Thousands of alums returned to campus last month for Alumni Weekend, to lunch with old friends, tour the changing campus, sit in on classes led by star faculty members, and watch the Terrier icemen topple Michigan, 3-2.
]]>It won’t cover tuition, but the winnings will allow for a bit of fun.
Two months ago, Kaelin Merrihew competed on Wheel of Fortune, her “childhood guilty pleasure,” and luck was with her — she beat the other contestants to win $7,200 in cash and a Mexican cruise worth $5,000. The episode was taped on September 4, but contestants and audience members were sworn to secrecy until the show aired on November 9.
]]>Good Morning America producer Brandon Bodow (COM’06) takes viewers behind the scenes as he produces a segment with musical guest Ingrid Michaelson, who is currently on tour with her band promoting her newest album, Everybody.
]]>Bill O’Reilly isn’t usually on the receiving end of an interview. But there he was on Friday evening, lounging in a third-floor room of the George Sherman Union fielding questions minutes before taking the stage for what promised to be a raucous night before an overflow crowd at the start of Alumni Weekend.
O’Reilly (COM’75) called journalists over individually, like a doctor summoning patients into a makeshift office. Compared with his sharp, confrontational television tone, his manner was avuncular.
]]>Boston University has been ranked positively by several publications in the past few months, on both a national and an international scale.
Times Higher Education, a British publication that ranks schools globally, recently published “Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings,” and BU was ranked 54th out of 200 universities, 20th in the United States.
]]>With the Tsai Performance Center filled to its 500-seat capacity, many in the audience remembered when that hall was named Hayden, the University was in turmoil, and Howard Zinn was both lightning rod and radical catalyst.
Much has changed. The Howard Zinn Lecture Series, kicking off Alumni Weekend on October 22, now celebrates Boston University’s distinguished professor emeritus of political science. As Virginia Sapiro, dean of Arts & Sciences, welcomed all and introduced three intriguing writers gathered around the man of the night, cordiality rather than conflict ruled.
“To have a kindly relationship between us and the BU administration,” said Zinn, his nod to Sapiro drawing swells of laughter, “well, we’re still trying to get used to it.”
Yet some things haven’t changed. The topic was The Promise of Change: Vision and Realty in Obama’s Presidency. And the analysis came hard from the left, with Zinn staking out the far post.
Just as intriguing were the positions of his fellow panelists, each nuanced, each approaching Obama at least a little more sympathetically. They were:
James Carroll, a National Book Award winner and Boston Globe columnist, who first met Zinn during his years as Catholic chaplain at Boston University, from 1969 to 1974, before he left the priesthood.
Watch a video of Howard Zinn answering a question from the audience: what would he urge Barack Obama to do? Photo above by Frank Curran
]]>Providing a synopsis of each of eight major world religions in Twitter-speak takes creative condensation. On Stephen Prothero’s feed, an “Ahh!” at the end indicates that a religious philosophy includes a final payoff. The eightfold path in Buddhism becomes “Path=let go(d),” and his shorthand for atheism is “There is no uknowwho but Freud & Marx is his prophet,” because the words “delusional” and “oppressive” are too long.
]]>In the video: Nick Mills and Andrew Bacevich discuss the obstacles to a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Watch the video.
As President Obama considers sending as many as 40,000 more American troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, Boston University’s Nick Mills has some thoughts on when and where the United States could have been most effective: Kabul, circa 2001.
“We really lost the moment in 2001, when we went in there and booted the Taliban out, and they were for all intents and purposes defeated,” says Mills, a College of Communication associate professor of journalism and the author of Karzai: The Failing American Intervention and the Struggle for Afghanistan (2007). “But neither Hamid Karzai (Hon.’05), Afghanistan’s president, nor American policy took advantage of the moment, when 95 percent of the Afghan people were delighted the Taliban were gone and very enthusiastic and excited about the prospect of building a new Afghanistan. I think we really could have succeeded, and that moment was lost.”
Eight years later, the United States faces another fulcrum moment, as military leaders urge Obama to raise troop strength, while political leaders at home worry about a Vietnam-style quagmire. Andrew Bacevich, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of international relations, wrote in last week’s Washington Post that such an escalation would prolong the war for an additional 5 to 10 years and “break the bank and break the force.”
Coming from different personal and political perspectives to perhaps the crucial foreign policy question of Obama’s first year, Bacevich and Mills explore the cultural and political issues U.S. forces face in Afghanistan and offer the president some unsolicited advice.
]]>If you’ve been looking for a job, you know the news is grim. By September, the unemployment had doubled — to 9.8 percent — since the start of the recession in December 2007, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. More than 15 million people are unemployed, with most of the job losses in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, and government.
BU alumni who have been searching for work or who want to advance their career can get help. The Boston University Alumni Association (BUAA) offers an array of career management and networking tools, including mentoring and job- and résumé-posting services. In addition, a series of career-focused classes, called Managing Your Career, will be held on campus on Friday, October 23, during Alumni Weekend.
The classes, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the George Sherman Union Conference Auditorium, will help alums strengthen their professional network, learn job-search strategies, and reinvent their attitude and relationship to work. General admission is $15 and $10 for young alumni (Classes of 1999–2009).
“The Managing Your Career event is an opportunity for alumni to see and experience firsthand the power and value of the 288,000-member BU alumni network,” says Kirsten Lundeen, associate director of alumni relations. “You’ll learn how to use alumni career tools that are available for free.”
The series will include a demonstration of CareerBeam, a free career management system that helps alums create résumés and cover letters, prepare for job interviews, find information on more than 300 industries and 35 million companies, and develop their professional network. The presentation will be made by CareerBeam CEO Colleen Sabatino, an author and a nationally certified career counselor. Kimberly Delgizzo, director of BU Career Services, will offer job-search strategies. And Juline Godin (CFA’97), a workforce development and training coach with Dale Carnegie Training, will make a presentation on how alums can take control of their career and relationships at work. There will be time for networking breaks, so alumni are encouraged to bring their business cards, and career advisors will be available for one-on-one résumé critiques after the last session, by appointment.
Alumni can also get help through the Boston University Alumni Web by logging in to the Alumni Online Community. Besides CareerBeam, services include the Career Advisory Network, an online group of more than 5,300 alumni volunteers who have been selected to provide peer-to-peer networking, career information, and mentoring. Alums can also search for jobs and post a résumé online.
In addition, many BU schools and colleges have their own career Web sites, which offer additional career management tools, job resources, and personal career advising (for a fee).
“As the U.S. begins to recover from this long and difficult recession, a lot of new jobs and opportunities will be coming up on the market,” says Lundeen. “To get those, you’ll need to be well-educated, informed, and ready to take on a whole new set of challenges we’ve never seen in our lifetime. Why not turn back to your alma mater to help you prepare? Remember, you’re not just a Terrier for your college years — you’re a Terrier for life.”
]]>Last June, President Obama presented his case for radical overhaul of the U.S. health-care system to the annual meeting of the American Medical Association, a powerful physician assembly famous for resisting government influence on the practice of medicine.
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]]>For his latest book, Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age (CreateSpace, 2009), Scott Kirsner talked to dozens of successful filmmakers, musicians, visual artists, writers, and comedians known for using social media and other Web functions to boost their careers. In some cases, readers may suspect, Kirsner knew a bit more than those he questioned. He has built his own successful career writing about how technology has changed our lives for the better. In addition to writing the Boston Globe’s “Innovation Economy” column, Kirsner (COM’93) writes regularly for Variety and has been a contributing writer for Fast Company, BusinessWeek, and Wired.
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]]>For five years, Raj Mohanty tinkered in a kind of parallel universe, an odd place where objects were so small they could be seen only with a scanning electron microscope and movements were so quick they were measured in billions of oscillations per second. For Mohanty, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of physics, nanoscale structures were intriguing stuff, and his investigations were driven by a fascination with the science and a kind of arm’s-length hope that his efforts would someday be useful and profitable.
“You just keep working on something,” he says. “And from time to time you have an idea that may be relevant in the marketplace.”
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]]>Even today, Karen Eschbacher Spataro can recite word for word the front-page “teaser” in the January 17, 1997, Daily Free Press:
“BU administration fails to take care of students at this university.”
The problem? There was no story. The knock on BU was the default placeholder for every issue, replaced by a real teaser every night, until the day it showed up in print. Spataro, then a freshman assistant news editor, remembers the dread she felt when she got to the office that day.
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]]>Annual Funds at each of the University's schools and colleges give deans the flexibility to meet new, pressing, and often unexpected needs. The Feltensteins issued their challenge in April to match new and increased gifts made through June, the end of the University's 2009 fiscal year. Despite what might be expected in this recession, the number of donors who increased their gifts during that period more than tripled over fiscal 2008, and the number of new donors increased by nearly 25 percent.
New and increased gifts to the Annual Fund in the last three months of the fiscal year rose by 51 percent — a great success for this first all-University Annual Fund challenge grant.
A longtime BU supporter and a trustee since 2000, Feltenstein (COM'62) has contributed to the School of Hospitality Administration and has served on its board of advisors since the board's inception in 1984.
Feltenstein is founder and past chair of Sagittarius Brands of Nashville, Tennessee, the parent company of the restaurant chains Captain D's and Del Taco. Previously, he was executive vice president of worldwide marketing at Burger King Corporation, where he is credited with reversing an eight-year decline in customer traffic, and chief marketing officer at Dunkin' Donuts.
]]>With its opening this week, the University’s student housing capacity has increased dramatically; approximately 75 percent of undergraduates now live on campus. Local hotels, such as Cambridge’s Hyatt Regency and Brookline’s Holiday Inn, which formerly accommodated students shut out of campus housing, are not in the mix this fall; the overflow is over. Bostonia checked in with Marc Robillard, BU’s director of housing, about the addition of 33 Harry Agganis Way and how the eclectic mix of housing owned by the University is meeting student demand.
]]>Perhaps this gives Doug a slight advantage on the rest of his freshmen class. But like all his peers, he will be looking to build his own community this fall and eventually call BU home — even if his mother keeps reminding him (as she reminded his sister) that “real home” is only 45 minutes away, in Marblehead.
]]>They’ve spent much of the summer hitting neighborhood hot spots, shaking hands with Boston voters, collecting endorsements, making endless calls to raise money. Of 15 candidates for 4 at-large Boston City Council seats, 3 have ties to BU: Tomás González, former director of community outreach at the Medical Campus and part-time master’s student in Metropolitan College, Andrew Kenneally (MET’08), and Ayanna Pressley (CGS’94). The 13-member council includes 4 councilors-at-large, elected by all Boston voters. With two of the four at-large incumbents leaving office - Michael Flaherty (LAW’94) and Sam Yoon are looking to unseat Mayor Thomas M. Menino (Hon.’01) - opportunity knocks. A preliminary election, which will whittle the roster of at-large candidates to eight, will take place on September 22; the municipal election to choose the final four is November 3.
]]>After the BU men’s hockey team’s jaw-dropping NCAA comeback victory in last April’s championship, it seemed impossible that things could get better. But that was in Washington, D.C. This winter, the national hockey champs will have their chance to break new ice, and add to local sports lore. They’ll be stickhandling in Fenway Park, storied home of the Boston Red Sox. Next January, the Terriers will face off against archrival and 2008 NCAA champion Boston College on a rink set in the shadow of the Green Monster, within the confines of New England’s legendary sports mecca. Slap shots and kick saves will replace line drives and booted grounders.
]]>When Judy Austin’s students showed up for their 8 a.m. Fundamentals of Communication class last month, they were not expecting free coffee. So when servers from McDonald’s burst through the classroom doors 20 minutes into an intentionally drab lecture carrying trays of iced and hot coffee, the looks on faces ranged from shock to delight. As cameras, booms, and lights followed, it dawned on the students — they were being filmed for a television commercial.
]]>Pristine, futuristic — not to mention colossal — BU’s Student Village II is the newest addition to the Boston skyline. StuVi2 (as everyone calls the new high-rise towers) will be open for 975 lucky residents this fall. At twenty-six stories, it’s half the height of the Prudential Center Tower.
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