Taking the Helm
In the past year, new deans have arrived at three of Boston University’s schools and colleges—the College of Communication, the School of Education, and the School of Theology. Here, the deans articulate their visions for their school’s or college’s distinctive brand of research
Building a Media Model
Tom Fiedler earned an engineering degree before he ever came to the College of Communication in 1970 to learn journalism. When he returned to his alma mater 38 years later as dean, he noted that his engineer’s mindset had proved useful throughout his career as an investigative journalist and editor of the Miami Herald.
“Engineers are methodical,” Fiedler explained at the time. “When you build a building, you want to make sure it’s going to stand up.” He approached reporting the same way. “You find the information, you test the information. You build the story in many ways as you would build a bridge, piece by piece.”
Tom Fiedler
“The tools that all media use are converging. A journalist today, even one who focuses primarily on text, also has to know how to shoot and edit video, how to tell a story visually.”
Now, a year into his tenure as dean, Fiedler is still assembling complementary components, to craft not a news story but a cohesive communication college.
He set the tone with an all-faculty retreat in early 2009, where he told faculty in three departments—journalism; film & television; and mass communication, advertising & public relations—that it was critical “that we think of ourselves as one College—with a diversity of strengths, but with all of those strengths coming together to add up to something greater.”
In today’s media landscape, that concept matters more than ever. “The values that distinguish the professions remain distinct, as they should, but the tools that all media use are converging,” Fiedler says. “A journalist today, even one who focuses primarily on text, also has to know how to shoot and edit video, how to tell a story visually.”
This year, the College launched its biggest experiment in convergence yet, with the creation of the New England Center for Investigative Reporting (NECIR). Funded in part by a grant from the Knight Foundation, NECIR is the nation’s first university-based investigative reporting collaborative focused on local and regional issues. Veteran investigative journalist Joe Bergantino and other faculty are leading students in data collection for in-depth stories that will appear on an array of platforms, including web (Boston.com), radio (WBUR, BU’s National Public Radio station), and television (New England Cable News).
NECIR is also serving as a laboratory for outside investigative reporters, who are bringing story ideas that the center is turning into more grant proposals. Furthermore, the center is inspiring similar efforts across the country, including programs in Denver and Seattle.
“In medicine,” says Fiedler, “a lot of research and initiatives and incubation for processes come out of medical schools—that’s where innovation often begins.” With NECIR, he continues, the College of Communication will fill a parallel and increasingly crucial role. “We can do for a community’s civic health what a medical school does for its physical health.”
The Science of Pedagogy
The School of Education has a long tradition of blending research and practice, says Hardin Coleman, a school counselor and psychologist who was appointed as dean in July 2008.
“We were the first school of education in the country to add a field component to the preparation of teachers,” he says. “We’re the first school of education in the country to have a technology department.” And the School’s Journal of Education is the oldest continuously published education journal in the country. This year, the journal is switching to a peer-reviewed format for the first time—a change that reflects a renewed commitment to research and the generation of new knowledge that is useful to practice across the School of Education as a whole.
For years, says Coleman, an emphasis on teaching preparation was foremost in the minds of faculty. “The teaching mission has been central, and based on alumni and student surveys and employer commentary, we do an exceptional job,” he says. “So the question becomes: How do you think of research in service of that mission?”
Hardin Coleman
“My aspiration is for the School of Education to be known as a school of and for scientist-practitioners.”
Among those quick to respond to Coleman’s charge is Suzanne Chapin, an associate professor of math education who has received six grants totaling approximately $5.7 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to improve math education. Project Challenge, a program Chapin co-developed, stresses “productive classroom talk” about mathematics. Program guidelines help elementary and middle school teachers encourage discussion in the classroom about fractions, ratios, integers, and proportions as a way to ensure that their students not only do the math properly, but also develop a thorough understanding of how it works. Hundreds of students taking part in the experiment have scored significantly higher than their peers on state exams.
Recently, Chapin successfully collaborated with Glenn Stevens, a professor of mathematics and statistics in the BU College of Arts & Sciences, on a grant “to support the recruitment and professional development of math educators,” says Coleman.
Already, the School of Education and College of Arts & Sciences offer a joint master’s degree in advanced math study and teaching, with support from NSF, to help alleviate a shortage of teachers with demonstrated math proficiency at the elementary level.
“Part of research is access to data,” Coleman says, and Project Challenge benefited from a ready supply, thanks to BU’s unique, 19-year partnership with the Chelsea Public Schools. (The University managed the nearby Massachusetts city’s once-troubled schools from 1989 until 2008, and maintains connections with the system.) “Clearly, an area where we’re very strong is our deep engagement with Chelsea and our growing relationship with the Boston Public Schools.”
Looking to the future, Coleman says, “My aspiration is for the School of Education to be known as a school of and for scientist-practitioners,” to fulfill its research potential without altering the core teaching mission.
“In five years, we want to be the buzz in this city, in the schools, the state, and the world—that if you want to become a high quality scientist-practitioner in the field of education who can integrate policy, theory, and practice, go to BU.”
Theologians Without Borders
If religion touches all dimensions of our lives, then so should the study of theology. Religious beliefs can influence our views on everything from politics and jobs to medical treatment and the environment, and School of Theology faculty are ensuring their work has an equally wide reach. They are exploring the role of faith in such diverse areas as physics, ecology, and conflict transformation, allowing them to help probe the origins of the universe, discern religion’s role in healing our planet, and restore veterans’ psychological health.
This broad-minded approach, says School of Theology Dean Mary Elizabeth Moore, is central to her view of teaching and research.
“I have a vision to encourage interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interreligious research,” says Moore. “I want to promote research that crosses BU’s schools and colleges. A lot of our faculty are already building these relationships and mostly I just need to cheer them along.”
Mary Elizabeth Moore
“You can’t profess any religion in a way that is credible in the 21st century without understanding and having respect for other religious traditions.”
Moore believes this interdisciplinary work will challenge traditional views of what study in certain theological fields should achieve, and it will also engage more people more complexly with the theoretical, practical, and value-laden issues of a global society. Conflict transformation, for instance, is no longer just about the “ethical questions of war and peace,” she says, but about dealing with issues “in immediate and practical ways, as well as theoretical, contextually nuanced, and long-term ways.
“The accent on practices is refreshing to students,” Moore continues. “If they’re studying early Christian life, for example, they recognize that the way people ate and what they ate were related to what they believed and valued.”
Since joining BU in 2008, she has noticed that students are helping to drive another two elements of her vision: intercultural and interreligious research.
“Whether we raise interreligious questions or not, our students live in an interreligious world,” she says. “Most profess Christianity, but they want to be able to do so in a way that is credible and respectful. They recognize, just as our faculty do, that you can’t profess any religion in the 21st century without understanding and having respect for other religious traditions.”
That philosophy, coupled with a new Global Religion Initiative at BU to promote collaboration among experts of different faiths and denominations, leads Moore to predict that study across religions might soon become “one of the major strengths of the University.” In her own school, that means practical theology, a long-time emphasis at BU (cemented in 2005 with the founding of the Center for Practical Theology), will become less exclusively focused on Christian practice. So, says Moore, if researchers are delving into religious rituals connected with death, they need to engage the practices and meanings of their own faith in dialogue with others.
“We are beginning to develop an approach to practical theology in which religious practices of different traditions are studied in relationship to the beliefs, values, and practice frameworks of diverse religious communities. Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Christians can learn much from each other by examining and analyzing their differences and similarities.”