BUniverse

Aeroecology: The Next Frontier

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:00:00 EDT

Professor of biology and director of Boston University’s Center for Ecology & Conservation Biology Thomas Kunz invites the audience to consider the air around them. In Aeroecology: The Next Frontier, Kunz explains the new discipline of aeroecology, which studies airborne organisms and how they depend on the support of their aerospheric ecosystem. Kunz’s presentation is Boston University’s 2009 University Lecture, established to honor faculty engaged in outstanding research.

According to Kunz, the aerosphere — the boundary of the Earth’s atmosphere that supports life — is the least-understood part of the biosphere. Adiabatic forces in the aerosphere strongly influence the evolution of organisms that depend upon this fluid environment. The goal of Kunz’s research is to understand and interpret responses of organisms under different meteorological and atmospheric conditions and anthropogenic perturbations.

Kunz stresses that aeroecology is vitally important because it directly relates to climate change, air pollution, altered landscapes, emerging pathogens, invasive species, and declining bird, bat, and insect populations. Bats and birds are harmed by the ever-changing aerosphere — a serious issue because they play such a crucial role in countering insect populations.

The challenges of counting and tracking bats are enormous, Kunz says. However, most of the advances in aeroecology are being conceptually and technologically driven. New technologies like vertical profiling, computer simulations, thermal imaging, and radio transmitting are greatly increasing the information gained about bats’ common behaviors.

A question-and-answer session follows the lecture, as well as an interactive demonstration of thermal imaging technology.

October 19, 2009, 7 p.m.

Tsai Performance Center

Video length is 01:12:00.

About the speaker :

Thomas H. Kunz is Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Ecology & Conservation Biology at Boston University. A BU faculty member for the last 35 years, he has authored more than 200 publications and is the editor of five books on bat ecology. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a winner of both the Gerrit S. Miller Jr. and C. Hart Merriam awards for his work with bats, and is Past-President of the American Society of Mammalogists.

2009 College of Fine Arts Commencement Address: Gunther A. Schuller

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Gunther Schuller was a professional horn player at age seventeen, and by twenty-four he was the principal horn of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and a performer on Miles Davis’s seminal Birth of the Cool recordings.

In 1955 Schuller and jazz pianist John Lewis founded the Modern Jazz Society and later became known as the Jazz and Classical Music Society. In 1959 Schuller gave up performance to devote himself to composition, teaching, and writing. While lecturing at Brandeis University, he coined the term “third stream” to describe music that combines classical and jazz techniques. He has taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Yale University, and the groundbreaking Lenox School of Jazz. He was president of Boston’s New England Conservatory, where he created the first conservatory-level, jazz degree program and founded the award-winning New England Ragtime Ensemble.

Schuller is the winner of several major honors, including the William Schuman Award (1988), presented by Columbia University for lifetime achievement in American music composition, a MacArthur Foundation Genius Award (1991), a Pulitzer Prize (1994), the Gold Medal for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997), the Downbeat Lifetime Achievement Award, and an inaugural membership in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame.
He is the father of jazz percussionist George Schuller and bassist Ed Schuller.

May 16, 2009, 6 p.m.
Metcalf Hall

Video length is 00:27:52.

2009 Commencement Address by U.S. Representative Michael E. Capuano, D-Mass.

Sun, 17 May 2009 00:00:00 EDT

Michael Capuano is the United States Representative for the Eighth District of Massachusetts. He is a third-generation resident of Somerville, Massachusetts, and served as that city’s mayor for nine years, until he was elected to Congress in 1998. He is a member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, the House Committee on Financial Services and the Committee on House Administration, and chair of the Subcommittee on Capitol Security and the Special Task Force on Ethics Enforcement.

Capuano is also a leading congressional voice on the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, cofounding and cochairing the Congressional Caucus on Sudan, securing $50 million in funding for the African Union Mission in Sudan, and urging public officials and institutions to speak out against the genocide. He called for Harvard University to divest all financial holdings from businesses with ties to the Sudanese government and said that former President George W. Bush should not attend the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic games unless China pressured the Sudanese to end the violence.

He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Boston College Law School.

May 17, 2009, 1 p.m.

Nickerson Field

Video length is 00:18:36.

2009 Baccalaureate Address by Gloria White-Hammond

Sun, 17 May 2009 11:00:00 EDT

Gloria White-Hammond (CAS’72) received a bachelor of arts degree in biology from Boston University and a doctorate of medicine from Tufts Medical School, and served as pediatrician at the South End Community Health Center from 1981 until she retired in 2007. In the late 1980s, she earned a master of divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School, and in 1997 she cofounded and became copastor of the Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Boston.

White-Hammond has worked as a medical missionary in several African countries. In 2002, she cofounded My Sister’s Keeper, a nonprofit that helps bring HIV/AIDS care, girls’ schools, and grain-grinding mills to Sudanese villages. She became the founding cochair of the Massachusetts Coalition to Save Darfur and led the national campaign, Million of Voices for Darfur, for the DC-based human rights group Save Darfur.

White-Hammond is the founder of Boston-based Do the Write Thing, a creative-writing ministry and mentoring initiative for high-risk black adolescent females. The project began in 1994 with four girls and now serves over 550 women. She also is cofounder of the Red Tent Group, which brings together Christian and Jewish women for Torah and Bible study.

May 17, 2009, 11 a.m.

Marsh Chapel

Video length is 00:16:31.

2009 School of Law Commencement Address: Howard Dean

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Democrat Howard Dean served as governor of Vermont for five terms, from 1991 to 2003. A strong proponent of fiscal restraint, he balanced the budget 11 times, paid off much of the state’s debt, and lowered income taxes. A physician, Dean also focused on health care, ensuring near-universal health coverage for Vermont’s children and pregnant women. In 2000, Dean signed the nation’s first civil-union law, which granted gays the same legal rights as married couples. In 2004, he ran for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States, launching a dynamic grassroots campaign that harnessed the power of the Internet to raise funds — paving the way, some argue, for Barack Obama’s own fundraising success during Obama’s historic 2008 presidential campaign. In 2005, Dean became chairman of the Democratic National Committee, devising the 50-state strategy that sought to make Democrats competitive in states previously considered unsympathetic to the Democratic Party. He resigned the chairmanship this year and has returned to the private sector.

May 17, 2009, 4 p.m.

Agganis Arena

Video length is 00:11:17.

2009 College of Communication Commencement Address: Bonnie Hammer

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:00:00 EDT

Bonnie Hammer (CGS’69, COM’71, SED’75) is president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions. She launched her television career at WGBH, the public television station in Boston, where she produced This Old House and Zoom. She became executive producer at Good Day! (a show on Boston’s ABC affiliate) and later a programming executive at Lifetime Television Network, where she oversaw the production of several award-winning documentaries. In 1989, she joined USA Network as a programming executive. She has been president of USA Network since 2004 and of the Sci Fi Channel since 2001. Both are owned by NBC Universal.

This year, Hammer was sixty-sixth on Fast Company’s list of 100 Most Creative People in Business. The magazine, which notes that shows such as Monk and Battlestar Galactica have “blossomed” under Hammer, says, “the USA Network’s ratings have soared under her watch - its 2008 prime-time viewership was the largest ever for any basic-cable channel, and her products contributed more than $1 billion to NBC Universal’s profits last year.”

Hammer studied photojournalism at BU’s College of Communication and earned a master’s in media technology at the School of Education. She received a Distinguished Service to Profession Award from COM in 2007.

May 17, 2009, 9:00 a.m.

Agganis Arena

Video Length is 00:29;49.

2009 College of Engineering Commencement Address: Venkatesh Narayanamurti

Sun, 17 May 2009 16:30:00 EDT

Venkatesh Narayanamurti, inaugural dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and former dean of physical sciences at Harvard University, oversaw the transformation of a division of engineering and applied science to a degree-granting school. For a decade, as a leader in Harvard engineering, Narayanamurti worked to increase sponsored research, as well as the number of faculty and graduate student applications.

Narayanamurti is the former Richard A. Auhll Professor and dean of engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, vice president of research at Sandia National Laboratories, and director of solid state electronics research at Bell Labs. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.

May 17, 2009, 4:30 p.m.

Track and Tennis Center

Video Length is 00:10:51.

2009 Metropolitan College Commencement Address: Mary Kennard

Sat, 16 May 2009 18:00:00 EDT

Mary Kennard (MET’76) is vice president, chief legal counsel, and member of the president’s cabinet at American University, where she manages both in-house and external legal representation services.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in urban affairs at Metropolitan College, J.D. degree from the School of Law at Temple University, and L.L.M. in international and comparative law at the George Washington University National Law Center. She joined the staff of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and subsequently was assistant university counsel at the University of Pittsburgh and counsel and assistant to the vice president for legal affairs at Howard University.

In 1987, Kennard became legal counsel at the University of Rhode Island, served as interim vice president for university relations, as well as vice president for federal relations and public policy, and taught courses in business management and higher education law. Since joining American University in 1995, she has served as co-chair of the university’s diversity strategic plan and acted as vice president of development for 1999-2000. She was the first vice president of the National Association of College and University Attorneys and is president-elect of the Washington Metropolitan Area Corporate Counsel Association.

May 16, 2009, 6:00 p.m.

Track and Tennis Center

Video Length is 00:13:31.

2009 Graduate School of Management Commencement Address: Alessandro Benetton

Fri, 15 May 2009 17:00:00 EDT

Alessandro Benetton is the executive deputy chairman of the Benetton Group. Benetton received a bachelor of science from the BU School of Management in 1988 and a master of business administration from Harvard University in 1991. He has worked for Goldman Sachs International, served as chairman of Benetton Formula, during which time the Formula One Team won several championships, and was the first Italian to join the advisory committee of Robert Bosch International Beteiligungen AG in Zurich.

May 15, 2009, 5 p.m.

Agganis Arena

Video length is 00:19:51.

2009 School of Hospitality Administration Commencement Address: Denise Coll

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:30:00 EDT

When Denise Coll began her career in hospitality administration more than 30 years ago, she was in a no-frills, frontline position: reservations manager for the Sheraton Boston Hotel. That hands-on experience served her well. Currently president of the North American division of Starwood Hotels and Resorts, in charge of sales and marketing for more than 500 hotels and destinations, Coll has reached a pinnacle of the hospitality industry. As a member of the advisory board of BU’s School of Hospitality Administration, Coll shares her wisdom and experience on a regular basis. In serving as the school’s Commencement speaker this year, she offers perspectives and insights for the graduating class about a sector of the economy that she believes will remain vital and full of opportunity in the years ahead.

May 15, 2009 12:30 p.m.

George Sherman Union Metcalf Hall

Video Length is 00:17:05.