State of the University, 2010

Dear Colleagues,

The new academic year is off to a good start with our students, including our larger-than-expected freshman class, settled into the rhythm of university life. I join this new student cohort, as well as our returning students, in their high hopes for the academic year.

I want to use my fall letter to you to serve several important purposes. First, I want to use this opportunity to take stock of our progress in several areas over the past several years and to begin the conversation about where I would like to see the faculty and University leadership put additional energy and resources in the coming years. This preview of important issues comprises the first portion of the letter. My review of the past academic year, 2009-2010, follows later in the letter. I realize this letter is rather long, but I feel it is important that members of our community have access to information about key developments and the factors that affect our ability to pursue our mission. I also value your ideas, suggestions, and feedback; please feel free to share your thoughts with me by writing to president@bu.edu.

Looking ahead, the most important transition in our leadership is the appointment of a successor to David K. Campbell as University Provost. We expect to make an announcement of this critical appointment in the next few weeks.

Today and Looking Ahead

First, I would like to offer my perspective on what we have accomplished in recent years. Beginning with the University’s strategic planning efforts in 2006-2007, and sharpened by the financial crisis and the recession, a great proportion of our energy and resources have gone into strengthening our faculty and our undergraduate programs, and working to reinforce undergraduate student success.

We all recognize that the quality of the faculty, as seen in their research and scholarship, is an essential component of the foundation of the University as a research institution. Additionally, through their commitment to excellence in teaching and educational innovation, the faculty define the quality of our academic programs. Together, these elements define Boston University and our impact as a world-class research university. Working with our deans and department chairs, the University Provost has focused on faculty hiring and retention and setting appropriate compensation levels, with the goal of further building the quality of faculty. Even throughout the recession we have continued to hire spectacular new colleagues and to launch their academic careers at Boston University. Also, although there is much more work to do, our emphasis on faculty compensation has resulted in bringing our salaries much closer in line with our peers; the annual averages are listed below in this letter.

The University Provost and the deans of our schools and colleges also have worked to hone our faculty recruitment processes, positioning ourselves to compete for the very best candidates, and we have done extraordinarily well over the last several years in the face of tough competition, especially for the very best young faculty. We will continue to devote increasing resources to our faculty with the aim of continuing to increase the quality of our faculty through the quality of our hiring.

For many of us, this statement is a very complicated concept to come to grips with. The concept that we are renewing our faculty with teachers and scholars whom we expect, on average, to be more productive and to carry a greater profile than our faculty has done in the past, is the sign of a university that still expects to move upward and that is not yet mature as a major private research university. Although it has been 131 years since our founding, by any meaningful measure of the timescale for the development of great institutions, we are in fact a very young research university. Just consider the fact that in 1970 the entire amount of externally sponsored research led by our faculty (including the Medical Campus, but not work done by Boston University faculty in the hospitals) was only $13.5 million. This compares to our results for last year that put this number at $407.8 million, or $553 million, if we include the research led by our Medical School faculty at Boston Medical Center. Forty years is not long in the entire history of Boston University, but this period has witnessed our emergence as a research institution and we have changed dramatically in this relatively brief time span.

This change is an indication of the focus on scholarship and research that has been driven by the faculty over the last several decades, first starting in a few clusters of research activity. This focus is now spreading across our campus as all new faculty members are expected to be active in scholarship and research. This transformation is not complete; building and sustaining excellence in scholarship, while preserving and reinforcing our deep commitment to quality undergraduate and graduate professional education, will require major, continuing investments by the University.

This continuing evolution is the basis of a very important observation: I expect that in the future we will attract and retain faculty members who are, on average, even more accomplished in research and scholarship than we do today. To do this requires dynamic, forward-looking faculty members and academic leaders who are constantly communicating our aspirations and standards throughout our ranks. To become such an institution we will need to improve our review processes for promotion and tenure. On the Charles River Campus these processes suffer from taking too long to reach decisions and from having too little feedback between the various decision bodies — departmental faculties, school, college, and University appointment and promotion committees — and reviews by the academic leaders, including the deans, the University Provost, and the President. Such communication is crucial if the standards for promotion and tenure are going to be consistently applied and continuously raised.

This fall, we have started discussions with the deans and with the Faculty Council and University Council about possible changes in the promotion and tenure processes on the Charles River Campus that will streamline procedures, reduce the time for decisions, improve communications about our standards at all levels, and provide a sustainable process for faculty improvement. Although it is too early in this effort to recommend any specific changes, I am confident that we can develop modifications that improve communication at all levels and create strong ownership of the rising standards of the University by our faculty and academic leaders. I will introduce this topic at the fall Faculty Assembly meeting on October 27th.

Hiring, retaining, and promoting the very best faculty is the most important step for Boston University if we are to continue to move forward and be counted among the best universities in the country. To do this our standards for promotion and tenure must be high, transparent, and uniformly adopted by the faculty and leadership across the University. I hope you will join me in working toward this goal.

The provosts and I have spent considerable time this past summer reading the strategic plans of the schools and colleges and discussing them with the deans and senior leadership. Although these discussions have not yet progressed to the point that we can say there is an agreed-upon plan for every academic unit, we are at a stage where the critical issues have been brought to the table and discussions are progressing. Our hope is to align the budgeting process for fiscal year 2012 (the year beginning July 1, 2011) with the approved priorities in these plans, overlaid with the University priorities described in Choosing to be Great.

We will be dealing with the reality that we do not have enough resources to fund from the University’s normal revenue sources all of the aspirations we have for our programs. We must set priorities that will put some programs ahead of others in the queue for additional support and we also need to establish clear metrics for the impact we can expect from the application of these additional resources. Even with this constraint, the plans have significant value as they not only guide the allocation of the first dollars into each program, but they also influence the priorities we have for fundraising for schools, colleges, and the University. These priorities are critical as we embark on Boston University’s first comprehensive fundraising campaign, as described below.

Some of the needs identified in the plans are individualized to specific academic units, but some common themes have emerged as well across many units. For example, embedded in the plans of many of our individual schools and colleges are requests to enhance doctoral education, especially for students involved in doctoral research and scholarship. The common theme is that Boston University can only excel as a premier research university with vibrant doctoral programs built on recruiting the very best graduate students, giving them the support and guidance required to successfully complete their degrees, and, finally, placing them in the best starting points for their professional careers. I feel strongly about the importance of quality graduate doctoral programs as a cornerstone for our research and scholarship and equally strongly that those programs which do not meet these objectives do a disservice to the University and to our graduate students.

Improving our doctoral research programs will require additional resources, as well as a focus on quality and outcome measures. Under the leadership of Andrei Ruckenstein, Vice President for Research and Associate Provost, we have charged a Task Force of faculty and academic leaders to analyze our current allocation of resources, their distribution across our programs, and the outcomes we should expect, and make recommendations about how we can enhance the quality of doctoral research education. As with the resources needed to bolster other parts of our programs, we will have to make hard choices about where the first new resources for doctoral programs are allocated and the impact we can expect from these allocations. Details of the Task Force will be in a forthcoming BU Today article. We have asked the group to report by April 2011 and we hope to reach a consensus on a plan of action before the end of the academic year.

The Year in Review

Let me use the rest of this letter to review our progress over the last academic year and offer a few comments about the implications of these developments for this year and the next.

Undergraduate Recruitment

As you have heard, this fall’s incoming freshman class was excellent in all dimensions, and a bit larger than we had projected. Although we targeted an enrollment of 4,100 students, as has been the case for the last several years, the admitted applicant pool responded with more enthusiasm than expected and 4,423 freshmen arrived in late August, a 6.8 percent increase over the previous year. Because of the great work of our Housing office we were able to accommodate all freshmen in on-campus Boston University residences and, with the support of our schools and colleges, all of our undergraduates are settled into their classes. We plan to balance the size of this year’s freshman class by admitting a smaller freshman class next fall.

The quality of the incoming class is excellent, with the median GPA rising to 3.52 and the SAT scores climbing to 1911 (three-test composite). The bulge in the freshman class is not uniformly distributed; the College of Engineering saw a 28 percent increase in enrollment and has the largest freshman class in its history at 432 students. As the poor economy continues, undergraduate financial need continues to be high with 68.9 percent of the freshman class receiving financial aid and the average award for all undergraduates receiving aid rising to $29,642.

Graduate Programs

Our professional graduate programs also continue to thrive. Let me highlight several of our programs:

The School of Law is seeing a rise in applications outpacing a national trend for increasing interest in law degrees. There were 8,515 applicants for this fall’s entering class, an increase of 11 percent over the previous year; nationally, applications were up 7.1 percent. Several programs at LAW are ranked in the top 10 nationally, including health, tax, and intellectual property law. Additionally, the School is getting set to launch a new LLM program in international business law. The American Bar Association reaccreditation process also has been going smoothly and is nearing completion.

The School of Management has refined its doctoral program and now offers the PhD in order to provide students with a solid grounding in theory and academic research in order to teach, conduct research, publish, and become leaders in the business community. Also, the Mathematical Finance Program, under the direction of Professor Andrew Lyasoff, has moved into SMG. Offering master’s and doctoral degrees, the program is based on sophisticated mathematical tools used to analyze complex business problems. SMG, which is ranked number six in the nation by the Financial Times for the development of custom programs for corporations, the government, and other organizations, is pursuing a major initiative to expand its executive education programs.

Admission to our MD program in the School of Medicine continues to be highly selective with 11,339 applicants (an increase of nearly 5 percent over last year) for the 178 positions in this fall’s first-year class (and roughly 40 of those seats went to students already enrolled in one of our dual-degree and pathway programs). The Medical School also continues to improve its physical plant. This past summer, we completed renovation projects on seven classrooms in the School of Medicine instructional building, at a cost of $3.6 million, and we renovated several laboratories and building infrastructure systems in the Conte Building, at a cost of nearly $8.7 million. Additionally, we renovated the library on the twelfth floor of the MED instructional building. The School also reached its fundraising goals for the new $40 million graduate housing facility on Albany Street. The new residence will feature 104 two-bedroom units and provide housing for 208 students. Research activities continue at MED at a brisk pace, with the number of grants awarded to MED researchers increasing last year by 17 percent, from 549 to 641, and in dollars by 22 percent, from $144 million to $176 million.

The School of Public Health is seeing dramatic improvements in its admissions statistics, with one of the largest applicant pools of any public health school in the country. SPH is increasing its selectivity, yet still admitted a class this year that is 20 percent larger than a few years ago. The research program at SPH also is growing at a dramatic rate and is now the third-largest at BU, behind MED and CAS. Faculty received 225 grants this past year, up from 192 the year before, with funding at $41 million, compared to just under $31.8 million a year ago. In response to growing interest in the field, SPH now offers a 4+1 bachelor-master’s dual-degree program with CAS, modeled on an existing collaboration with SAR.

Faculty and Leadership Development

This year saw the continuation of very active faculty hiring on the Charles River Campus with the appointment of 53 new faculty members, including 44 at the assistant rank and six full professors. Fourteen of these are new positions, added as part of our efforts to increase the size of the faculty as called for in our Strategic Plan. On the Medical Campus, we saw 52 full-time appointments at the assistant, associate, or professor level over the past year at the School of Medicine, seven at the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, and two at the School of Public Health.

Among our senior faculty hires:

• The new holder of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Professor of Ethical Leadership chair in the School of Theology is Dr. Walter E. Fluker, who returns to his alma mater from Morehouse College. Dr. Fluker, who will continue to serve as editor of the Howard Thurman Papers Project, earned his PhD at BU, and has also held professorial and administrative posts at Vanderbilt, Harvard, and Dillard, and has been a visiting scholar at other institutions in the United States and South Africa.
• Also joining STH is Christopher Evans, a specialist in the history of Christianity and Methodist studies. After earning his Master of Divinity at STH and his PhD at Northwestern University in a joint program with Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, he served on the faculty of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School, where he also was interim academic dean. His focus is on the history of Christianity, American religion, and Methodist and ministry studies.
• In the Department of Religion in CAS, David Frankfurter is the new William Aurelio Professor. A scholar of ancient Mediterranean religions who has focused on Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature and related topics, Professor Frankfurter is particularly interested in such theoretical issues as the place of magic in religion, the relationship of religion and violence, and the representation of evil in culture.
• Frederick Tung joins the School of Law from Emory University, and will teach and conduct research in the areas of corporate and securities law, bankruptcy, and the governance of financial institutions. He has served as a consultant in Ethiopia and Indonesia and is a former software engineer in Silicon Valley. Proficient in Mandarin, he has served as a lecturer in law at Peking University and was an interpreter for ABC News during the democracy movement in Beijing.

We successfully completed three decanal searches this past year, for the School of Management, the College of Fine Arts, and the School of Hospitality Administration, with each of our three new deans arriving in August:

• Kenneth Freeman has become the new Allen Questrom Professor and dean at the School of Management, following an outstanding career in business, with Corning, Quest Diagnostics, and the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. When he took on the CEO position at Quest, Ken turned what was a troubled business into the world’s leading medical testing company. He also has been an executive-in-residence at the Columbia Business School and served as chair of the Board of Trustees at Bucknell University. He brings the skills, leadership experience, and vision needed to guide SMG further into the top ranks of business schools worldwide.
• Benjamín Juárez, a conductor, educator, and arts administrator, assumed the helm at CFA on August 1. He comes to us from the Dr. José María Luis Mora Research Institute in Mexico, and brings a broad range of experience in academia, arts management, conducting, and radio and television production. He has an international perspective that will help CFA continue to develop over the coming years while serving as a dynamic center of the arts on our campus.
• In mid-August, Christopher Muller arrived from the University of Florida’s Rosen College of Hospitality Management to become the second dean of our School of Hospitality Administration. An award-winning teacher, he brings to the position a strong academic background and extensive entrepreneurial experience in the hospitality field. He taught at Cornell before going to Florida, and has managed and launched a number of hospitality ventures.

SMG Dean Lou Lataif retired this past year after 19 years at BU, and SHA Dean Jim Stamas retired after 15 years. Walt Meissner, who served in the CFA dean’s position for eight years, has rejoined the University administration, where he now is associate vice president for operations. Each of these individuals provided outstanding leadership and helped his school achieve significant progress. We are extremely grateful for their outstanding service and leadership.

Research and Scholarship

Last week, the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, released a report on the nation’s doctoral programs, including 39 at BU. Data for this study was collected in 2005 and 2006, and the methodology for examining programs has changed since the NRC’s previous report, which was published in 1995, but we can see significant advances in 11 of the 24 programs that were examined in both studies. This report, of course, does not take into consideration the tremendous strides we have taken in recent years, as evidenced by the significant rise in external support of our research and growth of our faculty. More information about this report can be seen in BU Today.

The amount of research funding awarded to faculty on both the Medical and Charles River campuses grew significantly this past year. We received a total of $407.8 million in research awards, a 19 percent growth over the previous year. While the number of awards to faculty on the Charles River Campus was virtually unchanged, the value of awards rose by nearly 15 percent, from $140.7 million to $161.6 million, and the number of awards on the Medical Campus grew from 800 to 949, and the amount of funding from $201.7 million to $246.2 million, or 22 percent. As of the close of the last fiscal year, BU had received a total of $68.6 million in awards made possible by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA).

One example of an especially important research award, one which can have a major impact not only in its field, but on the quality of life for people in developing nations, is the $8.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to the Center for Global Health & Development, based at SPH. Under the leadership of Professor David Hamer, a team of researchers will use this four-year grant to test whether mothers can be encouraged successfully to use an antiseptic wash that can reduce infections of the umbilicus in the month after birth and help prevent the deaths of newborns in developing nations. The team will recruit 28,000 women in Zambia for the trial. Given that 40 percent of the deaths of children under age five occur in the first month of life, we can see the importance of this work.

Faculty Recognition and Awards

I am pleased to announce that on the Charles River Campus, 19 members of the faculty have been granted tenure, and 15 of these individuals have been promoted to associate professor. In addition, 10 members of the faculty have been promoted to full professor, and two to the rank of associate professor. On the Medical Campus, 48 faculty in BUSM received promotions, four in GSDM, and 15 in SPH. A full list of promotions can be found here.

A number of our faculty have received recognition from groups and organizations off campus for their work. James Collins, a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor and ENG professor of biomedical engineering, won the 2010 Lagrange-CRT Prize, awarded by the Institute for Scientific Interchange Foundation of Italy. This award, which is presented to those who make significant contributions to the progress of complexity science, comes in recognition of Jim’s outstanding work in complex biological systems.

CAS archaeologist Kathryn Bard, whose discoveries in Egypt have captured the world’s attention, was voted a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Class of 2010. Over the past five years, Kathryn’s work along the coast of the Red Sea has yielded incredibly well-preserved artifacts that shed new light on ancient Egypt’s sea trade.

In June, the Spanish Ambassador to the United States, Jorge Dezcallar de Mazarredo, came to campus to bestow the Officer’s Cross of the Orden de Isabel la Católica on CAS professors James Iffland and Christopher Maurer for their leadership in the study of Spanish literature and their efforts to promote Spanish culture in the United States. And while protocol does not call for us to address them as Sir Jim and Sir Chris, they deserve our congratulations.

The 2010 United Methodist Church Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award was presented to CAS Professor of Computer Science Azer Bestavros.

During last May’s Commencement ceremony, ENG Professor J. Gregory McDaniel was honored with the Metcalf Cup and Prize. John Caradonna, CAS Chemistry, and Sandra Nicolucci of CFA each received a Metcalf Award for Teaching Excellence.

Those among you who follow book reviews will have noted the extensive number of very positive reviews in publications across the country over the past few weeks regarding Isabel Wilkerson’s new book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Professor Wilkerson is the director of the Narrative Nonfiction Program at COM.

Academic Initiatives

Two years ago, the University Provost convened a task force under the direction of Victor Coelho, associate provost for undergraduate education, to explore how BU can better provide all of our students with the education that will best serve them in the 21st century. I would urge every member of the community to read the report of the task force, “ONE BU: Unlocking the Undergraduate Experience,” if you have not already done so. Discussions are ongoing on how to implement the recommendations of the task force. Among the most important ideas being explored are how we can eliminate barriers that make it difficult for students to take full advantage of opportunities that ought to be available to them in all schools, through co-curricular activities, and how we can improve the transfer process for students from one school to another within the University.

The Center for Excellence & Innovation in Teaching, which is under the direction of Professor Janelle Heineke, chair of the Operations & Technology Management Department in SMG, is supporting efforts to make large introductory classes more effective. The Center, through the “Redesigning the Undergraduate Learning Experience” (RULE) grants program, funded 15 pre-proposals submitted by teams of faculty in five schools last spring; full proposals are due October 15, and announcement of which ones will receive $30,000 grants per year for up to three years will be made in early November. Teams that receive grants will work to redesign large introductory classes in order to take better advantage of innovative pedagogical practices, promote collaborative learning and teamwork, train teaching assistants to be more effective instructors, and guide faculty in the use of technology and new instructional methods.

University Honors College formally launched this fall, with 70 freshmen from eight schools and colleges enrolled. Each of these students matriculated into one of our undergraduate programs, but will engage, through UHC, in a four-year course of study that blends liberal arts, professional education, and interdisciplinary work, along with extensive co-curricular activities, in order to engage in research, discovery, and the creation of new knowledge throughout their undergraduate years. I would like to thank Professor Charles Dellheim of CAS History, who chairs the UHC, the faculty involved in this very important new effort, and all of those who contributed to its formation over the past few years.

At the graduate level, the new neuroscience doctoral program, under the direction of Professor Shelley Russek of the MED Pharmacology & Experimental Therapeutics Department, is an example of how we can leverage our strengths in a number of related areas and provide an important academic program that places us at the forefront of this dynamic and rapidly developing area of science. Launched this fall, this University-wide PhD program brings together faculty from both campuses, drawing on ideas, approaches, and techniques from virtually all areas of neuroscience. The initial cohort of nine students will take a set of core courses in their initial year and maintain an interdisciplinary focus throughout the program. The undergraduate neuroscience program, under Professor Howard Eichenbaum of CAS Psychology, began last year and is seeing intensive interest and spectacular growth, with more than 200 students enrolled. We can expect both the undergraduate and graduate programs to see continued growth and, moreover, we can expect that many of the next generation of leaders in this field will be graduates of these programs.

Finance and Budgeting

The University continues to navigate the economic downturn well. As I reported to you in my letter of May 7, 2010, we entered this year with a budget of just over $2 billion, up 3.95 percent, and that included a 3.65 percent increase in undergraduate tuition, our lowest since 1969. The increase in our yield of applicants is an indication that the quality of our programs is apparent to prospective students and their parents and that our tuition rate and financial aid models are in line with the value of a Boston University education.

Because of the disciplined efforts of our faculty and staff, we completed fiscal year 2010 (ending June 30th) with reserves of $114.2 million, just ahead of our previous record total in FY2009. Approximately $14.4 million of these funds were transferred directly back to academic units, according to revenue sharing agreements and another $75.6 million have been allocated to academic initiatives. These include:

• Faculty hiring and retention: $12.7 million
• Renovation and renewal: $34.9 million
• Funding for academic initiatives: $28.0 million

Our endowment saw strong growth as it rebounded from the terrible year of the financial crisis. On June 30, 2010, our endowment stood at $1.02 billion on the basis of a 12.7 percent return. The endowment stood at $919.4 million at the close of the previous fiscal year. Based on an established formula, the distribution of income from our endowment to our academic units increased by 2.3 percent from the prior year.

While our financial operations remain strong, the nation’s slow economic recovery is a concern because it puts additional pressure on our students’ and their parents’ ability to afford a Boston University education. The need to moderate increases in tuition and fees will continue to constrain our ability to provide resources for as many of our initiatives as we might like. We have begun the budgeting process for the year starting July 1, 2011 with this moderating reality in mind. The larger-than-expected freshman class brings added challenges to our teaching mission that are being addressed by the University Provost’s Office and will add incremental revenue to the University for four years. We plan to allocate these funds to a reserve for special academic projects to enhance our academic programs and facilities.

Even with the tight financial controls that we need to employ in the current economic climate, the University continues to make progress on raising faculty salaries on the Charles River Campus. As of September 1, 2010, our average faculty salaries on the CRC were $143,816 for professors and $84,974 for assistant professors. According to the latest comparative data published last spring, our average salary at the rank of professor still lags the median of our peer group by about 3.5 percent, but this is significant progress from our position a few years ago.

Administrative Initiatives

Last year saw the BUworks development of our new SAP Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system start in earnest, with the staffing of the implementation team and the completion of the specifications for the system. This year will be consumed with the hard work of implementing the system design, with the goal of going live with the new financial and human resources systems on July 1, 2011, to coincide with the start of the next fiscal year.

I am very pleased with how constructively we have worked together to redesign administrative and financial workflows within the University so as to optimize the implementation of SAP. We are on track to complete an implementation that will modernize our financial and human resource services and that will be sustainable without adding overly burdensome costs.

Just behind the BUworks process is the implementation of the Kuali Coeus project for online administration of research contracts and grants. This is another badly needed upgrade to our administrative infrastructure, especially as the sponsored research on our campuses continues to grow. This system, still in its early stages, will be implemented across both campuses and will support the offices of Sponsored Programs, grants accounting, and other research compliance functions.

Physical Campus and Sustainability

As I have discussed before, the financial crisis and beginning of the recession caused us to reduce capital spending for new facilities and renovation. Beginning last fall, we returned to our normal planning process for renovation and renewal, and as a result there was considerable activity over this past summer. Some of the most noticeable projects are listed below:

• CRC classroom projects: 30 classrooms in CAS, on Cummington Street, and in STH, with a total of 1,211 seats, were outfitted with new media equipment. Also, two classrooms in CGS were renovated and combined to create a 63-seat case-style classroom equipped with state-of-the-art technology resources.
• Claflin Hall: rooms with more than 600 bed spaces were renovated and furnishings replaced.
• Towers Dormitory: the final phase of room and hallway renovations for 260 bed spaces in the west tower were completed, including, replacement of furniture.
• Walter Brown Arena: ice-making equipment, ice floor, dasher boards, and glass were replaced; and new arena dehumidification, ventilation, and lighting systems were installed.
• The Union Court at the George Sherman Union was renovated to provide new floor and wall coverings, tables and chairs, and a projection video system in the Back Court seating area.
• The first phase of a multi-year, $9 million project to replace all windows in the iconic CAS, STH, and MET buildings, 685-755 Commonwealth Avenue, was completed this summer. The design for the replacement windows was approved by the Massachusetts Historical Commission. This project will continue until all the windows are replaced.

All of these projects have taken into account how they might best address our sustainability goals. At the GSU, for example, the renovated dining area includes expanded recycling systems for compostable items; the Walter Brown Arena renovations feature a number of energy conservation measures and are estimated to reduce annual electricity usage by 1.6 million kWh; demolition materials from the dormitory projects were recycled, new carpeting is made from recycled material, and all new lighting has been selected for energy efficiency; the central campus window replacement project will provide significant savings on electricity and heating and reduce carbon emissions by 770 metric tonnes annually when completed.

A new intermediate pressure gas main was installed over the spring and summer between Buick Street and the East Campus Boiler Plant at 763 Commonwealth Avenue, adjacent to the GSU and LAW buildings. The boiler plant provides steam heat to 2.3 million square feet of classroom, student activity, and residential space in the core campus area. Burners have been upgraded to use either oil or natural gas, and we expect to rely primarily on gas, which is the cleanest of all fossil fuels. This will reduce the campus carbon footprint by 3,800 metric tonnes annually and save more than $1 million a year in fuel and operating costs.

Faculty and staff working to implement our sustainability initiatives have made outstanding progress in many areas, including the construction projects listed above. I am grateful to those involved for their diligence, and urge everyone to be aware of how they can contribute further to our sustainability efforts.

As was reported in BU Today last spring, we are in the midst of a major upgrade in communications infrastructure on the Charles River Campus, with wireless access being spread across campus. This summer, wireless was installed in all our major student residences, and we brought wireless to 82 classrooms. Our plan is to have all major classrooms outfitted by early 2011.

Two major academic projects are planned for the Metcalf Science Center in the summer of 2011 and will be funded from reserves generated for fiscal year 2010. First is a project to renovate the major ground-floor classrooms that are heavily used for undergraduate science classes. We also are planning the renovation of the teaching laboratories for organic chemistry that are located in the Metcalf Science Center. Over the last decade, enrollments in the initial organic chemistry course, as a measure of interest in the field, have increased by over 56 percent, from 345 students per year to 539, as the interest in science, engineering, and medicine has expanded. The renovation will not only give us new, modern laboratories, the spaces will enable the faculty to pursue discovery-based teaching methodology that the Chemistry Department is pioneering. Tentatively, this renovation is scheduled to be done next summer and be ready for the fall of 2011.

The design also is complete on the new student services center that will be built at the corner of Deerfield Street and Bay State Road; you can see the renderings here. The design is developed around a major new dining hall that will replace outdated facilities in the Towers, Myles and Shelton residences, but most importantly, the upper floors are designed to house a much-needed center for services that are key to student success. New and expanded spaces are included for the:

• Educational Resource Center
• Career Services
• Pre-professional Advising for Medicine and Law
• College of Arts & Sciences Writing Program

We will break ground this fall with the goal of opening the building in fall 2012. Once this new building is occupied, 27,000 square feet of space in six buildings now used by these services will be available for redeployment, and the now-existing dining facilities will be re-tasked and renovated for other uses, giving us a large increase in student space in several east campus residences

Finally, the design phase of the expansion and renovation of the Law School will be complete by spring. This project will include the construction of a classroom facility on the east side of the tower, followed by a complete renovation of the tower itself. Plans are for construction of the classroom building to start in 2012 and to be completed by summer 2014, followed by renovation of the tower. We will communicate more details closer to the start of this project next spring and keep you informed of steps that may inconvenience those with offices near the construction site.

Development and Alumni Activities

Last year saw us return to the increasing success of our development efforts that were under way before the financial crisis. By the numbers, we received cash gifts of $85.1 million, up by 15 percent from last year, and $80.4 million in formal pledges, up by 21.4 percent. Both totals mark the best fundraising years in the University’s history using the nationally accepted methodology for crediting gifts.

These totals include some marvelous commitments to the University. Trustee and alumnus Kenneth Feld (SMG’70) and members of his family, including his wife, Bonnie (CAS’73) and daughters Nicole, Alana (COM’02), and Juliette, pledged $10 million to enhance faculty development and other University projects. CAS Professor Robert Devaney was named the first Feld Professor; the other two Feld Chairs will be in SMG and COM. This past spring we learned that alumna Ernestine O’Connell, who earned degrees from CAS, GRS, and SED, left a bequest of $7.4 million to increase the endowment of a scholarship fund that her mother, also named Ernestine, a 1911 graduate of CAS, had established in 1961. Several other very major commitments will be announced in the months ahead.

We continue to make progress with engagement of our over 290,000 alumni. Last year we hosted over 700 alumni events worldwide that were attended by more than 38,000 people; both totals are up very significantly from the year before and represent our most active year on record with our alumni. During the weekend of October 29 through 31, we will have our annual Alumni Weekend on campus and we are on track to exceed the greater than 3,000 participants who joined us for this event last year. Wish us luck for good weather!

Along with these annual statistics, we have reached another critically important milestone. For the last two years, with the leadership of the Board of Trustees, we have been working to calibrate the University’s readiness for launching our first comprehensive fundraising campaign. We enter this fall with over $165 million of committed pledges to such a campaign, with over $120 million of this amount coming from Trustees. With these commitments and the prospect for more successes, with the needs defined by our strategic plans, and with our proven ability to make every dollar count toward improving the quality of our programs, students, and faculty, our Board voted to move us into the initial, “quiet” phase of a comprehensive fundraising campaign. During the next several years we will continue to add to these totals and to test the readiness of our alumni and friends to support the aspirations of our faculty and the University. Wish us luck!

Conclusion

I hope you take pride in the progress of Boston University over the last year. This year, like those before, involves major initiatives that will help shape our future. I look forward to working with you toward these goals.

Sincerely,

Robert A. Brown
President

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