Mark Nelson (COM’88) has only one small regret about his time at Boston University. As a student, he wishes he could have enrolled in the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), which wasn’t founded until 1997.

“I would have eaten it up,” says Mark, who dedicated much of his senior year at BU to an independent study on emotional responses to advertising. “I had boxes and boxes of research articles on the topic,” he recalls.

Research opportunities aside, BU was so transformative for Mark that he and his wife, Ruth, decided—decades later—to prioritize the University in their estate planning. “Our intention was always to better the world, and we thought we could really make a difference by giving to BU,” Ruth explains.

A missing piece

As a giving opportunity, UROP wasn’t on Mark and Ruth’s radar until they came to BU’s Friends & Family Weekend in 2021. (They attended the event to support their niece, a BU student.) By chance, the couple stumbled into the UROP Research Symposium, where they found a room full of impressive students and high-caliber research. But something was missing.

“I said, ‘Why isn’t COM represented?’” Mark says. “I knew, from my own experience, that there was a huge opportunity for research. In addition to traditional academic research, investigative journalism, documentaries, and films all require research.” Eager to change that, he and Ruth reached out to Mariette DiChristina, dean of the College of Communication, and made a three-year pledge to fund communications research through UROP.

Meanwhile, across campus, communications student Emma Longo (COM’24) was on the hunt for a research project. “I kept bugging my professor, asking if there were any research opportunities,” she recalls.

Thanks to the Nelsons, Emma found what she was looking for. Through UROP, she was awarded funding to study climate misinformation in the media. Much like Mark, she threw herself headfirst into the work, analyzing climate-related native advertising (also known as sponsored content) in two prominent newspapers.

Coming full circle

Two years later, the Nelsons came back to BU for the next edition of UROP’s Research Symposium. There, they got to meet Emma for the first time and see the results of her research.

“We walked up as she was in the middle of sharing her research with someone else,” Mark recalls. “I was just blown away by how eloquently she talked about it and how passionate she was for the cause.”

Afterward, the three sat down for coffee, where Emma shared her ambitions for the future. She talked about presenting her research at the prestigious AEJMC Conference in Washington, DC, her efforts to get the paper published in an academic journal, and her plans to attend graduate school for communications research. UROP had opened doors, she explained, and changed the course of her career.

Emma also expressed her deep appreciation to the Nelsons. “I would not have been able to do this research without their help; I would have had to get a job instead,” she recalls. “I was so grateful for the opportunity.”

For the Nelsons, the feeling was mutual. “It was so meaningful to see what Emma did with our gift,” says Ruth. “It was so worth it.”