Here is a sampling of the awards and honors received by CAS faculty in 2013/14:

  • Archaeology: Assistant Professor of Archaeology John Marston was one of three recipients of this year’s Peter Paul Career Development Professorships. The coveted award acknowledges junior faculty who are budding leaders in their fields. Marston’s award will enable him to complete a book as well as to expand his work on climate adaptation and environmental change in the ancient Mediterranean and the Near East. Read more
  • Biology: The Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) awarded Professor of Biology Michael Baum the 2014 Daniel S. Lehrman Lifetime Achievement Award in Behavioral Neuroendocrinology. The award honors the lifetime achievement of the most distinguished investigators in the field. Baum has made many pivotal contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying sex differences in the brain and behavior.
  • Computer Science: Professor of Computer Science Leonid Levin was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Read more
  • Creative Writing and English: Professor of Creative Writing Ha Jin (Xuefei Jin) was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Read more
  • History: Associate Professor of History Arianne Chernock received a Fulbright—King’s College London Scholar Award to pursue research in the UK in 2015. Each year, one award is offered to a US citizen in support of research and/or teaching in any subject in any of King’s College London’s research-active departments. Professor Chernock will be working on her book, The Right to Rule and the Rights of Women in Victorian Britain.
  • History: Professor of History James Johnson was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for the Humanities, as well as the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship, for his research on masks and modern consciousness. Johnson will continue writing Means of Concealment: French Identity and the Self. The work examines the meaning of masks, both physical and figurative, and will trace evolving ideas of the self and the rise of modern individualism through modes of concealment and its penetration.
  • International Relations: Cornel Ban, assistant professor of international relations, received the Stuart and Elizabeth Pratt Career Development Professorship. The award acknowledges Ban as an emerging leader in his field. Ban is an expert on the failure of economic models used by governments or international banks to predict the financial crisis that swept the world within the past decade.
  • Mathematics and Computer Science: Jared Weinstein, assistant professor of mathematics & statistics, and Sharon Goldberg, assistant professor of computer science, were among the 126 winners of this year’s Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowships. The coveted two-year fellowships go to young scientific researchers making outstanding contributions to their fields. As a network security researcher, Goldberg studies the global internet and—more specifically—the ways networks worldwide connect to one another. Weinstein’s area of expertise is the field of number theory, with a specialization in automorphic representation theory, which studies abstract algebraic structures. Read more
  • Mathematics & Statistics: Assistant Professor Samuel Isaacson of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics received a CAREER Award in mathematics from the National Science Foundation, a prestigious five-year grant given annually to the top 20–30 tenure-track mathematicians nationwide. Read more

Annual Report 2013/2014

  • From the DeanFrom 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.
  • New Structures for Organizing Discovery and EducationImproving 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.
  • Enhancing a World-Class FacultyStrengthening 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.
  • Strengthening the Quality of Undergraduate EducationEnhancing 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.
  • Strengthening the Quality of Graduate EducationConducting 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.
  • Strengthening Our Research and ScholarshipDeepening 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.
  • Finances and DevelopmentStewarding 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.
  • The Class of 2012Nurturing 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).
  • AppendixGrowing 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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