- Improving Undergraduate Education
- Class of 2020 Profile
- First-Year Student Enrollment
- Enrollments and Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded by Major, AY 2016/2017
- New Academic Programs
- Post-Graduation Destination Profile CAS Class of 2016
- Strengthening Graduate Education
- GRS-Registered MA/MFA/MS Students (by Department)
- GRS-Registered PhD Students (by Department)
- Enhancing a World-Class Faculty
- Promoted, Tenured, and Retired Faculty, AY 2016/17
- New CAS Faculty, AY 2017/2018
- Growing Our Capacity: The Campaign for CAS
- The Campaign for CAS: 2017 Status Report
- Stewarding Our Resources
- Budget
Contents
Attracting and Nurturing the Best Students
Class of 2020 Profile
Profile of the Class of 2020, Registered and Settled Through Fall 2016 Final (Official Mid-Semester)
Total Number of Entering Students, Fall 2016: 1,636
| Male | 37.3% (610) |
| Female | 62.7% (1,026) |
Top 10 Programs/Majors
| Undeclared | 355 |
| Biology | 160 |
| Economics | 122 |
| Psychology | 103 |
| International Relations | 91 |
| Computer Science | 87 |
| Biology-Cell/Molecular/Genetics | 70 |
| Neuroscience | 62 |
| Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | 59 |
| Mathematics | 49 |
Academic Accomplishment
The class entering in Fall 2016 was the most accomplished academically in the college’s history.
| Credentials | Average | Middle 50% |
|---|---|---|
| SAT Critical Reading | 644 | 590–700 |
| SAT Math | 684 | 640–740 |
| SAT Writing | 663 | 620–710 |
| SAT Composite | 1990 | 1890–2080 |
| ACT Composite | 30 | 29–32 |
| High School Rank in Class | 90.8 | -- |
| High School GPA | 3.65 | -- |
| Rank in Class | |
|---|---|
| Top 5% | 43.3% |
| Top 10% | 71.7% |
| Top 15% | 85.2% |
| Top 20% | 92.1% |
| Top 25% | 97.1% |
| Top 30% | 99.8% |
| Top 50% | 99.8% |
The Class of 2020 demonstrates a wide range of ethnic diversity; 22.9% of the class identifies as international.
| Ethnicity | Number | % of Class | % of Domestic Known |
|---|---|---|---|
| African American | 100 | 6.1% | 8.5% |
| Hispanic | 164 | 10.0% | 14.0% |
| Native American | 5 | 0.3% | 0.4% |
| Hawaiian/Pacific Islander | 5 | 0.3% | 0.4% |
| Asian | 305 | 18.6% | 26.0% |
| Caucasian | 595 | 36.4% | 50.7% |
| International | 375 | 22.9% | -- |
| Unspecified | 87 | 5.3% | -- |
| Total: | 1,636 | 100.0% | 100.0% |
Geography
Most domestic students who entered in Fall 2016 are from the Northeast and California, with Massachusetts leading the way. The largest contingent of international students is from the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong) (175 freshmen).
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| # of states | 46 |
| % from out of state | 83.3% |
| Top States | |
|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 273 |
| New York | 192 |
| California | 129 |
| New Jersey | 94 |
| Florida | 78 |
| Connecticut | 65 |
| Pennsylvania | 51 |
| Illinois | 37 |
| Texas | 33 |
| New Hampshire | 25 |
| Other states, DC | 245 |
| Territories, APO | 12 |
| Foreign address | 402 |
| Territories represented: | PR, VI, GU, APO |
| State(s) not represented: | AK, AR, ID, ND, WY |
| Region | |
|---|---|
| New England | 24.0% |
| Mid-Atlantic | 22.4% |
| Midwest | 5.6% |
| South | 9.2% |
| Southwest | 2.4% |
| West | 1.4% |
| Pacific | 10.0% |
| Other | 24.9% |
The majority of entering international students in Fall 2016 came from Asia, with the greatest number coming from China.
| Geography | |
|---|---|
| 47 countries | |
| Top Countries by Citizenship | |
|---|---|
| China (Incl. Hong Kong) | 175 |
| India | 43 |
| Republic of Korea | 33 |
| Taiwan, R.O.C. | 13 |
| Canada | 13 |
| Russia | 8 |
First-Year Student Enrollment
The table below shows the intended majors of first-year students who matriculated at CAS for Fall 2016 and Fall 2015.
| Intended Majors | ||
|---|---|---|
| Program/Major | 2016 | 2015 |
| American Studies | 1 | 0 |
| Ancient Greek | 1 | - |
| Ancient Greek & Latin | 3 | 2 |
| Anthropology | 7 | 14 |
| Anthropology & Religion | 2 | 4 |
| Archaeology | 6 | 13 |
| Architecture | 5 | 6 |
| Astronomy | 4 | 4 |
| Astronomy & Physics | 23 | 13 |
| Asian Studies | 5 | 3 |
| Biochemistry | 1 | 1 |
| Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | 59 | 53 |
| Biology | 160 | 176 |
| Biology—Ecology & Conservation Biology | 11 | 5 |
| Biology—Cell/Molecular/Genetic | 70 | 72 |
| Biology—Quantitative | 1 | 3 |
| Biology—Behavioral | 12 | 9 |
| Biology—Neurobiology | 28 | 26 |
| Chemistry | 46 | 43 |
| Chemistry—Biochemistry | 20 | 25 |
| Chemistry—Teaching | 1 | 1 |
| Chinese Language & Literature | 1 | 0 |
| Cinema & Media Studies | 2 | 2 |
| Classical Civilization | 2 | 2 |
| Classics & Philosophy | 0 | 0 |
| Classics & Religion | 1 | 0 |
| Comparative Literature | 1 | 3 |
| Computer Science | 87 | 70 |
| Earth Sciences | 1 | 1 |
| East Asian Studies | 0 | - |
| Economics | 122 | 130 |
| Economics & Mathematics | 21 | 36 |
| English | 41 | 37 |
| Environmental Analysis & Policy | 6 | 4 |
| Environmental Science | 15 | 14 |
| European Studies | 1 | 2 |
| French & Linguistics | 1 | 1 |
| French Studies | 1 | 2 |
| Geography—Human Geography | 1 | 1 |
| Geography—Physical Geography | - | 2 |
| Geophysics & Planetary Sciences | 1 | 0 |
| German Language & Literature | 0 | 0 |
| Hispanic Language & Literature | 2 | 1 |
| History | 15 | 12 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 10 | 8 |
| International Relations | 91 | 86 |
| Japanese Language & Literature | 4 | 1 |
| Japanese & Linguistics | 1 | 0 |
| Latin | 0 | 1 |
| Latin American Studies | 0 | 1 |
| Linguistics | 7 | 4 |
| Linguistics & Philosophy | 0 | 2 |
| Marine Science | 11 | 14 |
| Mathematics | 49 | 48 |
| Mathematics & Computer Science | 9 | 12 |
| Mathematics & Mathematics Education | 2 | 0 |
| Mathematics & Philosophy | 4 | 2 |
| Middle East/North Africa Studies | 2 | 0 |
| Music | 2 | 3 |
| Neuroscience | 62 | 65 |
| Philosophy | 6 | 6 |
| Philosophy & Physics | 0 | 4 |
| Philosophy & Political Science | 3 | 5 |
| Philosophy & Psychology | 2 | 4 |
| Philosophy & Religion | 0 | 0 |
| Physics | 25 | 23 |
| Political Science | 47 | 57 |
| Predentistry | 0 | 0 |
| Premedical | 1 | 0 |
| Psychology | 103 | 98 |
| Religion | 0 | 0 |
| Russian & Eastern European Studies | - | 1 |
| Russian Language & Literature | 1 | 0 |
| Sociology | 23 | 24 |
| Spanish & Linguistics | 2 | 2 |
| Undecided | 355 | 369 |
| Accel. Medical program | 25 | 19 |
| Accel. Dental program | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 1,636 | 1,655 |
Enrollments and Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded by Major, AY 2016/2017
The table below lists the number of enrolled students in each CAS major and the total number of degrees awarded in each major during academic year 2016/2017.
| Major | Fall 2016 Enrolled Students | Degrees Awarded (AY 2017) |
|---|---|---|
| Undeclared | 708 | - |
| Economics | 700 | 197 |
| Psychology | 609 | 185 |
| International Relations | 559 | 193 |
| Computer Science | 515 | 119 |
| Biology | 456 | 112 |
| Neuroscience | 334 | 72 |
| Mathematics | 285 | 73 |
| Political Science | 271 | 74 |
| Biochemistry & Molecular Biology | 251 | 39 |
| Biology with specialization in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology & Genetics | 228 | 47 |
| English | 173 | 60 |
| Economics & Mathematics | 125 | 23 |
| History | 121 | 45 |
| Sociology | 117 | 35 |
| Chemistry | 97 | 20 |
| Biology, Neurobiology | 83 | 20 |
| Physics | 80 | 20 |
| Medical Science | 69 | 14 |
| Environmental Analysis & Policy | 68 | 16 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 56 | 12 |
| Marine Science | 56 | 14 |
| Anthropology | 55 | 15 |
| Philosophy | 54 | 19 |
| Math Computer Science | 53 | 9 |
| Astronomy & Physics | 49 | 4 |
| Architectural Studies | 43 | 10 |
| Environmental Science | 43 | 16 |
| Archaeology | 38 | 8 |
| Biology w/ specialization Behavioral Biology | 38 | 9 |
| Chemistry: Biochemistry | 37 | 3 |
| Biology, Ecology & Conservation | 35 | 9 |
| Linguistics | 31 | 12 |
| Philosophy & Political Science | 23 | 9 |
| Japanese Language & Literature | 14 | 4 |
| Classical Civilization | 13 | 3 |
| Philosophy & Psychology | 12 | 2 |
| Math & Philosophy | 9 | 1 |
| Spanish & Linguistics | 9 | 1 |
| Ancient Greek & Latin | 8 | 3 |
| Astronomy | 8 | 2 |
| Comparative Literature | 8 | 1 |
| Environmental Earth Science | 8 | 0 |
| Spanish | 8 | 2 |
| Cinema & Media Studies | 7 | 1 |
| French Studies | 7 | 2 |
| Independent Concentration | 7 | 2 |
| Religion | 7 | 4 |
| Music | 6 | 1 |
| Asian Studies | 5 | 1 |
| Earth Sciences | 5 | 3 |
| European Studies | 5 | 1 |
| Anthropology & Religion | 4 | 3 |
| Chinese Language & Literature | 4 | 0 |
| French & Linguistics | 4 | 0 |
| Geophysics & Planetary Science | 4 | 3 |
| Italian Studies | 4 | 2 |
| Math & Math Education | 4 | 1 |
| Middle East/North Africa Studies | 4 | 2 |
| Philosophy & Neuroscience | 4 | 1 |
| Philosophy & Religion | 4 | 0 |
| Japanese & Linguistics | 3 | 1 |
| Latin | 3 | 1 |
| Linguistics and Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences | 3 | 1 |
| Russian Language & Literature | 3 | 0 |
| Linguistics & Philosophy | 3 | 0 |
| American Studies | 2 | 1 |
| Classics & Philosophy | 2 | 0 |
| Hispanic Language & Literature | 2 | 1 |
| East Asian Studies | 2 | 2 |
| Predental Science | 2 | 2 |
| Philosophy & Physics | 2 | 0 |
| Classics & Religion | 1 | 1 |
| Classical Studies | 1 | 0 |
| Geography Human | 1 | 0 |
| Geography Physical | 1 | 0 |
| Germanic Language & Literature | 1 | 0 |
| Latin American Studies | 1 | 0 |
| Biology w/ specialization in Quantitative Biology | 0 | 0 |
| Teaching Chemistry | 0 | 0 |
| Italian & Linguistics | 0 | 0 |
| Biology Neuroscience | 0 | 0 |
| Modern Greek Studies | 0 | 0 |
| Total Students | 6,675 | 1,569 |
New Academic Programs
The College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences introduced the following majors, minors, and graduate degree programs during AY 2016/17:
- PhD in Linguistics
- Minor in Persian Cultural Studies
- Minor in Holocaust & Genocide Studies
- Core Curriculum Interdisciplinary Minor
New Courses
In addition to these degree programs, CAS/GRS introduced 71 new courses. Broken down by division, we introduced:
- Humanities: 26 new courses
- Natural & Computational Sciences: 20 new courses
- Social Sciences: 25 new courses
CAS offers a vast range of courses available to students; a random sampling:
- Islamophobia and Anti-Semitism
- Cloud Computing
- Women on Trial
Post-Graduation Destination Profile CAS Class of 2016
BU surveys its undergraduate degree recipients each year to learn about paths taken following graduation, including employment, graduate school, military service, and volunteer or service activities. View the PDF.
Strengthening the Graduate Education
GRS-Registered MA/MFA/MS Students (by Department):
The following table lists Fall 2016 admissions statistics for MA/MFA/MS programs.
| Program | # Applications | % International | # Admitted | % Admitted | # Accepted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Biostatistics | 83 | 65% | 47 | 57% | 5 |
| Computer Science (All Programs) |
770 | 94% | 162 | 21% | 45 |
| Creative Writing (MFA) |
700 | 15% | 25 | 4% | 18 |
| Earth & Environment (All Programs) |
92 | 61% | 40 | 43% | 10 |
| Economics (All Programs) |
714 | 87% | 576 | 81% | 137 |
| English | 49 | 4% | 35 | 71% | 4 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 71 | 25% | 34 | 48% | 8 |
| Linguistics | 40 | 33% | 26 | 65% | 10 |
| Mathematics & Statistics (All Programs) |
547 | 90% | 146 | 27% | 43 |
| Pardee School (All Programs) | 368 | 44% | 286 | 78% | 47 |
| Playwriting (MFA) | 28 | 18% | 8 | 29% | 5 |
| Preservation Studies | 17 | 24% | 16 | 94% | 4 |
| Psychology | 205 | 31% | 106 | 52% | 28 |
| Total (All Programs) | 3,945 | 61% | 1,570 | 40% | 374 |
| Program | Total Enrollment Fall 2016 | AY 16-17 Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| Biology | 10 | 7 |
| Biostatistics | 10 | 3 |
| Computer Science (All Programs) | 79 | 32 |
| Creative Writing (MFA) | 30 | 21 |
| Earth & Environment (All Programs) | 21 | 13 |
| Economics (All Programs) | 172 | 99 |
| English | 5 | 5 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 15 | 7 |
| Linguistics | 21 | 4 |
| Mathematics & Statistics | 51 | 26 |
| Pardee School (All Programs) | 88 | 36 |
| Playwriting (MFA) | 10 | 4 |
| Preservation Studies | 9 | 4 |
| Psychology | 30 | 24 |
| Total (MA/MS/MFA) | 535 | 295 |
GRS-Registered PhD Students (by Department):
The following table lists Fall 2016 admissions statistics for PhD programs.
| Program | # Applications | % International | # Admitted | % Admitted | # Accepted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| American & New England Studies | 43 | 9% | 13 | 30% | 5 |
| Anthropology | 92 | 42% | 10 | 11% | 6 |
| Astronomy | 87 | 37% | 26 | 30% | 6 |
| Bioinformatics | 92 | 62% | 23 | 25% | 11 |
| Biology | 142 | 25% | 20 | 14% | 11 |
| Biostatistics | 156 | 67% | 19 | 12% | 5 |
| Chemistry | 272 | 40% | 74 | 27% | 33 |
| Classical Studies | 38 | 18% | 10 | 26% | 2 |
| Computer Science | 171 | 77% | 27 | 16% | 8 |
| Earth Sciences | 37 | 57% | 12 | 32% | 7 |
| Economics | 764 | 76% | 107 | 14% | 23 |
| English | 98 | 18% | 12 | 12% | 6 |
| French Language & Literature | 17 | 35% | 7 | 41% | 2 |
| Geography | 32 | 66% | 5 | 16% | 2 |
| Hispanic Language & Literatures | 28 | 57% | 10 | 36% | 5 |
| History | 74 | 16% | 7 | 9% | 5 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 65 | 31% | 15 | 23% | 7 |
| Mathematics | 259 | 56% | 30 | 12% | 15 |
| Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry | 96 | 42% | 10 | 10% | 5 |
| Musicology | 29 | 41% | 5 | 17% | 3 |
| Philosophy | 151 | 26% | 14 | 9% | 6 |
| Physics | 282 | 50% | 55 | 20% | 11 |
| Political Science | 88 | 58% | 14 | 16% | 5 |
| Psychology | 748 | 11% | 20 | 3% | 12 |
| Religious Studies | 61 | 24% | 9 | 15% | 7 |
| Sociology | 143 | 44% | 20 | 14% | 6 |
| Total (all programs) | 4,066 | 44% | 551 | 14% | 203 |
| Program | Total Enrollment Fall 2016 | AY 16-17 Graduates |
|---|---|---|
| American & New England Studies | 41 | 5 |
| Anthropology | 38 | 1 |
| Astronomy | 31 | 8 |
| Bioinformatics | 58 | 6 |
| Biology | 65 | 11 |
| Biostatistics | 41 | 6 |
| Chemistry | 111 | 17 |
| Classical Studies | 20 | 0 |
| Computer Science | 59 | 12 |
| Earth Sciences | 21 | 2 |
| Economics | 132 | 14 |
| English | 35 | 4 |
| French Language & Literature | 13 | 4 |
| Geography | 21 | 6 |
| Hispanic Language & Literatures | 25 | 2 |
| History | 37 | 3 |
| History of Art & Architecture | 46 | 6 |
| Mathematics | 52 | 5 |
| Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry | 32 | 4 |
| Musicology | 15 | 1 |
| Philosophy | 41 | 4 |
| Physics | 81 | 12 |
| Political Science | 41 | 6 |
| Psychology | 71 | 10 |
| Religious Studies | 53 | 6 |
| Sociology | 33 | 3 |
| Total (all programs) | 1,218 | 175 |
Enhancing a World-Class Faculty
Promoted, Tenured, and Retired Faculty, AY 2016/17
Promoted to Full Professor:
In 2016/17, 12 CAS faculty were promoted to the rank of professor: Kecia Ali, religion; Betty Anderson, history; Alisa Bokulich, philosophy; Uri Eden, mathematics & statistics; Sergio Fagherazzi, Earth & environment; Iván Fernández-Val, economics; Douglas Kriner, political science; Fallou Ngom, anthropology; Scott Schaus (CAS’95), chemistry; Stephen Scully, classic studies; Pamela Templer, biology; Richard West, computer science.
Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure:
In AY 2016/2017, 10 CAS assistant professors were promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure: Ross Barrett (GRS’09), history of art & architecture; Taylor Boas, political science; Catherine Connell, sociology; Stefania Garetto, economics; Alisdair McKay, economics; Manjari Chatterjee Miller, international relations (CAS & Pardee); Joseph Rezek, English; Johannes Schmieder, economics; Jared Weinstein, mathematics & statistics; Paul Withers, astronomy.
Promoted to Associate Professor, non-tenure track:
Additionally, one CAS assistant professor was promoted to the rank of associate professor, non-tenure track: Christopher Walsh (GRS’95,’00), English.
This past year nine CAS faculty members retired from active service as professors. These newly retired faculty include: Jelle Atema, biology; Michael Baum, biology; William Eldred, biology; Wolfgang Haase, classic studies; Diane Meuser, mathematics & statistics; Augustus Norton, international studies (Pardee); Robert Richardson, world languages & literatures; Eric Widmaier, biology; James Winn, English. After a vote of the faculty, four additional retiring faculty members were granted the title of emeritus or emerita, a mark of respect for colleagues who exemplify the highest values of the academic profession. They are as follows: Deborah Belle, psychological & brain sciences; David Mostofsky, psychological & brain sciences; Bruce Redford, history of art & architecture; and Ann Vasaly, classic studies.
New CAS Faculty, AY 2017/2018
Each year, the College of Arts & Sciences recruits leading scholars and researchers from around the world to grow the ranks of its faculty. The faculty members listed below arrived new on campus for the 2017/18 academic year, unless stated otherwise.
Biology
- Sarah Davies, Assistant Professor of Biology
Sarah Davies earned her MSc in biology from the University of Calgary in 2009 with Peter Vize and her PhD in ecology, evolution, and behavior from the University of Texas at Austin in 2014 with Mikhail Matz. During her MSc and PhD, she was supported by NSF and NSERC fellowships. In 2014, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Karl Castillo (UNC-CH), Adrian Marchetti (UNC-CH), and Justin Ries (Northeastern University), and in 2016 she was recognized as a Simons Foundation Fellow of the Life Sciences Research Foundation.
Professor Davies is an integrative biologist with expertise in ecological genomics, population genetics, physiology, and marine biology. Her research integrates field-based studies, controlled laboratory experiments, and genomics to better understand how organisms respond to environmental change. Her research specifically focuses on how the coral Symbiodinium symbiosis is maintained under climate change and the dynamics of range shifts under future ocean warming. Her new state-of-the-art aquarium research facility will facilitate her research and will be used in teaching her new BU Marine Semester laboratory-based course Marine Physiology and Climate Change. - Andrew Emili, Professor of Biology
Andrew Emili received his PhD in molecular and medical genetics from the University of Toronto. He then pursued postdoctoral studies as a Damon Runyon/Walter Winchell Cancer Research Fellow with the Nobel laureate Leland Hartwell at the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center in Seattle, while learning protein mass spectrometry with John Yates III at the University of Washington. Prior to joining BU, Professor Emili was a principal investigator (since 2000) and founding member of the Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research and a professor in molecular genetics at the University of Toronto.
Professor Emili is an internationally recognized leader in protein interaction networks and the development of innovative technologies to systematically characterize protein complexes on a proteome scale. He directs a multidisciplinary research laboratory with a track record in cutting-edge proteomics and systems biology. He has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers with more than 25,000 citations (h-index 68), including multiple papers in the leading journals Cell, Molecular Cell, Nature, PNAS, and PLoS Biology. His influence is widely recognized—he reviews regularly for prominent journals, serves on grant-review panels, and his group's data is often accessed via public databases. Professor Emili was also editor of Network Biology and Systems Analysis, books with more than 25,000 downloads, and he has given over 150 talks at research conferences, international symposia, and workshops. At BU, he will serve as the director of the Center for Network Systems Biology. - Mario Muscedere, Lecturer
- Randi Rotjan, Lecturer
Chemistry
- Qiang Cui, Professor of Chemistry
Qiang Cui (“QC”) will be joining the Boston University chemistry department on January 1, 2018, from the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is a biophysical computational chemist. After receiving his BS at the University of Science and Technology of China, he obtained his PhD at Emory University in 1997 and then was a postdoctoral fellow with Nobel laureate Martin Karplus at Harvard University. Following his appointment as assistant professor of chemistry at Wisconsin in 2001, he was tenured and promoted to associate in 2007 and then promoted to full professor in 2010. His expertise and interests are in developing theoretical/computational methods for complex biological systems, including enzyme reactions, energy transduction in biomolecular machines, and interactions between biomolecules, lipids, and inorganic materials. More currently, he is attempting to pursue problems on a larger scale and with higher levels of complexity, such as muscle fiber assemblies, biomembrane-protein complexes, and large-scale biomechanics problems.
Professor Cui has already authored more than 230 publications and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and an NSF CAREER Award. He is a member of several journal editorial boards and is a highly sought-after lecturer, delivering 54 research presentations since 2014 alone. His current work is supported by multiple grants from the NSF and NIH. Aside from further strengthening our department’s reputation in computational/theoretical chemistry, his expertise and interdisciplinary motivation will result in collaborative efforts with the College of Engineering biomedical engineering department and Division of Materials Science & Engineering, the Center for Sustainability, the neuroscience department, and the Biological Design Center on the Charles River Campus, as well as with the biophysics department on the Medical Campus. We are delighted to have him as a chemistry faculty member and anticipate his impact, not only on our department but also on the BU scientific community more generally. - Chen Yang, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Electrical & Computer Engineering
Chen Yang received her PhD in chemistry from Harvard University working in the laboratory of Charles Lieber before beginning her first academic appointment at Purdue University in 2007 as an assistant professor and then as associate professor in both chemistry and physics. Her appointment at BU is a CAS-ENG joint appointment with the chemistry and electrical & computer engineering departments. Her research interests are perfectly suited for such an interdisciplinary position as they are focused on the development of new nanomaterials with chemically controllable functionality for the fabrication of novel nanoelectronic devices as well as for investigating the nano-biological interfaces.
More specifically, Professor Yang’s materials-centered research has applications in plasmonic optical devices, solar energy utilization, nanomedicine, neuroscience, biological imaging, and nanoelectronics. In her independent research career, she has authored 34 publications and given over 30 invited lectures domestically and abroad. Professor Yang was awarded a Seeds of Success Award from Purdue University (awarded to faculty raising over $1M) and an NSF CAREER Award. Her prior work has been supported by NSF, DARPA, ARO, and the Keck Foundation. She will also be a member of the Materials Science & Engineering Division. - Blair Szymczyna, Lecturer
Classical Studies
- Hannah Čulík-Baird, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies
Hannah Čulík-Baird received a BA, Literae Humaniores, from Oxford University in 2011 and a PhD from the University of Southern California in 2017. Her dissertation was titled Cicero and the Early Latin Poets and examined poetic quotations in Cicero’s writings. Čulík-Baird has a strong generalist foundation in Latin literature and culture with a special interest in the Roman Republican literature and intellectual life and ancient practices of citation. She has given conference papers here and abroad on topics of Roman science, song, and history, and has an article, “Stoicism in the Stars: Cicero’s Aratea in the De Natura Deorum,” forthcoming in Latomus. A firm advocate of the scholar’s responsibility to communicate with the public, Čulík-Baird also writes online about cultural issues related to the classics. Part of a CAS cluster hire, Čulík-Baird will teach Women in Antiquity this fall. - Leah Kronenberg, Associate Professor of Classical Studies
Leah Kronenberg comes to us from Rutgers University, where she was assistant professor from 2004 to 2010, when she was named associate professor. She received her BA (summa cum laude) and PhD from Harvard University in 1997 and 2003, respectively. Her interests include Roman Republican and Augustan poetry and prose; ancient philosophy and intellectual history; and gender and sexuality in antiquity.
Professor Kronenberg is the author of Allegories of Farming from Greece and Rome: Philosophical Satire in Xenophon, Varro, and Virgil (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and close to 20 articles and book chapters. She is currently working on a book titled Lesbia’s Sparrow: Sexual Allegory and Poetics in Catullus. Her scholarship has been supported and rewarded by a Loeb Classical Library Foundation grant and an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. At Rutgers, she has supervised seven dissertations and was awarded the Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence.
Computer Science
- Renato Mancuso, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Renato Mancuso comes to BU after completing his doctoral thesis in the computer science department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is interested in high-performance cyber-physical systems, with a specific focus on techniques to enforce strong performance isolation and temporal predictability in multi-core systems. He has published around 20 papers in major conferences and journals. His papers were awarded a best student paper award and a best presentation award at the Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS) in 2013 and 2016, respectively.
Professor Mancuso was the recipient of a Computer Science Excellence Fellowship and was a finalist for the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship. Some of the design principles for real-time multi-core computing proposed in his research have been officially incorporated in recent certification guidelines for avionics systems. They have also been endorsed by government agencies, industries, and research institutions worldwide. He received a BS in computer engineering with honors (2009) and an MS in computer engineering with honors (2012) from the University of Rome “Tor Vergata.” - Emily Whiting, Assistant Professor of Computer Science
Emily Whiting comes to BU from the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College, where she was an assistant professor and co-founder of the Visual Computing Lab. Her research is in the area of computer graphics, with a focus on topics in architectural geometry, computer-aided design, and 3D fabrication. From 2011 to 2014, she was a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich in the Interactive Geometry Lab, where she was supported by a Marie Curie/ETHZ Fellowship.
Professor Whiting received her PhD (2012) from MIT, where she worked jointly in computer graphics and building technology studying structural optimization of 3D masonry buildings. She obtained her MSc (2006) in computational design from the architecture department at MIT and her BASc (2004) in engineering science from the University of Toronto. Her history also includes stints in research and development at Lucas Films’ Industrial Light & Magic, structural design with the Halcrow Yolles engineering firm, and cultural heritage projects on Italian architecture with Sabry El-Hakim at the National Research Council of Canada. Her innovative research has been supported by the National Science Foundation and featured in a TEDx talk and a PBS NOVA special. - Dora Erdos, Lecturer
- Christine Papadakis-Kanaris, Lecturer
Economics
- James Feigenbaum, Assistant Professor of Economics
James Feigenbaum received a BA in economics and mathematics from Wesleyan University in 2008 and an AM in economics in 2012 and PhD in economics in 2016 from Harvard University. He was a postdoctoral research associate and lecturer at Princeton University in 2016–17. Professor Feigenbaum is an economic historian who is developing machine-learning approaches to turn handwritten historical census records into usable data, opening up new data for analyzing important issues in economics. For example, he has used data on the Great Depression to address how economic crises affect intergenerational economic mobility. He is a faculty research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research. In 2016, he received the Economic History Association’s Alan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation of the year in US economic history. - Tarek Hassan, Associate Professor of Economics
Tarek Hassan earned his diploma at the University of Mannheim in 2004 and his AM and PhD degrees from Harvard University in 2007 and 2009, respectively. From 2009 to 2013, he was an assistant professor of finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. From 2013 to 2017, he was associate professor of finance and economics at Booth. Professor Hassan has written on a wide range of topics, including international finance and cultural factors involved in economic growth and in macrofinance. For example, he has studied the social and economic impact of the Holocaust in Russia through the present day and the macroeconomic impact of Egypt’s Arab Spring using data on street protests and their effect on stock prices. He is a research fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Center for Economic Policy Research. - Jihye Jeon, Assistant Professor of Economics
Jihye Jeon received her AB in economics from Yale in 2009 and her PhD in economics from New York University’s Stern School of Business in 2017. Her research interests are in empirical microeconomics, particularly industrial organization. For example, she has written on the container shipping industry, studying how firms learn about demand conditions in a changing world. She has also written on the effects of information-sharing among firms bidding for inputs in a sequence of auctions, showing the effects of such information-sharing on bidding behavior and output. - Chiara Margaria, Assistant Professor of Economics
Chiara Margaria received a BA in economics and business from Università di Torino in 2008, an MA in economics from Collegio Carlo Alberto and Università di Torino in 2011, an MA in economics from Yale University in 2013, an MPhil in economics from Yale in 2014, and her PhD in economics from Yale in 2017. She is an economic theorist with primary interests in game theory and mechanism design theory. She has written on the role of frequent interaction in encouraging honest communication, on the effects of information externalities on investment decisions by firms, and on the use of queues as a means of allocating scarce resources. - Pascual Restrepo, Assistant Professor of Economics
Pascual Restrepo received his undergraduate degree in economics and mathematics from Universidad de los Andes in 2010 and his PhD in economics from MIT in 2016. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University in 2016–17. A macroeconomist with wide-ranging interests, he has written on topics ranging from cocaine markets and violence in Colombia to the relationship between democracy, redistribution, and economic inequality. His recent work on the impact of robots and automation on wages and employment was featured in the New York Times.
English
- Louis Chude-Sokei, Professor of English
Louis Chude-Sokei is a writer and scholar who comes to us most recently from the University of Washington, Seattle. His work ranges widely in and around the literary, political, and cultural phenomena of the African Diaspora. His scholarly work includes the award-winning The Last “Darky”: Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (Duke University Press, 2006), The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black Technopoetics (Wesleyan University Press, 2016), and the forthcoming Dr. Satan’s Echo Chamber and Other Essays (Wesleyan University Press). Also imminent is a memoir with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt that traces his intellectual development across multiple nations and cultures. Professor Chude-Sokei is the editor-in-chief of The Black Scholar, one of the oldest journals of black studies, which was this year ranked by Princeton Journal reviews as the #1 journal of black studies in the United States. - Adriana Craciun, Emma MacLachlan Metcalf Chair of Humanities and Professor of English
Adriana Craciun specializes in 18th- and 19th-century British literature and culture and critical theory, with current research in Arctic humanities, exploration studies, science studies, geography, history of collecting, and history of the book and of authorship. Her most recent book, Writing Arctic Disaster: Authorship and Exploration (Cambridge University Press, 2016), was shortlisted for the 2016 Kendrick Book Prize by the Society for Literature, Science & the Arts. She is also the author of Fatal Women of Romanticism (Cambridge UP, 2003) and British Women Writers and the French Revolution: Citizens of the World (Palgrave, 2005). She is the editor of several essay collections and editions, most recently the volume The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences, co-edited with Simon Schaffer (2016), and the special issue of Eighteenth-Century Studies on The Disorder of Things (2011). She has published numerous essays in journals such as PMLA, New Literary History, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Nineteenth-Century Literature, European Romantic Review, Atlantic Studies, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies. Before coming to BU, Craciun taught at the University of California-Riverside, the University of London, and the University of Nottingham, and she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), the Fulbright Program, and the National Maritime Museum (UK). - Takeo Rivera, Assistant Professor of English
Takeo Rivera joins BU from the University of California, Berkeley, where he has just completed his PhD in performance studies with a designated emphasis in women, gender, and sexuality studies in 2017. With broader expertise in performance, race, sexuality, and media, Rivera’s research interrogates the cultural politics of racial masochism and techno-orientalism within Asian American theater, literature, and new media forms such as video games. Rivera’s work has been published in a range of different journals and anthologies, including Performance Research, Amerasia Journal, The Routledge Companion to Asian American Media, and The Handbook of Cultural Politics and Education. Prior to completing his PhD, Rivera earned an MA in modern thought and literature and a BA in comparative studies in race and ethnicity from Stanford University, and worked for two years as a community educator and victim advocate at the YWCA of Silicon Valley Rape Crisis Center. Rivera is also an award-winning playwright whose works have been staged in New York City, Los Angeles, and throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. - Crystal Williams, Professor of English
Crystal Williams comes to BU from Bates College, where she was professor of English and served on the college’s senior leadership team as associate vice president for strategic initiatives (2013–2017). She earned a BA from New York University and an MFA in poetry from Cornell.
Professor Williams is the author of four collections of poems; the most recent, Detroit as Barn, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Maine Book Award, and the Cleveland State University Poetry Prize. Her creative work most frequently explores issues of identity (race, class, gender), social justice, and human connection and interdependence. Her poems have been broadly acknowledged and are included in leading journals and anthologies, including Angles of Ascent: The Norton Anthology of African-American Poetry, among many others. She is currently working on a fifth book of poems as well as a multi-genre book/performance project about growing up in Detroit, MI, the adopted daughter of an interracial couple. An arts advocate, Professor Williams is regularly engaged with organizations keen to address and improve cultural equity, diversity, and inclusion in the arts. She serves on the boards of the Maine Humanities Council and the Barbara Deming Money for Women Fund, an organization that supports feminist artists and writers.
Linguistics
- Elizabeth Coppock, Assistant Professor of Linguistics
Elizabeth Coppock received her PhD in linguistics from Stanford University in 2009. She then held a series of research positions in the United States, Sweden, and Germany. In 2014, she was awarded a prestigious fellowship at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She has also been an assistant professor at the University of Gothenburg since September 2016. Professor Coppock has made important contributions to the study of definiteness and determinacy, superlatives, scalar modifiers, and discourse pragmatics. She is now embarking on a new research endeavor, investigating comparative and superlative modifiers cross-linguistically. This has been supported by a grant from the Swedish Research Council, which will continue to provide funding for the ongoing research. Professor Coppock has published in major linguistics journals and has written (or co-written) five significant articles in semantics and three in other areas of linguistics. She is also an associate editor for Semantics and Pragmatics.
Mathematics & Statistics
- Salim Ali Altug, Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics
Salim Ali Altug received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to pursue graduate studies at Princeton University, where he earned a PhD in mathematics in 2013, working quite independently of his thesis advisors Robert Langlands and Peter Sarnak. Subsequently, he was the Ritt Assistant Professor of Mathematics at Columbia University, and this past year a visiting assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Professor Altug’s research program in mathematics lies at the heart of analytic number theory and automorphic representation theory. He has developed penetrating new analytical methods to understand the complex-analytic properties (modulus, zeros, poles) of L-functions, the spectra of automorphic forms, functorality, metaplectic forms, the metaplectic Ramanujan conjectures, and the Arthur-Selberg trace formula. In turn, he has employed these new methods to make deep conceptual advances in the core area of modern number theory known as the Langlands Program Beyond Endoscopy, which consists of a set of conjectures around automorphic forms, Galois groups, and functorality. His research articles have appeared in several of the top journals in pure mathematics, including Compositio Mathematica, the American Journal of Mathematics, and International Mathematics Research Notes. In addition, he is much sought after as a lecturer in number theory. - Hyonho Chun, Associate Professor of Mathematics & Statistics (starts 1/1/18)
Hyonho Chun earned her bachelor’s degree in earth sciences and master’s in statistics, both from Seoul National University. In 2008, she earned her PhD in statistics at the University of Wisconsin. After serving for one year as a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, she became an assistant professor of statistics at Purdue University, where she was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2016.
Professor Chun’s research program spans the gamut from foundational research developing new statistical methods to applications leading to scientific advances in biology, genetics, and medicine. She is the co-developer of the Sparse Partial Least Squares (SPLS) Method that cleverly uses sparseness to achieve dimension reduction and variable selection during regression. Based on her fundamental insights, the SPLS method naturally overcomes difficulties associated with high-dimensional data, small sample size, and correlations among the co-variants. It has been cited over 325 times and applied to high-throughput technologies, including expression quantitative loci (eQTL) analyses and GWAS.
Professor Chun is also responsible for major advances in the statistical analysis of biological network data as the developer of Conditional Gaussian Graphical Models, which provide a framework for data integration in gene-gene and gene-genome regulation; for introducing the novel statistical concept of Additive Conditional Independence, which has led to major advances for non-Gaussian Graphical Models; and for introducing a new method of quartile regression for component selection in genetics problems. Also, she has taught statistics at all levels, winning an Outstanding Teaching Award at Purdue in 2014. - Michael Salins, Assistant Professor of Mathematics & Statistics
Michael (Mickey) Salins earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Maryland. Since completing his PhD in 2015, he has been a postdoctoral research faculty fellow in mathematics at BU.
Professor Salins is a leading young expert in the fields of probability and stochastic processes, working on fundamental problems in the dynamics of stochastic differential equations. He has developed significant new mathematical theory for large deviations, exit times, exit behaviors, importance sampling, noise-induced metastability, dynamical metastability, and problems with small sample sizes, all in the context of infinite-dimensional systems. He is widely acknowledged as having developed the most comprehensive approach to infinite-dimensional Freidlin-Wentzel theory for large deviations, to the Smoluchowski-Kramers approximation for systems with infinitely many degrees of freedom, and to averaging for infinite-dimensional multi-scale systems.
Another theme central to Professor Salins’ research is the analysis of numerical methods—such as accelerated Monte Carlo for importance sampling—that are both provably efficient and provably accurate asymptotically, which is important for data science. Several of his 10 research articles have appeared in the top journals in his field. He is also an excellent expositor, mentor, and teacher.
Philosophy
- Victor Kumar, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Victor Kumar (PhD, University of Arizona, 2013) comes to BU after postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Michigan and the University of Toronto. His primary philosophical interests lie at the intersection of ethics and cognitive science. He also has interests in epistemology, philosophy of mind, evolutionary theory, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of race. Professor Kumar’s published work can be found in Ethics, Philosophers’ Imprint, Cognition, Philosophical Studies, and The Philosophical Quarterly. He is a recipient of the William James Prize (2011) and the Jean Hampton Prize (2015) for best essay in political philosophy by a younger scholar from the Pacific Division of the American Philosophical Association. His recent projects include essays on moral disgust, empathy, moral luck, and moral learning, among other topics. He is currently drafting a book-length manuscript with Richmond Campbell on the evolutionary foundations of morality. He is director of the Moral Reason Lab and member of the interdisciplinary Moral Psychology Research Group.
Physics
- Wanzheng Hu, Assistant Professor of Physics
Wanzheng Hu studies the non-equilibrium behavior of quantum materials using novel ultrafast laser spectroscopy. She earned her undergraduate degree from the Beijing University of Technology in 2005 and her PhD in condensed matter physics from the Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2010. Upon graduating, she won the Chinese Academy’s highest prize—the Special Prize of the President Scholarship for Postdoctoral Students. Since 2010, she has been first a postdoctoral researcher, then a scientist, at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg. There she has helped pioneer the use of ultrafast laser studies to better understand materials with highly correlated electrons.
Professor Hu has published approximately 33 papers with over 1,800 citations. These include a first-authored paper in Nature Materials and three first-authored papers in Physical Review Letters. She has given numerous invited talks about her work around the world. At BU, she will contribute to our research, mentoring, and teaching in condensed matter physics. We also anticipate that she will have strong overlaps with the Photonics Center and the interdisciplinary graduate program in materials science & engineering. - Maria (Masha) Kamenetska, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Physics
Masha Kamenetska, recruited via an interdisciplinary faculty search initiated by the Materials Science & Engineering Division, will be an assistant professor with a joint appointment with the departments of physics and chemistry in the area of experimental materials science with a focus on single-molecule measurements and biophysics. She graduated with a BS in physics from MIT and received her PhD with distinction in applied physics in 2012 from Columbia University. There she applied single-molecule techniques to learn about structure conductance relationships at metal-molecule junctions, which are essential for developing molecular-level electronics.
Professor Kamenetska was awarded the Robert Simon Memorial Prize for the Most Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation in the Department of Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics in 2012, and was a recipient of an NSF postdoctoral fellowship in biology. She continued her work on single-molecule techniques while a postdoctoral associate at Yale University, successfully building an optical tweezers and fluorescence instrument for mechanical force and optical measurements of biological systems. She has co-authored 18 publications and made eight invited research presentations. At BU, she intends to continue to develop instrumentation that combines novel multiple-optical trapping techniques with optical measurements to study the molecular-level details of important biological structure function relationships.
Political Science
- Steven Rosenzweig, Assistant Professor of Political Science
Steven Rosenzweig earned his BA at Yale University in 2007 and was awarded his PhD at Yale in 2017 after defending his dissertation “The Logic of Violence in Electoral Competition.” A student of comparative politics with a specialization in political economy and African affairs, he has already published important articles in leading scholarly journals. Additionally, he has produced a significant body of writing in non-academic outlets for the benefit of Washington think tanks and news media and has delivered papers to various learned conferences. He has conducted vital field research in Tanzania as well as serving as an analyst and consultant for a diversity of worthy policy initiatives (related to healthcare, youth employment, and transparency/accountability in African contexts) centered in London, Washington, and Dar es Salaam.
Not only is Professor Rosenzweig an accomplished young scholar, he is also well practiced in the classroom, having served in different teaching capacities at Yale in courses dealing with post-conflict situations, development politics, and African questions related to domestic matters and international relations. At BU, Rosenzweig’s roster of courses will also include—at both the undergraduate and PhD levels—ones on quantitative methods, research design, and democratic governance.
Preservation Studies
- Jan Haenraets, Professor of the Practice of Preservation Studies (started 1/1/17)
Jan Haenraets is a landscape architect and specialist in historic preservation with professional experience and projects in Europe, America, North Africa, and Asia. He is a practicing designer. His work ranges from creative design and environmental art to heritage management, cultural landscape advice, and planning. His research and writing focuses on international approaches toward historic landscape preservation, ecological sustainability, and preservation of 20th-century designed landscapes. He will teach lecture courses and seminars at the undergraduate and graduate levels on preservation, landscape history, and public history.
He has a wide interest in landscape heritage and was the head of gardens and designed landscapes of the National Trust for Scotland. He holds a PhD in landscape conservation from De Montfort University, UK, and an MA in conservation studies (historic landscapes & gardens) from the University of York, UK.
He is an expert in Mughal garden history and preservation, with a special focus on Kashmir, India. He has been a fellow in garden and landscape studies at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University, and Washington, DC, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, with research on Kashmiri garden heritage, a subject he is currently developing into a book.
Psychological & Brain Sciences
- Steve Ramirez, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences
Steve Ramirez studies the basic mechanisms governing memory formation in the mammalian brain. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2015. Since then he has been a Harvard University junior faculty fellow. He has co-authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, including first-author papers published in Science and Nature, the two premier international scientific journals. Using optogenetics and other cutting-edge systems neuroscience techniques, he and his collaborators have developed the ability to create and manipulate memories.
Professor Ramirez’s techniques, which focus on mechanisms within the hippocampus, give him bi-directional control over both positive and negative memories. His research is also focused on cellular and circuit-level approaches for alleviating psychiatric disease-like states. He has demonstrated that the establishment of positive memory engrams via optogenetics can diminish depression-related behavior in animals. His work on extinction of fearful memories also has important implications for post-traumatic stress disorder. Professor Ramirez has been named a "Breakthrough Explorer" by National Geographic, a "Top 10 Bright Young Mind" by Science News, and one of "30 innovators under the age of 30" by Forbes Magazine. In 2015, his research was runner-up for Science Magazine’s "Breakthrough of the Year." His research is funded by an NIH Early Independence Award and other sources.- Ben Wormwood, Lecturer
Sociology
- Deborah Carr, Professor of Sociology
Deborah Carr earned her PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin in 1997. Her research interests include aging and the life course, psychosocial factors and influences on health over the life course, and end-of-life issues. She comes to us from Rutgers University where she was professor of sociology and interim director of the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy and Aging Research. Carr is a fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and is also a member of the Sociological Research Association and Academy of Behavioral Medicine, both honorary organizations. She is currently editor-in-chief of Journal of Gerontology: Social Sciences. She has led several important national survey projects and has recently been appointed as the principal investigator of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979. She also writes a monthly blog, “Bouncing Back,” for Psychology Today. - Daniel Kleinman, Professor of Sociology; Associate Provost for Graduate Affairs (started 1/1/17)
Daniel Kleinman received his PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1992. After moving up the ranks at the Georgia Institute of Technology, he joined the faculty at the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2000, where he soon moved into positions of leadership, including that of senior associate dean of the graduate school. Kleinman’s scholarship explores the politics of science, with research on the social organization of the knowledge economy and the sociology of democracy and expertise. A leading figure in the interdisciplinary field of science, technology, and society studies, his many publications include the books Impure Cultures: University Biology and the World of Commerce (2003) and Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics and Honey Bee Health (2017). He is the co-winner (with Moore, Hess, and Frickel) of an award from the Science, Knowledge and Technology Section of the American Sociological Association for the journal article “Science and Neoliberal Globalization: A Political Sociological Approach” (2011).
World Languages & Literatures
- Petrus Liu, Associate Professor of World Languages & Literatures
Petrus Liu holds a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. He taught previously at Cornell University and comes to BU from Yale NUS College in Singapore, where he was a founding director and head of studies in literature. He is the author of Stateless Subjects: Chinese Martial Arts Literature and Postcolonial History (Cornell, 2011) and Queer Marxism in Two Chinas (Duke, 2015), a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and the recipient of Honorable Mention for the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize from the MLA. He is also the co-editor (with Lisa Rofel) of Beyond the Strai(gh)ts: Transnationalism and Queer Chinese Politics, a special issue of the journal positions that won the MLA’s 2011 Council of Learned Journals and Editors Prize for Best Journal Special Issue. Professor Liu is now completing a third book, titled Cold War Aesthetics in Asia, in which he explores the culture and economics of video games and other new media forms in Asia. He is also a prolific translator of literary and theoretical texts whose work has put scholars, filmmakers, and queer activists in the Chinese-speaking world into critical dialogue with their counterparts elsewhere around the globe.
Writing Program
- Sean Desilets, Senior Lecturer
- Marie Satya McDonough, Lecturer
- Malavika Shetty, Lecturer
Campaign for CAS
Status Report
Thanks to the generosity of our many alumni and friends, the Campaign for CAS is making tremendous progress. As of the end of June, we were well ahead of our target for the year.
| FY17 Goal Vs. FY17 Total YTD | |
|---|---|
| FY17 Goal | $12,000,000 |
| FY17 Total YTD | $11,168,219 |
| FY17 Pledge Goal | $3,000,000 |
| FY17 Pledge YTD | $7,103,521 |
| CAS Campaign Status | |
| Campaign Goal | $100,000,000 |
| Campaign total as of June 30, 2017 | $121,428,195 |
| Percentage toward campaign goal | 121% |
| Campaign Goals for FY2017 | |
| Secure $13,000,000 in cash and pledges. | |
| Cash Goal | $15,750,000 |
| Pledge Goal | $3,000,000 |
| Annual Fund Goal | $1,000,000 |
Stewarding Our Resources
CAS/GRS Budget
The college achieved a balanced, unrestricted expense budget of $122,851,560 at the close of the 2016/2017 fiscal year, compared with $115,673,260 the previous year.
This budget covered faculty salaries ($82,743,766), staff salaries ($15,310,618), student salaries ($13,458,252 for fellowships, internships, etc.), and operating expenses ($11,338,924).
Annual Report 2016/2017
From the Dean
The 2016/17 academic year was an exciting one for the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. We made tremendous progress on important fronts, including working to increase faculty and student diversity, providing enhanced experiential educational opportunities, expanding our research impact, and enhancing our academic programs.
Improving Undergraduate Education
Providing a world-class undergraduate education is no easy task, but at CAS it is part of our core mission. In 2016/17 we made curricular improvements, launched new career preparation programs, increased access to our world-class education, and gave our students a space to call their own, the CAS Think Tank.
Strengthening Graduate Education
The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences’ evolution continued in and out of the classroom, with a 10% increase in master’s applications in 2016/17 and continued high PhD acceptance rates affirming the strength of our programs.
Enhancing a World-Class Faculty
The quality of CAS’ academics and research depends on the quality of its faculty, and so we work hard to hire the best and brightest. In 2016/17, CAS hired 30 new professors across the humanities and the social, natural, and computational sciences.
Conducting Pathbreaking Research
Discoveries and innovations at CAS helped put BU at 32nd on the list of U.S. News & World Report’s top research universities in the world. Our faculty earned numerous prestigious awards and grants, helping to advance human understanding in the fields of biogeoscience, religion, computer science, and biology, just to name a few.
Building Our Future Together
In 2016/17, the seventh year of the Campaign for Boston University, numerous alumni, friends, and parents have helped to raise $121.6 million for CAS—far exceeding our aggressive goal of $100 million.
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