State of the University, Spring 2023
March 23, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
As has been my custom each spring, I am writing to update you on the state of the University. As this letter will be my last as your president, I want to reflect on Boston University today and the special opportunity that the University has in the years ahead.
At no time in the history of our country have our great research universities been so crucial for educating the next generation and providing the research and scholarship that will shape the future of our economy and society. Today, because of the efforts of our faculty and staff, Boston University is counted among these universities. We are distinctive from others in very important ways.
First, our cohesiveness, working as one university, is more apparent and more part of the Boston University DNA than it is for most others. This feature was named many years ago by a faculty committee as “One Boston University, or OneBU.” While many large universities suffer from fragmentation and lack of institutional direction, Boston University is more unified in philosophy and organization. Our internal barriers—both administrative and cultural—while still significant, are lower than those at most universities. As a result, talented faculty and students who value and search out a more boundary-free environment are attracted to us and generate extraordinary levels of collaboration, innovation, and creativity. Just as the quality of research, scholarship, and teaching has grown in each of our schools and colleges year by year, the interconnections across the University have grown. The sum of the academic community we represent and our ability to work together are advantages in a world where many of the great challenges we face do not neatly align with traditional disciplines, and many talented individuals defy disciplinary stereotypes. I wrote about the importance of interconnections in my spring letter in 2018.
The need for convergence of disciplines is well established in the sciences.1 However, the connections needed are not just across science, technology, and medicine. In his book Consilience, E.O. Wilson2 made an impassioned argument that convergence of knowledge must extend across all fields, saying that “most of the issues that vex humanity daily … cannot be solved without integrating knowledge from the natural sciences with that of the social sciences and humanities.” This is not a new argument, but it is more pressing today than ever.
I believe that we must expand and strengthen those interconnections so we can be the most highly collaborative research university imaginable. We should lead in interdisciplinary approaches in research and scholarship, demonstrating to our students how to seamlessly work across boundaries.
The interconnectedness of Boston University today does not lend itself well to a simple description. The elevator speech is difficult because we can’t rely on a simple slogan like “Terrier Nation” (which works for Athletics) as our unifying theme or point to a single pillar of our educational philosophy. But there are many proof points for the unique value of our interconnectedness. Here are a few:
- In education, the BU Hub has unified what were disparate undergraduate general education programs into one that serves all our students. In keeping with the spirit of collaboration, the BU Hub is an organically changing program continually being reassessed to best meet the needs of our students.
- The Rajen Kilachand Fund for Integrated Life Sciences and Engineering was created to promote new collaborations among faculty on both the Medical and Charles River Campuses. It is working spectacularly well and is already catalyzing exciting new research.
- The revolutionary new organizational structure and faculty hiring program introduced in the College of Engineering account for the convergence of traditional engineering disciplines and align with research initiatives. Search committees that transcend traditional academic boundaries are already responsible for half of the faculty searches in the college.
- The creation of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences as an all-University academic unit brings together faculty and students from across our schools and colleges with the goal of applying and integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science in all our programs and research efforts. Over 40 faculty have joined CDS. A new doctoral program in data science was established in 2021 and the undergraduate major was launched last fall with over 100 incoming freshmen and students transferring from within the University.
- We established the Center for Antiracist Research under the leadership of Ibram X. Kendi. The center has an interdisciplinary focus on understanding the impact of and developing strategies for ending systemic racism.
These initiatives and others, as well as the hiring of faculty with appointments split between multiple academic departments, would not have been possible without the growing realization that our ability to interconnect our programs is attracting incredibly talented faculty and students to Boston University. Nothing is more vital to the University’s continued success than the talent, creativity, and contributions of our faculty. They and their work are the ultimate differentiators for the University.
It is, I believe, imperative that we attract talent from everywhere. We must bring together faculty, staff, and students, from all backgrounds and walks of life, if we are going to contribute fully to addressing the challenges facing the world and educate our students to lead in it. Boston University’s history of diversity, equity, and inclusion goes back to our Methodist founding and led in the 1950s to the special environment that attracted Martin Luther King, Jr. as a graduate student and Howard Thurman as dean of Marsh Chapel.
Diversity and inclusiveness should be one of our calling cards. Unfortunately, over the years, we did not adequately build upon our history and gave away the potential for early leadership. But we have made good progress in the last decade. We have deepened the diversity of our undergraduate student body and now have similar efforts taking root in our graduate programs, faculty, and staff. Our academic and administrative leadership reflects this commitment. We must keep this effort front and center if we are going to be the diverse institution we aspire to be.
Simply having a diverse campus community is not enough. We must be intentional at fostering the principles of a liberal democracy, committed to equality of opportunity and the will of the majority, but also committed to personal autonomy, responsibility, and freedom of thought and belief. The result should be an academic community where civil discourse is the norm and more valued than slogans painted on signs or on a rock. Discussions and debates are required, where perspectives and positions are shared that may be unfamiliar to many and uncomfortable to others. We hope that through such conversations we can work toward a sense of shared purpose that defines our community while conducting ourselves in respectful ways that reinforce our drive to be inclusive. We should aspire to be a community in which both the free expression of ideas and the experience of being heard by others add to every individual’s sense of belonging.
I believe Howard Thurman, the namesake of our Center for Common Ground, agreed with this statement, but expressed it slightly differently when he said: “…meaningful and creative shared experiences between people can be more compelling than all of the faiths, fears, concepts and ideologies that separate them. And, if these experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a sufficient duration of time, then any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated.”3
If we succeed, we will be joined by the diverse, talented, creative, and engaged faculty, staff, and students who will help us realize our aspirations. Boston University will then be truly built on a foundation of inclusive excellence.
Boston University today has great momentum. The quality of our undergraduate student body is a clear validation of our progress. For next fall, we have over 80,000 applicants for the 3,100 positions in our freshman class. We expect that the admission rate will be below 11 percent (a spectacular change from the nearly 60 percent admission rate in 2005) and that the average matriculant in the fall will have a high school GPA of over 3.90. And the class will be diverse. Once again, we expect the domestic portion of the class will be composed of over 25 percent Pell Grant recipients and over 30 percent students from underrepresented groups.
The scholarship and research from our faculty and doctoral students is more vibrant than ever. We are on track for a record year in new research grants won by our faculty. And the number of external awards and honors that our faculty earn continues to grow.
Finally, our aspirations for the future are set by a forward-looking Strategic Plan. There is always more to do to make Boston University academically better, our community more vibrant, and our research and scholarship more renowned and relevant. The journey of creating a great research university is unending, and the path is neither straight nor level. At times we will need to seek the trail among the undergrowth caused by the world around us, or climb over obstacles caused by our own limitations, either cultural or financial. I am confident that the talented people of Boston University will continue to excel as members of the community that constitutes a leading private research university.
As I conclude my service as president, I want to thank each of you for your contributions to the journey during my time here. I reflect with satisfaction and gratitude on the path we have walked and the progress we have made together. I am even more excited, however, about the future of Boston University.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Brown
President
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1. Arise 2: Advancing Research in Science and Engineering. American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2013.
2. E.O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York, 1998.
3. Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman. New York, 1979.