BU Launches Next Phase of You Are Why Initiative Focused on Student Experience
The second phase of Boston University’s awareness and fundraising initiative, called You Are Why: Students in Action, will get underway in earnest in fall 2026 and will fund undergraduate academic and career scholarships, internships, and research. Emmanuelle Bogomolni (CAS’26), pictured here in 2025 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, spent a summer internship working on a project analyzing macrofaunal communities in deep sea inactive hydrothermal vents.
BU Launches Next Phase of You Are Why Initiative Focused on Student Experience
You Are Why: Students in Action will help BU build new partnerships and philanthropy to fund undergraduate scholarships, internships, and research
Building off a successful launch last fall, Boston University is embarking on the next phase of its You Are Why initiative—this time centered on students. You Are Why: Students in Action will focus University-wide efforts toward building new partnerships and philanthropy efforts to fund undergraduate academic and career scholarships, internships, and research across BU’s schools and colleges.
“We know that students who engage in hands-on, experiential-learning opportunities have greater success in the classroom and are better positioned to make an impact within their chosen careers,” BU President Melissa Gilliam wrote in an April 16 letter to the University community. “At the same time, fostering an academically rigorous environment that also prepares our students to be global citizens is central to Boston University’s North Star vision and our Strategic Framework, Charting Our Future.”
You Are Why: Students in Action focuses University-wide efforts toward building new partnerships and philanthropy efforts to fund undergraduate academic and career scholarships, internships, and research across BU’s schools and colleges. Video by Alan Wong
The new initiative, which launched April 16, joins continued efforts through the University’s broader You Are Why initiative to grow support and establish new partnerships for research. The Students in Action effort sets three main goals: the creation of a new scholarship that combines real-world experience and academic rigor, a summer internship program for first-year students, and a number of additional internships across BU’s schools, colleges, and centers.
That summer internship program, called BU Launchpad, is designed to promote early access to experiential learning opportunities “so that more students can build skills, confidence, and relationships from the beginning of their college careers,” Gilliam wrote. The program will run as a pilot this summer with 30 students, and grow over the next two years to include more than 1,000 students.
The initiative will also support the creation of a new kind of scholarship—one that will cover tuition, housing, and meals, as well as costs related to participation in Boston University Launchpad, global learning experiences, advanced internships, and other professional-readiness programs.
Lucas Gibbons (CAS’27) is a research intern at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Internships such as his are a critical part of an undergraduate education at BU. Video by Devin Hahn
These, and other experiential learning opportunities available at BU are an integral part of a modern university education, says Sarah Hokanson, associate provost for academic initiatives and operational excellence at Boston University.
“The possibility for curiosity and discovery and the ability to follow your passions and learn about what you’re interested in is a really important part of the university experience, but it’s not the whole story,” Hokanson says “People are also coming here to be ready to be professionals, to enter the workforce, to make an impact on the world. And so being able to connect the research of our faculty [and] the work in our classrooms to the world outside of Boston University is such an important part of what our students need to do before they graduate.”
You Are Why: Students in Action complements the University’s ongoing, research- and impact-focused You Are Why initiative. Since it launched in the fall, the initiative has already raised close to $8 million to advance BU’s research and academic missions, Gilliam wrote. These funds are supporting seed grants for convergent research, expanding BU’s Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), and providing critical support for PhD students across the University. The Board of Trustees has also committed matching funds of donors who endow PhD fellowships, doubling the impact of their investment.