1941
Commencement
Wonder Woman Makes Her Debut
Elizabeth Holloway Marston (Class of 1918) is the inspiration for the character Wonder Woman, who makes her debut in All-Star Comics. Her husband, William Moulton Marston, creates the character, who triumphs with love instead of fists or firepower.
Photo courtesy and original Wonder Woman material courtesy of Moulton "Pete" Marston
1940
Campus, Learning
Instructional Materials Center
The genesis of the Instructional Materials Center goes all the way back to the fall of 1929, when Abraham Krasker, then a science teacher at Boston Latin School, was hired to offer an SED course called "Visual Education" to science teachers to train them in how to use educational film, still pictures, film slides, and lantern slides (the current technologies of the time) in teaching and learning science.
1940
Campus, Learning
SSW Created
The School of Social Work is created after the School of Religious Education and Social Service is split; the religious education division merges with the School of Theology. SSW had received provisional accreditation as a seperate school in 1939. Since its inception over ninety years ago, the School has valued differences among people as enriching the quality of life for all.
1938
Campus
Charles River Campus Opens
The Charles River Campus is inaugurated as the cornerstone is laid for the Charles Hayden Memorial Building, which houses the College of Business Administration.
1934
Campus, Community, Learning, Research
Aeronautical Engineering Established at Logan Airport
Captain Hilding Carlson and Lt. Arthur B. Metcalf are hired to start the Aeronautical Engineering Department, located at Logan Airport.
1933
Research
First Research Grant Awarded
The University receives its first research grant, $275 from the National Academy of Sciences to the School of Medicine.
1933
Leaders
First Female Judge Becomes a University Trustee
Alumna Emma Fall Schofield, Massachusetts’ first female judge, becomes a University Trustee. She is also the first female assistant district attorney and first female judge in New England.
Photo courtesy of Marsh, Daniel L. and Clark, William H. The Story of Massachusetts. New York, The American Historical Society, Inc. [1938]
1931
Campus
The University Yearbook Expands
CLA yearbook The Hub expands to represent the entire University. The yearbook, a BU tradition for more than 100 years, becomes The Boston Comment in 1980 and is renamed The Bostonian in 1982.
1931
Campus
Founders Day Established
The birthday of the University’s first president, William Fairfield Warren, is celebrated as the first Founders Day on March 13.
1930
Campus
University Colors Become Official
Scarlet and White become the official colors of the University.
1930
Community, Leaders
BU Alum Named “Man of the Year”
Owen D. Young (Class of 1896), alumnus, international diplomat, and Boston University School of Law instructor, is named “Man of the Year” by Time magazine for the second time. Young is one of the chief architects of the Dawes Plan, which established the policy for German reparations following World War I. Young was also part of the 1929 committee that created the Young Plan for the fiscal rehabilitation of Germany, at the time considered to be a great diplomatic feat.
Magazine cover courtesy of Time magazine.
"The great lawyer of the future will be the man who has the faculty for seeing right; the man who has the courage to tell what he saw; the man who has the stability to maintain what he said." — Owen D. Young
1929
Campus, Learning
Sargent College Acquired
Sargent College, a privately owned school of allied health founded by Dudley Allen Sargent in 1881, becomes part of Boston University.
1928
Campus
HER House Founded
The Harriet E. Richards Cooperative House, probably the first co-op house in the country, is founded at 328 Bay State Road.
1928
Campus, Community, Philanthropy
General Alumni Association Established
The General Alumni Association is established and fifty-one years later successfully revives the Scarlet Key, an award that recognizes seniors who have displayed exceptional leadership and dedication to the University.
1926
Leaders, Presidents
Daniel L. Marsh, Fourth President
from 1926–1951
Born in rural Pennsylvania, Daniel Marsh earned a degree from the Boston University School of Theology in 1908 and served as a Methodist minister and administrator with a strong record of creating social welfare programs for the urban poor. As Boston University president, Marsh declared that BU would instill in students the spirit of “Useful Service for the Sake of Others.” Marsh succeeded in building the new campus that President Murlin had envisioned. He also incorporated Sargent College into the University and founded the School of Social Work, the School of Nursing, the School of Public Relations (now the College of Communication), and the General College. He successfully guided the University through severe financial stringency in the Depression and during World War II.
1924
Leaders
First Dean of Women Named
Lucy Jenkins Franklin is the first Dean of Women.
1922
Campus, Sports
Rhett the Terrier
Boston Terrier becomes the Boston University mascot after students choose him over a moose. The Boston Terrier was first bred in 1869, the year BU was chartered. The mascot is later named "Rhett" after the 1936 book/1939 movie Gone with the Wind because “no one loves Scarlett more than Rhett.”
1921
Leaders, Learning
US President Taft Was a Professor at BU
President William Howard Taft, who lectured on legal ethics at Boston University School of Law from 1918 to 1921, is appointed 10th Chief Justice of the United States following his tenure as the 27th US president (from 1909 to 1913). To date, he is the only person to hold both positions.
1921
Firsts, Learning
First Evening Courses in New England Offered
On January 4, 1921, the College of Liberal Arts offers New England’s first evening courses leading to AB and BS degrees.
1921
Campus
BU Brief Yearbook
The first yearbook for the School of Law, the Boston University Brief, goes to print. The publication shuts down 11 years later.
1920
Campus
Campus Property Purchased
Boston University purchases 15 acres between Commonwealth Avenue and the Charles River (now the Charles River Campus) to unify the schools and colleges on a single campus. The property is acquired for less than $4 per square foot for approximately $1.7 million.
1919
Campus, Learning
Predecessor of SSW Opens
The School of Religious Education and Social Service opens.
1919
Campus, Learning
PAL (Later CBA) Established
The College of Secretarial Science opens its doors; it becomes the College of Practical Arts and Letters in 1924 and is absorbed into the College of Business Administration in 1955.
1918
Campus, Learning
SED Established
The School of Education is established.
1918
Campus
SATC Arrives on Campus
The US War Department institutes the Student Army Training Corps (SATC), which brings with it the 8 a.m. class.
1918
Campus, Community
First ROTC Pass-in-Review
Pass-in-Review is a long-standing military tradition in this country. The dean of the College of Business Administration, Everett Lord, makes ROTC compulsory in 1918; the ROTC remains active at the University until 1970. The Army and Air Force ROTC units are reestablished at the University in September 1981 under former Dean of Students Staton R. Curtis, academic coordinator for Military Education. A separate Navy unit is established in 1982 and a Marine unit in 1986.
1917
Sports
Boston Terrier Named Unofficial Mascot
The Boston Terrier becomes Boston University’s unofficial school mascot.
1916
Campus
First University Newspaper: BU News
The Boston University News, the University’s first newspaper, is created as a laboratory exercise for the College of Business Administration (CBA) journalism class. Five years later, it becomes the official newspaper of Boston University.
1915
Campus, Learning
First Summer Term Held
The University holds its first Summer Term.
1913
Campus, Learning
SMG (Formerly CBA) Established
The College of Business Administration, later the School of Management, is established. Journalism courses are taught there until the School of Public Relations opens three decades later.
1911
Leaders, Presidents
Lemuel Herbert Murlin, Third President
from 1911–1924
Boston University’s third president was another midwestern Methodist minister from a rural background. Lemuel Murlin served as president of Baker University in Kansas from 1893 until 1911, when he assumed the Boston University presidency. He, like Huntington before him, dreamed of a University “in the heart of the city, in the service of the city.” In 1920, he purchased a large tract of land between the Charles River and Commonwealth Avenue, hoping to unite on a permanent campus the colleges and schools scattered throughout Boston. His campaign to raise funds for the new campus, however, fell short, and he resigned in 1924 to accept the presidency at his alma mater, DePauw University.
1904
Leaders, Presidents
William Edwards Huntington, Second President
from 1904–1911
William Huntington grew up in a strongly abolitionist farm family in Illinois and served in the Union Army during the Civil War, where he rose from private to first lieutenant. He attended the University of Wisconsin and the Boston University School of Theology. Upon receiving his PhD in 1882, he was appointed BU’s dean of the College of Liberal Arts. He was named the University’s second president in 1904. Huntington defined his tenure as an attempt to capture in higher education the energy of America’s burgeoning cities. He saw BU as a new type of “municipal” university, attentive to the needs and opportunities of urban life.
1904
Campus, Learning
Collegiate Life Course Requirement
William Marshall Warren, son of the University’s first president, becomes dean of the College of Liberal Arts and assistant professor of philosophy. Freshmen are required to take his course on “Collegiate Life,” which features questions about the campus and downtown Boston, and are expected to explore the city to discover its history and beauty.
1903
Leaders
First President Steps Down
William Fairfield Warren retires after serving for thirty years as the first president of Boston University, but he continues to teach and once again becomes the dean of the School of Theology.
1902
Community
Goodwill Industries Founded by STH Graduate
Boston University graduate Edgar Helms founds Goodwill Industries while teaching applied Christianity at the School of Theology. A branch of the store opens on campus in May 2008.
1896
Community, Global, Sports
LAW Student Competes in First Olympiad
Thomas Edmund Burke (Class of 1897) takes a six-week leave of absence from Boston University School of Law to compete in Athens at the first Olympic competition held since 393 A.D.
1891
Firsts
LAW Graduate Is First Female to Try Jury Case in Massachusetts
Anna Christy Fall graduates from Boston University School of Law, later becoming the first woman to try a case before a jury in Massachusetts. She wins the case and a $700 verdict for her client.
1885
Campus
The Hub Yearbook Established
The Hub becomes the CLA yearbook.
1882
Philanthropy
Trustee Scholarships Established
The Trustees establish 64 full-tuition scholarships—32 for men and 32 for women—through the bequest of Isaac Rich. The scholarships adhere to the principle of equal opportunity for men and women, rich and poor, as stated by William Fairfield Warren.
1881
Firsts
First Female LAW Graduate
Lelia Josephine Robinson becomes the first female graduate of Boston University School of Law and succeeds in getting a bill passed allowing women to join the Massachusetts Bar. In 1882, she becomes the first woman admitted to the bar in Massachusetts.
1877
Firsts
First PhD Awarded to a Woman
Boston University is the first university to award a PhD to a woman, Helen Magill White.
1877
Commencement, Firsts, Learning
First Japanese LAW Graduate
Takeo Kikuchi is the first Japanese graduate of Boston University School of Law.
1877
Commencement
First Commencement
The first general Commencement is held.
1877
Commencement, Firsts, Learning
First Black LAW Graduate
Emanuel Hewlett is the first black Boston University School of Law graduate and one of the first black degree recipients of a major US law school. Upon his death in 1929, the Supreme Court adjourns for the day, an honor reserved for the most respected members of the bar.
Photo courtesy of "Crisis." New York, N.Y. Crisis Publication Company. Volume 36, Page 416. [1929]
1876
Campus
The Beacon Goes to Print
The Beacon, the first student publication, goes to print.
1876
Firsts, Research
Telephone Invented
In the first public demonstration, the telephone transmits sound to the Boston Athenaeum from Professor Alexander Graham Bell’s University office.
1876
Firsts, Learning
LAW Three-Year Degree Established
The School of Law becomes the first law school in the US to require three years of study for a degree.
1876
Firsts, Learning
First Agriculture Degrees Awarded
The first degrees in agriculture are granted by Boston University to students of the Massachusetts College of Agriculture, now University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The four-year curriculum includes courses in German, French, manual labor, and freehand drawing. Boston University continues to confer these degrees until 1912.
Photo courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, W.E.B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
1876
Firsts, Research
Centennial Exhibition Award
Alexander Graham Bell’s work on the telephone, completed while he was on a paid sabbatical from the University’s College of Oratory, earns the prize for science at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, which recognizes Boston University’s scientific pioneering. A year later, Bell becomes the first individual to receive an exclusive patent on the telephone.
1875
Global, Learning
First Study Abroad Program
Boston University students study abroad for the first time.
1874
Campus, Learning
GRS Predecessor Opens
The School of All Sciences, now the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, opens.
1873
Campus, Leaders, Presidents
William Fairfield Warren, BU’s Inaugural President
from 1873–1903
In 1867, William Fairfield Warren became acting president of Boston Theological School, which evolved into Boston University. The former pastor was officially appointed president of BU in 1873. Warren created a distinctive new educational institution, combining the breadth of the American liberal arts college, the inclusion of professional studies typical of the British university, and the focus on original research of the German university. Serving for 30 years, Warren championed higher education for all students regardless of religion, race, or sex. During his administration, BU became the first university anywhere to award a doctor of philosophy to a woman.
1873
Firsts, Learning
Women Admitted to MED
Boston University is the first university to admit women to a medical college.
1873
Commencement
MED Class Milestone
The first class of the School of Medicine includes students from Massachusetts, Kansas, California, South India, and Asia Minor.
1873
Campus, Learning
School of Medicine Established
Boston University acquires the New England Female Medical College and the School of Medicine is established.
1873
Firsts, Global
First Professor Exchange with Europe
Boston University is the first American university to exchange professors with European universities.
1873
Campus, Learning
CAS (Formerly CLA) Established
The College of Liberal Arts, now the College of Arts & Sciences, is established, the first fully coed liberal arts college in New England.
1873
Learning
Alexander Graham Bell’s First Lecture
Professor Alexander Graham Bell delivers the inaugural lecture for the School of Oratory, the first such institution in the country.
1872
Campus, Learning
School of Law Founded
Boston University School of Law is founded; it is the second School adopted into Boston University. The law school reforms the system of legal education in the US by requiring an admission exam, offering three-year courses, and being among the first to admit women and minorities.
1872
Campus, Learning
College of Music Established
The College of Music is established, the first degree-granting music school in the country. The New England Conservatory is founded by William Claflin, the son of BU founder Lee Claflin. The two programs share deanship, faculty and facilities, and grant joint degrees.
1871
Commencement
First School Named
The Boston Theological Seminary is renamed the School of Theology, the University's first school.
1869
Leaders
Trustees First Meet
The Trustees hold their first meeting.
1869
Campus
University Charter Established
Boston University is chartered by three businessmen, Isaac Rich, Lee Claflin, and Jacob Sleeper. The Boston Theological Seminary is the University’s first department.
1867
Campus, Firsts, Learning
Divisions Open to Women
Boston University is among the first universities in the United States to open all of its divisions to female students.
1867
Campus
Boston Theological Seminary Rechartered
The Methodist General Biblical Institute is moved to Boston and rechartered as the Boston Theological Seminary.
1847
Campus
Newbury Biblical Institute Transferred and Renamed
The theology department of the Newbury Biblical Institute is transferred to Concord, New Hampshire, and renamed the Methodist General Biblical Institute.
1839
Campus
Newbury Biblical Institute Established
Delegates to a Methodist Episcopal conference meet in Boston to establish the Newbury Biblical Institute, later the School of Theology, the first school of Boston University. The Institute is housed in the Newbury Seminary, a secondary school in Newbury, VT.
