We once again welcomed to CAS our most talented class of undergraduates ever—by all of our indicators of success. We attracted them here by improving our programs and doing a better job of reaching out and telling our story to potential students and parents. Recruitment is a team effort; current CAS students and our alumni played special roles, and our faculty members joined the Admissions staff in fanning out across the globe to find and attract great students.
Our first-year class was a diverse and impressive group from 43 states and 47 countries, including the largest group of international students ever. And they brought with them a diversity of interests—a key ingredient at a college of arts and sciences. Their intended majors ran the gamut of the humanities and the social, natural, and computational sciences. We continued to see a large focus on the life sciences and rising interest in the computational sciences. Although interest in the humanities and some of the social sciences as majors has softened at BU, as is true across the country, these fields remain healthy. Of course, many of our students will change their majors or add new ones—roughly one-quarter of our students have multiple majors.
About one-quarter of the Class of 2017 entered without a declared major. Part of the benefit of a liberal arts and sciences education is that students can take some time to identify their core interests and still complete their degree in a timely and successful way. For the complete snapshot of this past year’s incoming class, see the Class of 2017 Profile and the chart on First-Year Student Enrollment.
Supporting Student Success
As strong and engaged as are the undergraduates who enter Boston University, even these well-rounded, smart students need support and guidance during their first year to make sure that they make the transition from high school to college smoothly and to give them the strongest possible foundation for academic success.
Ravjot Singh (CAS'18), starting from left in red, Rishi Ramaraju (CAS'18), Naomi Carolan (CAS'18), and Nicole Cormier (CAS'18), listen as Associate Professor of English Carrie J. Preston delivers the Faculty Salutation during the Class of 2018 Matriculation Ceremony. Photo by Cydney Scott
This year, we continued to strengthen the CAS First-Year Experience, our name for an interrelated set of experiences, advising, and support systems aimed at students during this gateway year. A key part of the First-Year Experience program is FY 101, a one-credit pass/fail course that does not count toward graduation and is open to all first-year undergraduates. In 2013/14, FY 101 demonstrated its success by topping 500 first-year students for the first time (a 40% increase over the year before). FY 101 works seminar-style with small groups to cover many topics relating to academics and success, personal development, integrating into BU and Boston, and developing good relationships with faculty and other students. With more than 35 sections supported by almost 40 peer mentors, FY 101 brings students together with peer advisors, faculty, and staff to help with the transition to college and CAS during their first-year fall semester. FY 101 students can also continue their engagement after their first year by become peer mentors.
We created a unique new advising program for students who have not yet chosen a major, offering advising, career counseling, and specialized discussion groups. This program was created in association with the Center for Career Development (CCD). Students are assigned to an advising team, including a specific advisor in CAS and a career counselor. Undeclared students also have access to special sections of FY 101 designed to help them with the major and career decision-making process. We are working to meet the challenges faced by our growing number of international students, and especially to assist them with continuing their growth in English language skills, as well as their comfort in the American classroom and university setting. BU offers special orientations and advising, and the CAS Writing Program has experts who offer a growing number of sections to students coming from abroad whose first language is not English.
Enhancing the Curriculum
When we design our degree programs, we have certain outcomes and impact in mind—skills and knowledge our students should learn. A liberal arts and sciences education should ensure that students are developing broad analytical and creative thinking skills and learning how to apply them to complex challenges. Our degree programs are supposed to prepare our students for their future lives. We therefore need a way to make sure that all of our degree programs are having the intended transformative impact on our students’ minds and lives. In academic year 2013/14, BU launched a new initiative to develop a degree program assessment strategy to do just this. We are pursuing this comprehensive assessment to identify areas in need of improvement and enable ourselves to seek the right solutions. The point of this exercise is to add assessment of the quality and impact of our degree programs to the traditional work of assessing the quality of individual students’ work.
Take, for example, the assessment strategy developed this year by the undergraduate program in neuroscience. It identified both direct and indirect measures to determine student progress, including using standardized scientific reasoning tests before and after a course, monitoring student learning assistants to see how well they communicate ideas, sampling graduating seniors’ reasoning skills using multiple choice tests, and tracking post-graduates’ scores on graduate school entrance exams. The history department outlined a series of five ever-more-complex reasoning skills their majors must master, and identified ways to test their success. For example, history majors will be expected to demonstrate that they understand patterns of change in the past and can analyze the role of evidence in constructing historical arguments. The faculty will canvass students’ work and conduct entry and exit surveys, looking in-depth at one course at a time to determine how well students are building these skills.
The CAS curriculum changes over time because student interests, faculty expertise, and the needs of the world around us are also changing. This year, we launched a new major in Cinema Studies and Media Studies together with the School of Communication, as well as a new program in Middle East & North Africa Studies (MENA) which will be run through the new Pardee School of Global Studies. The MENA major, which sets a high bar for language learning, complements the five other area studies programs under the Pardee School.
One of our most exciting curricular innovations is about to be launched because of the creative thinking of a dedicated professor. A five-year, $1 million grant from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) will allow Professor of Earth & Environment David Marchant to give BU first-year students a huge leg up in the fields of climate change and geology. Marchant, an expert in Antarctic geomorphology, will lead students in conducting in-depth research in the CAS Permafrost Laboratory. They will meet top scientists in the field and educate middle-schoolers and the general public about their work. HHMI professorships are highly prized awards won through fierce competitions and aimed at promoting and improving the study of science, technology, engineering, and math in order to meet a national shortfall of students in those areas. The HHMI professorship is a signal of success for both the professor and the University.
Measuring Success
One of the bellwethers of the quality of CAS undergraduate education is the large number of our students who undertake original, in-depth research. And one of the signs of the investment of our faculty in our students is the large number of professors who sponsor and guide these research projects. In 2013/14, CAS undergraduates took the first, second, and third-place prizes at the BU Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program’s annual Undergraduate Research Symposium. Over 250 students presented. Biochemistry & Molecular Biology major Nicole Snyder took first place for her investigation of the DNA of cancer cells. Classics major Sydney Shea took second place with a study of Alexandria’s strong influence on the practice of editing Homeric manuscripts. And Math and Physics double major Emma Rosenfeld took third place with her examination of a detector for muons, a form of subatomic particle.
This past year, several of our academic departments were singled out by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) in its QS World University Rankings as being among the best in the world. The Department of Economics received the same ranking as last year at 47th, the Department of Philosophy climbed from 40th to 31st, and the departments of Physics and Astronomy rose to 41st (up from 51–100). The annual QS rankings are based on a program’s academic reputation, student employability after graduation, and research citations. The Department of Economics was also ranked 12th nationally by international clearinghouse Research Papers in Economics, with four faculty ranked in the top 1% of the field.
An undergraduate education should prepare students for their future lives. Unlike in the professional schools, a liberal arts and sciences degree is not designed as a track to a particular job. It is, instead, a broad and deep platform of skills and knowledge from which students launch themselves into virtually every career imaginable. The professional aspirations of many of our students require that they seek various forms of post-graduate education or training; internships of a variety of sorts to build up experience, skills, knowledge, and contacts; or other life experiences. Liberal arts and sciences students serve as a critical pool from which Peace Corps, Teach for America, and other service organizations choose their recruits.
A new comprehensive survey of the BU Class of 2013 shows where the newest class of CAS alumni were a few months after graduation. Fully 64% were employed full-time, while 18% were enrolled in graduate or professional school; 7% were involved in other activities, including the military, internships, and service activities; and just 11% defined themselves as still seeking employment. Only the School of Management and the School of Hospitality Administration had a higher percentage of their graduates “settled” at that time. Given the state of the job market, this placement record speaks well of CAS students and their preparation for their post-college lives. (See Appendix, Post-Graduation Destination Profile CAS Class of 2013.)
Annual Report 2013/2014
From the Dean
From recruiting ever-better faculty and students to surging ahead in our capital campaign, academic year 2013/2014 was a year of great accomplishments.
Improving Undergraduate Education
CAS once again attracted our most talented class of undergraduates ever. And we laid the groundwork to serve them even better, offering expanded academic opportunities and a comprehensive first-year experience program with over 500 first-year student participants.
Strengthening Graduate Education
BU and the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences saw immediate, strong results from our new five-year PhD funding model that has increased the attractiveness of doctoral programs.
Enhancing a World-Class Faculty
The quality of a university depends on the quality of its faculty, and hiring the best and giving them a strong start is crucial. In 2013/14, CAS hired 17 new assistant professors and 3 senior professors across the humanities and social, natural, and computational sciences.
Conducting Path-Breaking Research
As the academic heart of BU and its biggest school, CAS’s dynamism is helping propel BU’s recognition as one of the finest research universities in the country. New initiatives including the Center for Systems Neuroscience, BU Initiative on Cities, and Center for Autism Research Excellence are taking our research to new heights.
Deepening Our Global Mission
This year, thanks to a generous gift from Frederick S. Pardee (SMG’54, GSM’54, Hon.’06), we laid the groundwork for the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, launched in September 2014 and reporting to CAS. The Pardee School builds on the substantial success CAS has had in creating strong global and international studies programs.
Stewarding Our Resources
Boston University is financially healthy, although it faces the challenges of a continuing weak economy and many other issues that require skilled and careful management in higher education today. CAS is fortunate to benefit from BU’s wise management and our own diligent stewardship of our resources.
Nurturing Connections with Alumni and Friends
Boston University and the College of Arts & Sciences have made significant steps in building a framework for alumni to engage with faculty, other alumni, and current students in ongoing learning, discussion, and inquiry. Over 6,000 of the alumni attending BU Alumni Association events around the world were CAS alumni (up 11% over the previous year).
Growing Our Capacity: The Campaign for CAS
BU is in the midst of our first-ever capital campaign, and CAS is well ahead in its progress toward our original goal of raising $100 million. More than 4,300 alumni and many other friends of CAS contributed during the past fiscal year. By the end of the 2014 fiscal year, CAS had received $83.2 million in gift funds through the campaign.
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