From the moment the pandemic forced us to pause campus life and conduct operations virtually, our goal was to reunite students and faculty in the classrooms, labs, and studios as soon as was safely possible. And in 2020, we did just that.

But getting there was no small task.

Within days of asking community members to depopulate campus, students, faculty, and staff were taking crash courses in Zoom. Meanwhile, technicians at Information Services & Technology were rapidly developing the infrastructure to support a remote/hybrid learning system that would safely allow limited in-person teaching in fall of 2020. To that end, the University installed new technology in hundreds of classrooms across all campuses, reconfigured learning spaces for safety, trained remote teaching coordinators, and developed at-home lab kits for remote hands-on learning.

Called Learn from Anywhere (LfA), our teaching system accommodated public health requirements and addressed other challenges faced by BU students during the pandemic. But most crucially, LfA delivered the same academic content to all students, whether they were in a BU classroom, at their home, or in another country, allowing everyone to take part in the same classroom discussions.

Without a doubt, LfA helped meet the moment and allowed students to connect in new and different ways, but it was never viewed as a substitute or significant complement for in-person learning. We’re grateful, of course, for the monumental effort it required to launch and operate, but as the fiscal year ended, we readily, and smoothly, transitioned back to in-person classrooms, studios, and labs.

And judging by the roar of more than 4,000 new Terriers at fall 2021 Matriculation, and the familiar fall bustle up and down Comm Ave, we’d say students and faculty alike are once again thrilled by the unique energy our large and diverse residential learning community creates.