Membership obligates BU to offer five MOOCs (massive open online courses) via edX, says Jean Morrison, University provost. MOOCs typically enable people around the world to take a university class for free, sans credit. But BU and edX also espouse blended, or hybrid, courses: for-credit classes that mingle face-to-face instruction with online work, says Elizabeth Loizeaux, associate provost for undergraduate affairs and cochair of the University’s Council on Educational Technology and Learning Innovation (CETLI).

Dan O’Connell, edX spokesperson, says hybrid courses allow professors to shift time normally spent on lectures to one-on-one or small-group teaching, to field trips, or to additional lectures delving more deeply into topics. O’Connell says early results from a pilot project edX is running in California show decreased failure rates in a hybrid course, compared to the traditional classroom version.

“The hybrid model provides the best of both worlds,” says Loizeaux, a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English. “It promotes the face-to-face nature of…classroom interactions,” both students-to-teacher and between students. It simultaneously offers students “the flexibility to access content online at their own pace,” she says, while allowing faculty to use technology for “presenting information and assessing learning outcomes in ways that are not possible in a traditional classroom setting.”

BU President Robert A. Brown says he is delighted that the University is joining the edX consortium. “I am pleased to help pioneer the development of digital learning environments,” says Brown. “And I’m excited about the opportunity to use these enhanced learning tools for our residential students, and to invent new hybrid educational platforms as the next step in our ongoing significant commitment to online learning, especially for our students in graduate professional programs.”

EdX will also extend BU’s significant global reach, both by making BU professors and courses accessible to a global audience, and by increasing global connections for BU students. For example, study abroad might be enhanced by online minicourses before, during, and after the main course; online modules or courses could connect BU students with other students around the world; and online courses might even enable students whose schedules currently keep them at home to study abroad.

EdX’s ability to help professors evaluate how well students are learning course material was a big factor in BU’s choosing it over other platforms, Loizeaux says. The edX platform is designed to capture data on how students learn, she says, a capability that put it head and shoulders above other platforms BU considered, because it will aid professors in understanding which pedagogical approaches best advance student learning.

What kind of data? “We are talking about ‘big data’ from hundreds of thousands of learners,” O’Connell says. (According to edX, 700,000 students currently use its platform.) “EdX collects every click, and also, along with collaborating universities, conducts surveys throughout each course.”

The data dig deep into the digital weeds, he says. For example, says Azer Bestavros, CETLI cochair and a CAS professor of computer science, “Course evaluators can see how often a student rewinds to review parts of lectures—possibly indicating that clarifications are necessary—and also factors affecting students’ completion of courses. Such data goes beyond that available from courses offered by BU and taken by BU students.” Bestavros notes that for any hybrid courses the University develops on edX, “we will have full control regarding what we measure and how we analyze it, and…that data will not be shared with other institutions.” Only aggregated data from all edX members is shared, he says.

As a nonprofit in a field filled with for-profit competitors, edX “aligns with CETLI’s sense of values and what we believe to be BU’s best interest,” says Bestavros, who is also director of the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering.

The first hybrid courses on edX likely will be available “within the next couple of years,” Loizeaux says, while the MOOCs will be available in one year. EdX will complement, not replace, BU’s Blackboard e-learning system.

With more than 200 universities worldwide hoping for admission to edX—and with several elite institutions already in—“we are extraordinarily excited to be joining edX,” Morrison says. “It gives us the opportunity to collaborate with the consortium members on using their experience to better understand online learning.…We can learn from each other and develop best practices around higher education.”

Along with BU, edX welcomes several other institutions, including Cornell University, Davidson College, Berklee College of Music, Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium), Munich’s Technical University, the University of Washington, China’s Tsinghua University, Peking University,  Japan’s Kyoto University, the University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, Seoul National University, Karolinska Institutet (Sweden), and the University of Queensland (Australia).

They join the founders plus the University of California, Berkeley, Rice University, the University of Texas, Wellesley College, Georgetown University, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), Australian National University, Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands), and Canada’s McGill University and the University of Toronto.

“EdX is thrilled to welcome Boston University,” O’Connell says. Calling the University “a world-class institution with top faculty and courses,” he says the partnership will benefit both: edX will help BU “incorporate sophisticated online course work into its on-campus curriculum,” while BU “will help us extend our range” of courses reflecting “the diversity of the people on our platform.”

President Robert A. Brown created CETLI to examine developments in online education and recommend a plan for extending BU’s current technology use to enhance instruction for tuition-paying residential students. It also is to recommend ways to reach new audiences off campus who wanted to sample the University’s offerings. As part of its work, CETLI sponsored a symposium and forums this spring to discuss the issues it was considering. Through the CETLI Seed Grant program, it will also make grants to faculty to develop innovative approaches over the next year.

Sporting a tasseled Terrier baseball cap and wriggling out of his academic robe to reveal a Red Sox T-shirt whose letters had been transposed to read SED ROX, the spirited 75-year-old actor, comic, author, and producer, who holds a doctorate in education, gave a speech that brimmed with both pathos and humor, using his underachieving youth as an example of how teachers can and must make a difference.

“You always hear that people who can’t do, teach,” he said. “But if you don’t teach, they can’t do.”

Hardin Coleman, dean of SED, opened the proceedings by urging the group of 92 undergraduates and 143 graduate students, among them 42 double Terriers and 4 triple Terriers, to “be lifelong learners.” In his speech later, Cosby gave a nod to Coleman’s grandfather, William T. Coleman, the founder of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Philadelphia, where Cosby played basketball in his youth. “He saved many lives,” he said, adding that the beloved elder Coleman didn’t let kids like Cosby get away with anything.

Addressing graduates likely to have come of age watching him wrestle with the educational challenges and triumphs of the Huxtable children on his wildly popular 1980s sitcom The Cosby Show, the internationally known entertainer shared stories of his own academic failures. To waves of laughter, Cosby described a fourth grade teacher, a Russian immigrant all of 4-foot-11, who refused to put up with his excuses, and at least fleetingly, got him to change his ways. “She sat on me,” said Cosby, who at the time weighed, he said, “about 200 pounds.” He recounted these words from one of his middle school teachers: “William has a quiet way of not listening.”

“It wasn’t that I didn’t care,” recalled Cosby, who grew up in Philadelphia and quit high school when he was 19. “I had the idea that this was a free ride.” In spite of his intelligence, he never studied, reasoning that since “sooner or later the world would end,” cracking the books would prove to be a waste of time.

SED Dean Hardin Coleman (left) and Bill Cosby at the SED Convocation at Walter Brown Arena.

After leaving high school Cosby worked at a few local, low-paying jobs, including shining shoes with a homemade shoe-shine box. But he was lonely “with no one to play with,” so he joined the US Navy, “not to save America,” he said, but “to get off my block.” He credits military boot camp with putting him on track to redeem his past failures. It was where he learned to pay attention, learn, and shed the attitude that prompted his drill sergeant to call him a name meaning “excrement from a maggot.”

“‘I’m not your mother,’” Cosby remembered the hulk of a sergeant saying. “And he continued to prove that.” His stint in the Navy turned his life around, easing his way into Temple University in spite of his initial SAT score of 500—that’s 500 total, because as smart as he was, he joked, he didn’t know anything. “They say dying men see their lives pass before them. That’s how I felt at the SAT exam.”

A late bloomer, he grew enthralled with learning, and studying, during his time at Temple, which then cost $365 a semester, “plus free subway tokens.” Freshman year he “was enrolled in remedial everything,” he said. “I loved it.” He became a teacher, but one in the “Trojan horse disguise” of a physical education teacher. (In his youth, he had excelled in basketball and other sports.) His goal, he said, was to light a fire under kids who thought the way he’d thought, adding that he decided he was “going to save them in spite of themselves.”

“As student teachers, your goal was, you thought, if I could save just one person,” Cosby told the graduates. “Then you realized they didn’t want to be saved.” The crowd laughed. “That’s not funny,” he said.

More than ever, teaching is a difficult, misunderstood, underpaid profession, he noted. Not only don’t many of those “young William Cosbys” want to be saved, but also at times “the people you work with don’t want them to be saved. Even the people who had them don’t want them to be saved.” After sharing a rambling, hilarious anecdote about getting his comeuppance from a former geometry teacher, Cosby grew serious.

“So here you are,” he told the graduates. “It is your job to teach. I don’t know what fool said, leave no child behind, which means the behind moves forward and the brain goes nowhere.” Teachers need to reach out to troubled or distracted children, because often “you are it,” he said. “The children who come to your classroom come from some place and you have no idea what it’s like for them.” Forget about trying to win over jaded colleagues who “have given up. You can’t save them.”

“You want to find that next Bill Cosby,” he said. “You make me very proud and very happy today. You are teachers. You are everywhere.”

Congratulations, Class of 2013!

View a full summary of the 140th Boston University Commencement here.

Currently medical director of the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program’s Barbara McInnis House, Gaeta has spent her career working with patients who live in poverty, and as a result, are often chronically ill. She told the MED graduates that they are likely to work with patients with similar issues throughout their careers and urged them to passionately connect with them to build lasting relationships.

Doctors must first recognize the “structural inequities” that influence health, so they can diagnose appropriately, said Gaeta. “Then, ask yourself, how can I, with privilege and power, impact those underlying factors?…Never lose sight of the fact that what you are doing in the lab translates directly to a suffering person—let that guide you in the design and implementation of your research.”

Gaeta, currently a BU Advocacy Training Program core faculty member, was recently named a MED assistant professor of medicine. She earned a medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at Boston Medical Center, where she was appointed chief resident of internal medicine in 2001. She became a physician advocacy fellow at Columbia University’s Institute on Medicine as a Profession in 2005. There, she cofounded Home & Healthy for Good, a Massachusetts-based advocacy program that finds permanent housing for the chronically homeless and then treats their illnesses. In 2009, Gaeta was named medical director of the Barbara McInnis House, a 104-bed medical facility that provides respite care to homeless people who are too ill to stay in shelters, but not sick enough to remain hospitalized. She won the Quincy Interfaith Sheltering Coalition’s 2004 Community Hero award and was named BU Medical Center’s department of medicine Teacher of the Year in 2009.

“I am still in awe of the privilege and power we doctors are afforded, even though many years have passed since I sat where you are sitting today,” Gaeta told members of the Class of 2013. “And knowing you as I do, I know you’ll use that privilege and power in the best possible way.”

She cited her own work over the years with a homeless patient she pseudonymously called “Lisa” as an example of a doctor’s privilege in providing care to the homeless. She first met Lisa in a Boston homeless shelter and soon became her primary care physician, often helping her deal with her emphysema. But Lisa also faced extreme poverty, had no family, and was constantly anxious.

As the two women developed a trusting relationship, Gaeta realized that Lisa needed the safety and stability of a home if she was going to thrive.

“Housing was always her ‘self-management goal,’ and eventually I came to see it as the most important prescription I could write for her,” Gaeta told the graduates. “I started working with the shelter administration to prioritize her for housing, making the medical case for it, recounting her hospitals stays, and attesting that she would, indeed, be safe in housing.”

With Gaeta’s help, Lisa moved to a modest double-decker in Quincy. Her emphysema went into remission, her confidence increased, and doctors were able to give her routine checkups. When Lisa was later diagnosed with cancer, the fact that she was able to recover in her home made a huge difference, Gaeta recounted, adding that today, Lisa has a community of friends and occasionally testifies before lawmakers about the resources necessary for the homeless.

Gaeta chose to recount Lisa’s story, she said, because it proved to be a turning point in her career. Lisa taught her that a trusting relationship was the foundation for all the healing that followed.

“There are times when the ‘doing’ implied in providing care will leave you wanting at the bedside—because there is no cure, or because there is a cure but it is no match for the despair of the living conditions that the patient endures, or because no medicine will ease the suffering of the patient,” she said. “Yet you still have something healing to offer your patient: the fact that you are their doctor, all of the time, and the constancy of your relationship with them gives them a connection, a validation, and support that they might not have from anyone else.”

Gaeta urged the graduates to step outside the comfort zone of their individual clinical or scientific field of interest. “Bear witness to injustices that result in poor health, and work to remove those injustices and build health equity,” she said. “This is what healers owe society. And this is what our society desperately needs at this moment in time.”

As degrees were conferred on the Class of 2013’s 222 graduates, cheers filled the arena as some of the new doctors brought their young children on stage when they received their diplomas. The three-hour ceremony concluded with the Oath of the Scientist, read by Linda Hyman, associate provost for MED’s Division of Graduate Medical Sciences, and the Oath of Hippocrates, delivered by Karen Antman, provost of the Medical Campus and dean of the School of Medicine.

Read more about Commencement here.

For Camacho, that means joining groups like the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, enrolling in (and winning) half of the Mr. and Miss BU competition, and mentoring fellow ENG classmates. “I try to make a point of reaching out to people because people reached out to me,” says Camacho, who will soon begin work as a technical consultant at Parametric Technology Corporation in Needham, Mass.

In the video above, Ana Sofia Camacho (ENG’13) reflects on the challenges and triumphs of her years at BU and how her family helped her stay strong. Photo by Vernon Doucette. Video by Erik Duda View closed captions on YouTube

Over the course of his undergraduate career, Greene was an English tutor with the School of Education’s Intergenerational Literacy Program, assisting Latin American and African immigrants; worked with the Community Service Center on several projects, including the First-Year Student Outreach Project (FYSOP) and Alternative Spring Breaks; held a job in the Dean of Students Office; and was a resident assistant. He will spend the next two years teaching Spanish at the Bronzeville Urban Prep Academy, on Chicago’s South Side, as a member of Teach for America.

“BU has helped me to increase my cultural awareness, inspired me to become an active part of my community, and allowed me to realize my love for connecting with other people,” Greene says.

BU Today followed the two seniors through the days leading up to Commencement Weekend as they shared the milestone with friends and family. Hear their thoughts on what BU has meant to them in these two videos.

On Sunday afternoon, Kopp, the Class of 2013  Commencement speaker, addressed the graduates, playfully introducing herself as “the person responsible for those persistent Teach for America recruiters who have been after you all year.”

But it was Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman students most wanted to meet. A roar rose from the crowd the moment he stepped onto Nickerson Field, his smiling face flashing on the jumbo screens. Students whipped out smartphones, jumped up and down, and waved as the Hollywood star circled the track and took his seat.

“I have nothing new to say to you,” said Freeman after receiving his honorary degree, his deep, distinctive voice drawing an immediate cheer from the crowd. “You already know you’re graduating from one of the greatest universities on the planet.” He credited their dedication, hard work, and perseverance for helping them arrive at graduation day.

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman (Hon.’13) stole the show with an impromptu congratulatory speech to the Class of 2013. Photo by Vernon Doucette

On a partly cloudy and increasingly chilly day, Boston University’s 140th Commencement ceremony proceeded smoothly despite heightened security. Approximately 20,000 spectators looked on as more than 6,600 seniors and graduate students—some with messages like “THX MOM” and “BU Smart Boston Strong” pasted atop their caps—were recognized and celebrated alongside several guests. Honorary degrees were bestowed on Kopp, Freeman, chemical engineer and biotechnology pioneer Robert S. Langer, and United Methodist Church Bishop Peter D. Weaver (STH’75), who earlier gave the Baccalaureate speech in Marsh Chapel.

President Robert A. Brown presented Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino (Hon.’01) with the Boston University Medallion for his service to the community. Brown also announced that the Boston Scholars Program, which awards merit scholarships to graduates from the city’s public schools, will be renamed the Thomas M. Menino Scholarship Program and its students referred to as Menino Scholars. “You have recognized the role universities and colleges play in strengthening the economic and cultural life of the city,” Brown said in presenting the medallion, “and with this in mind, you have been an outstanding partner in the rational planning and development of campus facilities throughout Boston.”

Student speaker Adolfo Gatti (CAS’13) delivered a humorous speech that weaved BU insider jokes with a deep appreciation for the diversity of people and opinions that the native of Italy encountered here during his four years.

Longtime Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino (Hon.’01) receiving the Boston University Medallion for his service to the community from President Robert A. Brown (right) and Alan Leventhal (Hon.’09) (left), a BU trustee. Photo by Chitose Suzuki

Kopp, whose address mixed humor with a helping of hard-earned wisdom, reminded graduates that they are now “stewards of BU’s long legacy of promoting social justice.” The true question, she added, is which injustice to pick in a globally interconnected world. Two decades ago, Kopp decided to focus on education in high-poverty communities. After raising $2.5 million in a single year, she launched Teach for America in 1990 with a charter corps of 500 recent college graduates. The program has grown exponentially: over the past 23 years, it has trained 38,000 young men and women who have taught 3 million students at nearly 50 sites nationwide. Last year alone, 57,000 college graduates applied to the corps, and 10,000 were selected. This year’s corps will include 33 members of the University’s Class of 2013. Several Teach for America alumni earned BU graduate degrees at Sunday’s exercises.

“There’s no how-to guide for how to change the world,” Kopp said. “But it’s easy to get hung up by misconceptions about what it takes to make an impact.”

One common myth about success, she said, is that you need a big idea to change the world. “We are making progress today not because of a big idea,” she explained, “but because of a big commitment. Because we plunged in and embraced the journey of constant learning and improvement.”

Teach For America founder Wendy Kopp told graduates not to "put your desire to change the world on hold." Photo by Vernon Doucette

A second myth Kopp challenged was the idea that having an impact is about being first. “The people who have most changed the way we see the world and live our lives, from Einstein to Steve Jobs, all understood that innovation is not primarily about coming up with new ideas,” she said. “It’s about connecting good ideas to human needs, whether that means borrowing and adapting solutions that already exist or devising new ones.

“Our world needs more copycats,” she said.

And Kopp has met many of them, social entrepreneurs seeking to copy her model in other nations. In response to their interest, she and Brett Wigdortz of the United Kingdom’s Teach First created Teach for All, a network of independent social enterprises that replicates Teach for America in high-need areas around the globe. The network now includes organizations from 27 countries in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East, and 20 more countries are expected to join in the coming years.

The final myth Kopp debunked was the idea that it’s better for young people to wait until they have more experience before embarking on a personal passion. “The world needs you before you stop asking naïve questions,” she said, “and while you have the time to understand the true nature of the complex problems we face and take them on.

“Don’t put your desire to change the world on hold,” Kopp urged. “Start now and go forth in constant pursuit of learning and impact.”

In his opening remarks, Brown paused to reflect on the Boston Marathon bombings nearly five weeks ago that took the life of graduate student Lu Lingzi (GRS’14) and seriously injured her friend Zhou Danling (MET’14). He also recognized the courage of the 25 BU doctors, therapists, physical trainers, and student volunteers who “hastened bravely to save the lives of grievously wounded spectators.”

Provost Jean Morrison announced that Lu and Binland Lee (CAS’13), who died in an Allston house fire three weeks ago, were being awarded degrees posthumously—news that drew applause from the crowd.

Once University deans had conferred all degrees, Brown acknowledged the Class of 2013’s many accomplishments, as well as the efforts of the faculty and staff whose dedication helped them reach graduation day.

“On your shoulders rests the enormous responsibility for guiding America and the world, and for addressing the substantial challenges we face,” he said. “You are the future for this University, for this country, and for mankind.”

Brown reminded students that they could now count themselves among BU’s 300,000 living alumni. “Your accomplishments will be part of the fabric of our legacy,” he said. “Your Boston University education has prepared you; go into the world and make it a better place for all of us and for all generations.”

During the ceremony, Brown also presented the University’s highest teaching honor to three faculty members. The Metcalf Cup and Prize for Excellence in Teaching was awarded to Deborah Vaughan (GRS’72), a School of Medicine professor of anatomy and neurobiology and assistant dean for admissions, and Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching were presented to John Finnerty, a College of Arts & Sciences associate professor of biology, and Carol Jenkins, a School of Education associate professor of curriculum and teaching.

Bishop Peter Weaver (STH’75), former leader of New England Methodists and a former University trustee, borrowed that quote as the theme of his address from Elie Wiesel (Hon.’74), a Nobel laureate and BU’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities. Weaver interpreted Wiesel’s phrase to mean that wishing for justice and peace must be accompanied by hard work and honest recognition of worldly impediments to them.

“To dream with eyes open,” Weaver told graduating seniors and others in the audience, means that “dreams without deeds are simply daydreaming—and deeds unrooted in dreams can simply be a way of sleepwalking through life.”

Delivered with a practiced preacher’s precision—undulating between energetic and emphatic and solemn and low-toned—Weaver’s talk suggested that to understand what he meant, his listeners take the MBTA to Boston’s neighborhoods, where the work of justice must be carried out. One of those neighborhoods is Dorchester, “where eight-year-old Martin Richard talked of coming to BU and held up his dream on a blue poster board: ‘No more hurting people. Peace.’” (A picture of the boy and his sign ricocheted around the world after his murder by the Marathon bombers.)

The bombings also took the life of Lu Lingzi (GRS’14), remembered by Weaver in a line borrowed from her parents’ memorial tribute: “We want to encourage others who have Lingzi’s ambition and dreams and want to make the world a better place to continue moving forward.”

Weaver recounted how he attended last year’s Baccalaureate service and afterward heard a senior tell his family that graduation was “a dream come true. His dad responded, ‘So what’s your next dream?’” Weaver’s listeners laughed, but the bishop said, “It’s a good question….This has been an institution that’s never been content with mimicking others. Its history has been about dreams nurturing action.”

Indeed, one of BU’s founders, Isaac Rich, turned his fortune over to build the school of his dreams before it had buildings, faculty, or students, Weaver said.

In the video above, Bishop Peter Weaver delivers the Baccalaureate Address to the Class of 2013. Photo by Cydney Scott. Video by BU Productions

Weaver has spent a lifetime practicing what he preached in his address. As a pastor and bishop in Pennsylvania and New England, he led congregations’ efforts to care for homeless women, AIDS patients, the poor, immigrants, and victims of natural disasters.

He joked about his surprise at being chosen as Baccalaureate speaker over another of this year’s honorary degree recipients. “Morgan Freeman is here,” Weaver said, “and he has been God—twice.”

The service struck a more sober note, as Brother Lawrence Whitney (STH’09,’15), the University’s chaplain for community life, prayed not just for the graduating seniors, but for the half dozen members of their class who died in the last year in various accidents and crimes. He asked consolation for their families “as we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.”

• All students, faculty, staff, volunteers, guests, and vendors will be subject to screening when entering any Commencement weekend venue, possibly with a metal-detecting wand.
• Guests who are not carrying a bag may use an express entrance lane.
• Only small and average-size handbags, purses, and camera bags will be allowed (no large totes, oversized purses, backpacks, large diaper bags, or messenger bags). All bags will be physically inspected prior to entry.
• No other bags, gift bags, wrapped gifts, packages, briefcases, backpacks, or luggage will be allowed in a Commencement or Convocation venue, including Nickerson Field.
• If guests have packages or bags that are not permitted, they may leave them at a “self-check” area adjacent to the venues. While this area will be monitored by security, the University will not provide a claim check process and will not be responsible for packages left in the self-check area.
• Graduates and faculty should carry their robes into event venues and then dress in designated lineup areas.
• Anyone seeing anything suspicious is asked to contact the BUPD immediately at 617-353-2121.

Unsure about which accessories you’re allowed to carry into Commencement venues? Find out on this dos and don’ts list.

More information about Commencement can be found on the Commencement website.

This Sunday, Gatti (CAS’13) will deliver the student speech at Boston University’s 140th Commencement. He plans to draw on his experiences as an international student as he addresses fellow graduates and an estimated crowd of 20,000. He will talk about how BU taught him to embrace different cultures and ideas—something he’s written about as a blogger for the Italian edition of The Huffington Post.

“The message that I will share is to always keep your mind open to all the different obstacles and different cultures and ideas that are around you,” he says. “You have to be able to make them yours, transform them, and then use them.”

The beauty of BU, Gatti says, is that it’s impossible to describe a typical student. “You will always have someone in your group of friends who is not like you,” he says. “Even though it’s a campus and one university, it’s a city, a hub.” His theory may be borne out by recent BU admissions statistics: applicants to the incoming Class of 2017 came from 149 foreign countries, and the University saw a 39 percent increase in applications from international students.

As he prepared the speech he’ll deliver Sunday, Gatti says, he was mindful of the importance of keeping the audience’s attention.

“The speech will be sort of emotional,” he says. “I want to make the audience familiar with me, tell some jokes, and then have the speech turn into a more serious note. I was a bit inspired by Obama’s speeches in that sense, because he shoots off funny jokes in the beginning, and then suddenly you hear a change of tone, and he starts pacing slower and almost whispering his message. Finally, he turns right back on with a passion and emotion that he wants to throw into the crowd.”

This blending of emotion, humor, and passion may just be what landed Gatti the gig. Each spring, graduating seniors are invited to submit a potential Commencement address to a faculty committee. This year, the committee weeded through the applications and settled on six finalists, who were then asked to deliver their speeches in a mock Commencement setting. After careful deliberation, the committee chose Gatti.

“Dean Elmore actually called me the morning after my audition and woke me up,” Gatti says. “When he told me I would be the Commencement speaker, it took me a few minutes to understand what I was being told. I mean, I thought I had completely screwed up my audition. A friend told me it was too honest.”

Gatti attended an international school in Rome, with classmates who came from all over the globe—places like India, Japan, and Australia. “I grew up with people who didn’t share my culture and weren’t like me, mentally and physically,” he says. “Arriving at BU was just like being at home.”

Over the past four years, he’s managed to keep many of his Italian traditions alive: he’s famous among his friends for his freshly brewed espresso and homemade lunches. He tends to gesture wildly when he speaks. And like most Europeans, he loves soccer, so much so that he was a member of the BU Football Club and the BU Soccer Club.

Last year, Gatti studied abroad in Geneva, where he interned for the Centre for Socio-Eco-Nomic Development, an environmental think tank. Since February he has interned for the Consulate General of Italy in Boston as assistant education officer, traveling to local schools to talk about Italian culture. As part of his internship, he also tries to answer questions about scholarships for Italian students who want to study in the United States and US students who want to study in Italy, helps to find schools for families moving between the two countries, and assists Italian educators to find jobs in the United States.

When his internship ends in June, Gatti plans to return to Rome, where he has several interviews lined up. He wants to go to graduate school to study international relations within the next few years, and says he imagines himself returning to Italy one day to become a statesman, which, he is quick to point out, is different from being a politician, “because Italian politicians tend to be corrupt.”

With Senior Week drawing to a close, Gatti turns reflective about his last year on Comm Ave. “I definitely learned a lot,” he says. “I think I settled myself emotionally. I stopped worrying a lot about many things. I enjoyed this year the most because I was more accepting of myself by the end of it.”

And if any of his classmates travel to Italy after graduation, he wants them to track him down. “Everyone comes back saying they liked Paris more than Rome, but that’s because they only saw the Colosseum and went to bed too early,” he says. “I get mistaken for a tour guide all the time. Call me, and if I’m there, I’ll give you a tour.”

Weaver (STH’75) has believed from the outset of his ministry that highlighting the service of God’s people would spread the faith. When he became bishop of the New England Conference of the United Methodist Church in 2004, the conference counted 550 churches. On his retirement last year, there were 644.

So at Methodist-founded Boston University, Weaver will make an especially apt speaker when he takes the pulpit at Marsh Chapel to give this year’s Baccalaureate address on Commencement morning, May 19. Later that day, Weaver, who also stepped down last year after eight years as a University trustee, will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters at the All-University Commencement ceremony.

Weaver says he is humbled by being given an honorary degree, calling it “not so much for me as for the Methodist heritage that founded and nurtured this great University.” As for public displays of that faith tradition, “many of our churches in New England have become more engaged with the community beyond their walls,” he says, citing an initiative several years ago challenging every congregant to participate in one new service ministry.

“The results were everything from legal help for new immigrants to new community youth ministries to expanded sheltering, feeding, and health ministries with persons in poverty and those who are homeless,” Weaver says. Others tutored kids, worked in disaster relief, advocated for health care or immigration reform, and served overseas, from Nicaragua to Angola.

Weaver’s religious faith came early. His father was a Methodist pastor in Pennsylvania, and in a 2004 interview with the Boston Globe, Weaver credited his church’s youth group with helping him cope with high school bullying. “I felt lonely and marginalized. I grew up in a city high school, where, as happens in many places, people made fun of you, and where I got beat up several times.”

He graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College and Drew University, having swapped his planned career in the law for ministry after hearing an inspirational preacher. He became a Methodist deacon in 1967 and ultimately was a pastor in Pittsburgh churches. In a foretaste of what he’d do as New England bishop, he grew membership and budgets at two of those churches—one well-heeled, one poor—by having both sets of congregants gather together for prayer and fellowship.

He became Methodist bishop for eastern Pennsylvania in 1996, celebrating the occasion with a meal in a church parking lot shared by business executives and shelter residents.

Weaver frequently used humor and unconventional approaches. To loosen up a Maine congregation, he once shed his shoes at the altar and invited those sitting in the pews to do the same and wiggle their toes “to strip off all the pretense,” he told the Globe. Making an inaugural visit as New England bishop to a Rhode Island nursing home, he joked that he’d personally tried a medical cure advocated by John Wesley, Methodism’s founder. “He suggested lemon to get your hair to grow back,” the bald bishop said while patting his pate.

The Baccalaureate speaker and his wife even gave their three daughters middle names evoking Christian values: Faith, Hope, and Joy.

More information about Commencement can be found on the Commencement website.