This month all across the nation and, indeed, around the world, high school seniors are deciding where to spend their next four years. Nearly 61,000 applied for admission to Boston University for Fall 2017, and we accepted approximately 25% of them; now it’s their turn to decide whether to choose us. In the College of Arts & Sciences, we host Open Houses on Fridays in April, which begin with warm welcoming speeches: one by a student (thank you, Dieter DeCorte), one by Associate Dean for Student Academic Life Steve Jarvi, and one by me as the Dean.
In my speech, I tell these prospective students and their families why I think that BU, and CAS in particular, is a special place, highlighting that we are an elite undergraduate college within a world-class, global research institution in the intellectual capital of the world. I urge them to seek out faculty and students to investigate that claim, and then to picture themselves as student residents on our urban campus. To illustrate how great our teaching is, Open House offers students and their families the opportunity to attend lectures by great faculty members. I am grateful for the participation this year of 14 faculty members, including James Johnson (history), Paul Lipton (neuroscience), Sharon Goldberg (computer science), Martha Tompson (psychology), and Annah Henchman (English). In the afternoon, students attend an academic expo with representatives from our departments and degree programs, learn about financial aid, and visit science labs.
Open House day is, as Steve Jarvi tells them in his introductory remarks, one of the three most important days of students’ BU careers (the others being Move-In and Commencement). It’s about discovering both the academic fit and the community feel of BU for themselves. The welcome and information these students receive makes all the difference in their decisions to attend BU and, just as important, in their feeling of belonging once they arrive. At Open House, students begin to plan their academic careers, exploring options such as the Core Curriculum. They become excited about the courses, disciplines, and co-curricular opportunities that they want to explore, and they begin to imagine living independently from their families.
One of the four Open Houses each year pairs minority recruits with current student hosts in the residence halls for a long weekend to explore how we especially seek to make them welcome on our campus. Multicultural Community Weekend was this past weekend, and I was delighted to spend time with these prospective students at dinner on Thursday, as well as with their parents at a reception earlier in the day. At the dinner they had many questions for me about how to succeed, whether they would have small classes, how to get to know their faculty members, and how to engage in research. I spoke about how they should expect their paths to be rigorous and that everyone would find challenges along the way. But I promised them that they would find help and that by reaching out to their faculty and fellow students, by mastering good study habits and working hard, they would succeed. Proving to all our admitted students that they belong here and that we believe in their abilities is crucial to their choice and their ultimate success, and to making our College a diverse community of scholars.
By choosing to come to CAS, students are deciding to pursue a liberal education and learning what that means. While many universities have chosen to break up their colleges, separating humanities from the social and natural sciences, and computational sciences from all of these, we at BU maintain that the myriad foundational disciplinary approaches belong together–and a Bachelor’s degree that integrates these fields provides students an unparalleled preparation for lifelong learning. I am a firm believer in and champion of this approach to liberal education, and that’s why I chose this place. In recent months, local deans have been hosting conversations on the liberal arts; BU’s steadfast embrace of this diversity of thought shines through as a beacon of wisdom in these discussions. This is a great strength of the College of Arts & Sciences, and we can proudly claim it to our prospective students and their families. As we develop the BU Hub, we will be able to provide some of this liberal educational advantage to students across BU, as well.
Such breadth poses a challenge for both prospective and current students and alumni in our college, however, and that is the challenge of identity. In my first year as Dean, our CAS student government offered an important critique of our college’s ability to provide a feeling of shared purpose. They desired more community among their CAS classmates, matching that in schools and colleges at BU with a narrower, professional focus. They challenged me to find a place where they could gather as CAS students to work and study together and develop this community. Working with our Facilities Director, Lisa Doherty, we have been able to develop a beautiful, functional study space overlooking Comm. Ave. along the busy first-floor thoroughfare of the CAS building. I am pleased to announce that the CAS Think Tank will open in just a few weeks—welcoming students on May 1, just in time for studying for finals. This is a big step forward in helping create an identity for CAS students.
In the cycle of academic life, April Open Houses mark the pregnant beginning of a lifelong engagement with BU. By nurturing this relationship from the start, we enable the best possible start for our students who will move in and matriculate in the fall. Their four years here will be full of academic and social peaks and valleys, as they strive to become wiser adults with a community of classmates and mentors. When they graduate, they will still only be commencing to appreciate the value of investing in this liberal education, which we know will pay dividends throughout their lives–for them and for Boston University as their proud alma mater.