Tributes and Reflections: 2023 Retiring Faculty

Professor Blanchard earned his PhD at Yale University in 1978 under the direction of Professors Robert Szczarba and David Fried.  After a year at the University of Southern California, he came to Boston University as an assistant professor in 1980, where he was promoted to associate professor in 1985 and to full professor in 2010.

Paul has been a leader in in the Department of Mathematics & Statistics by all of the standard measures. His research in the core field of Dynamical Systems has been recognized through his publications in top research journals (notably two papers in the premier international mathematics journal of Inventiones Mathematicae) and his well-deserved induction into the Inaugural Class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society in 2012. 

Over the years, Paul has been invited to year-long visits at leading research institutes around the world, including the Institute for Mathematics and its Application at the University of Minnesota (1982-83), the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton (1983), and the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley (1984).  He has given more than 125 invited lectures and colloquia in prestigious venues including Oberwolfach, Harvard, the Max Planck Institut in Bonn, IBM Watson Labs, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, and the Park City Mathematics Institute, among others, and was invited to give the Plenary Lecture at the 1993 regional AMS meeting in Knoxville to present his ground-breaking work in complex analytic dynamics with Bob Devaney and Linda Keen.

Beyond his research contributions, Paul has also made important contributions to mathematics education.  He authored the third edition of Calculus with Dennis Berkey and, together with Bob Devaney and Dick Hall, he co-authored four editions of their innovative and widely-used textbook on Differential Equations, a text that was also translated into Spanish.  In 2001, he won the Northeast Section of the Mathematical Association of America’s Award for distinguished teaching of mathematics.  In 2011, the conference “Differential Equations Across the Collegiate Curriculum” was held in honor of Paul’s 60 birthday.

Professor Blanchard’s extraordinary contributions to the teaching mission of Boston University include his ODE projects, for which he was awarded the 2015 Gitner Award for Innovation in Teaching with Technology,  and his leadership of our department’s highly-successful revision of the teaching of calculus starting in 2010 through his NSF grant Redesigning the Undergraduate Learning Experience (RULE) in Calculus.  These projects will continue to play a key role in the mathematics education of our undergraduates well beyond Paul’s retirement.

—Professor Glenn Stevens, chair, Mathematics & Statistics

Here are four of my favorite remembrances from my 43 years in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at Boston University:

1. Dennis Sullivan, the winner of the 2022 Abel Prize and the holder of the Einstein Chair at CUNY, accepted my invitation to present two lectures at BU in the spring of 1982. He outlined his amazing technique of quasi-conformal surgery. His visit had a profound effect on the research interests of two faculty members and ultimately at least 20 PhD students.

The other three give a sense of some of the fun we have had over the years. As Dave Barry would say “I’m not making this up.” 

2. I’m happy to say that I had nothing to do with a group of graduate students who converted Bob Devaney’s office into a “toilet” one night. When you opened his office door, you found yourself in a “room” that would remind you of a small closet (a rectangular parallelepiped) with a working light switch, the appropriate porcelain, but no plumbing.

3. After a difficult time in my life, I missed an office hour because “Click and Clack” of WBUR and NPR fame showed up for a surprise birthday lunch with me and most of the rest of the department as well.  I have a video to prove that this really happened. One topic of conversation involved the Monty Hall puzzler.

4. During one Friday in April when prospective students were visiting campus, an exceptionally precocious 8-year old attended my Calculus 2 class. He sat in the back row of the small classroom and seemed to be reading a book about trains. The topic that day involved the radius of convergence of a power series. Most of class consisted of a bunch of examples, and every time I asked the class how they would determine the convergence of the series, he would raise his hand. Since he was a guest, I always called on him first and every time he said, “Ratio Test.”  I’m under the impression that he ultimately attended BU and graduated with honors.

John Clarke joined Boston University in 2001 as a professor of astronomy.  He was previously a research scientist at the University of Michigan, a project scientist with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Project at NASA’s Goddard and Marshall Space Flight Centers, and a research physicist at the UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. He received his PhD and MA in Physics from the Johns Hopkins University and is best known for his work on the physics of the aurora at Jupiter and Saturn, including the emission “footprints” caused by the interactions of moons with planetary magnetic fields. He made fundamental contributions to understanding the airglow emissions from giant planets, astrophysical processes in the interstellar medium and, most recently, exospheric escape on Mars. All are based on his creative use of space-based, state-of-the-art observing techniques in ultraviolet imaging and spectroscopy, coupled to his use and impact upon models of planetary atmospheres. In recognition of his cross-disciplinary contributions to planetary atmospheric science he was named a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 2016. At Boston University, Professor Clarke helped the next generation of graduate students and post-docs to become major contributors to HST’s science yield within the solar system. He served as director of the Center for Space Physics for 10 years, guiding this vibrant and productive research and space hardware endeavor. For the NASA MAVEN mission orbiting Mars, John Clarke is a major contributor as Co-I of its imaging ultraviolet spectrograph for the echelle spectral channel (derived from the custom design of a BU sounding rocket). The echelle channel has returned a remarkable data set revealing the processes responsible for the escape of water into space. Using both HST and MAVEN, he demonstrated true scientific leadership in the use of technological assets in space to learn about our solar system. He has a total of 23 papers in the highest-impact journals Science and Nature as either first-author or co-author, and over 250 additional publications in other high-impact journals. His teaching often features his research areas, bringing the latest in solar system science to introductory, non-majors, as well as foundational tools and materials to astronomy majors and graduate students. Involved in, or leading, international teams in space science, he encouraged international colleagues to seek HST access, and in many cases personally mentored younger scientists in those pursuits. In moving into retirement from teaching, Professor Clarke plans to engage even more fully with his active research projects and studies for many years. We wish him all the best.

—Professor Dan Clemens, chair, Astronomy

Universities are great places to work, and BU is a great university.  I have worked at other universities where teaching is not a priority, and it has been a pleasure to teach at BU where the time and effort that go into good teaching are valued and rewarded.  It is also great to live in Boston, with peer institutions and colleagues close by.  Over the 22 years I have spent a great deal of time teaching Astronomy / Physics majors, who are just like I was when I was in college.  Many spring breaks were spent in a 15-person van visiting NASA centers in Maryland and Virginia, and seeing those places through the majors’ eyes has brought back the allure of what we do in space physics.  The lucky students who got to see the James Webb Space Telescope in a clean room at NASA Goddard surely remember that trip.   

When I was born no human-made object had been into space.  Today spacecraft have visited every planet and several comets and asteroids, and a couple of them have left the solar system.  In the space of 4-5 decades we have explored the solar system for the first time, and I was lucky enough to be working during that period of exploration and discovery.  In graduate school we compared data from an early Earth-orbiting UV telescope with the Voyager spacecraft flying past Jupiter and Saturn.  This method continued with observations from the Hubble Space Telescope compared with data from the Galileo, Cassini, and Juno missions.  Space physics is a data-driven enterprise, in the sense that we cannot model or predict how the atmospheres of other planets work.  Every time we get better data we find things that no one expected, which is fascinating, humbling, and a reminder of how complex nature is.  Most recently we have learned about the complexity of the thin atmosphere of Mars, which is far more dynamic and variable than anticipated.   

On first visiting BU to give a seminar talk I was impressed by the collaborative and supportive atmosphere among the researchers.  The positive atmosphere where people supported each other and were happy to see their colleagues succeed compared quite favorably with institutions where the atmosphere is highly competitive.  

Dan Dill started his career right here at BU, earning his AB degree summa cum laude in Biology. He earned his SM at the University of Chicago, Department of Chemistry, where he stayed on for his doctoral degree. His PhD work in Chemical Physics was in the laboratory of Professor Ugo Fano, leading to his thesis titled, “Photoelectron Angular Distribution and Angular Correlation Theory.” He performed post-doctoral research at the Department of Physics, University of Chicago, and at Argonne National Laboratories. In 1979, Dan returned to BU as an assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry. Building on the work of Fano and Cooper on what is now referred to as the Fano resonance, Dan carried out fundamental work on the “shape resonance” that appears in photoionization spectra. In addition to the 78 research papers detailing his work, Dan has also published work in the area of chemical education and has contributed 14 articles and presented 40 talks on the teaching of quantum concepts to students and related topics. Dan is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1984.

Dan served as chair of the Department of Chemistry from 1984 to 1989. The hallmarks of his time as chair include the strong relationship he forged with leadership in information systems and technology, to secure leading-edge computing resources for the Chemistry department. Convinced that the future of Chemical research required continued investment in large-scale computing, he worked to put terminals and workstations into Chemistry research labs. He also worked to provide leading computational resources to Chemistry Department administration, including contracting the development of the groundbreaking GMS budgeting tool for grant monitoring and financial planning. As chair, he was also a tireless fighter for Chemistry department hiring and growth. He made four hires as Chair—two of those faculty are still in the department today and have themselves done a great deal to lead the Chemistry Department forward over the past 30 years. In his role as chair, Dan also led the improvement of infrastructure, including the purchase of the department’s first high-field NMR and first High-Resolution Mass Spectrometer.

In addition to his theoretical and physical chemistry expertise, Professor Dill is an accomplished photographer, who received a Kodak Award in 2006. When the departments offices were renovated in 2011, we needed a graphically compelling Periodic Table to display, and naturally the department turned to Dan. He created a striking representation of the table using the latest version of Adobe Illustrator. The final product, printed on six resin panels, has been enjoyed by the Chemistry community as an inspiring backdrop since its installation.

Dan plans to continue his educational mission as emeritus, working on introducing a new mechanistic model of how light and matter exchange energy to provide students a framework and fluency in light-matter interaction. We are excited to follow his continued success.

—Professor Karen N. Allen, chair, Department of Chemistry

This 2022/2023 academic year is my 50th on the faculty of Boston University. The university has evolved enormously in that time. The chemistry department was in Stone Science Building (built in 1946, the year I was born, and now in the shadow of the newly built Center for Computing & Data Science). The first departmental internet cable was strung through the fourth-floor ceiling by my undergraduate student Dinesh Loomba (now professor of physics and astronomy, University of New Mexico). This early involvement accounts for the brevity of my email address, dan@bu.edu. 

The department’s relocation to the Metcalf Science and Engineering Center in the 1980s and my time as chair from 1985 to 1989 marked the beginning of dramatic growth that continues today. 

 My abiding academic interest has been making quantum aspects of the world accessible to general chemistry students. 

There are two related challenges to teaching quantum ideas effectively to college freshman. First, and most fundamental, quantum concepts are foreign to everyday experience and so strange and inaccessible. As a result, new students have no intuition with which to build a bridge into the quantum world. Second, high-school introductions to quantum concepts therefore typically present inappropriate, incorrect mental models, and overcoming these is a difficult pedagogical challenge. 

In collaboration with colleagues in CAS CH101/2 General Chemistry, I have worked over the years to address these two challenges. A cornerstone is a Rabi-type mechanistic model of how light and matter exchange energy. This mechanistic model gives students a qualitative fluency in light-matter interaction without recourse to the incorrect concept of instantaneous (quantum “jump”) effects and to the incorrect concept of light as a stream of localized packets (“photons”) of energy. 

Making this approach accessible to teachers familiar only with the standard introductions to quantum aspects of general chemistry is a formidable undertaking. This is what I plan to devote myself to as emeritus.  

Professor Ricardo Elia has been a part of the BU community for more than 40 years. During that time, he has been a valued teacher and mentor to generations of students, teaching sought-after courses in the ethics of archaeology and its legal framework, in the US and abroad. These courses have inspired generations of BU students to careers in cultural heritage management and law. Through his research, teaching, and advocacy, Rick has pushed his students and colleagues to consider the dark side of the antiquities trade: how looters, the art market, and museums have been complicit in destroying cultural heritage around the world. While serving as the head of BU’s Office of Public Archaeology, Rick took part in some of the most important archaeological salvage projects in the greater Boston area, including numerous components of the “Big Dig” excavation of the subterranean path for I-93 through downtown Boston, training a generation of BU archaeologists in historical archaeology consulting practice. We congratulate Rick on his well-deserved retirement, and will miss his many contributions to BU Archaeology!”

—Professor John M. Marson, director, Archaeology Program

In my 40 years of teaching archaeology at BU I have had the privilege of working with many dedicated colleagues, students, and administrators who taught me many things and supported my passion for archaeology and teaching. I have been very fortunate to live through an exciting period that has seen the expansion of the field of archaeology to include a focus on site preservation, heritage management, ethics, and a concern for indigenous and other stakeholder rights and interests. During my time at BU, I introduced several new courses in cultural heritage, but my favorite course has been “Archaeological Ethics & Law,” which I taught annually for almost 40 years and introduced scores of students to this important topic. I served as principal investigator on more than 130 archaeological surveys and excavations in New England. Some of my personal highlights include unearthing 17th-century house sites as part of the “Big Dig” (Central Artery project) in the middle of downtown Boston; excavating Fort Griswold, a Revolutionary War battle site in Groton, CT; and excavating and analyzing of a 19th-century almshouse burial ground in Uxbridge, MA, which brought to life the stories of indigent residents of a town poor farm whose graves had been lost and forgotten. I was also thrilled to be able to co-direct with Amalia Perez-Juez archaeological and heritage field schools in Menorca, Spain through BU Study Abroad. BU Archaeology has been my professional home for more than four decades; I am very grateful to all the Archaeology teachers, staff, and students who helped make my journey a happy one! Thank you all for everything!

Louis Ferleger joined Boston University in 1999.  He has served as chair of the History Department and executive director of The Historical Society, which was based at BU.  He was an important contributor to BU’s American Studies Program.  He has written widely on topics in economic history, southern history, the history of voting, and history of American agriculture. His most recent book was published in 2020.  He is the joint author of seven books, has edited six books, and has been author or co-author of more than 40 essays and articles.

History colleagues know Lou Ferleger as caring, supportive, and personally modest.  As Chair, he was a fierce defender of his faculty.  He preferred short meetings, which made everyone happy except the person who happened to be speaking.  As a colleague and chair, he always wanted the best for others–whether it was the department as a whole, his colleagues, or his students.  He always figured out a way to do this quietly and effectively, without drawing attention to himself.

—Professor James Johnson, Chair, History

I owe debts to many friends, colleagues, and students at BU, who have contributed to my writing, research, and teaching. They have, whether they realize it or not, provided numerous insights, suggestions, and thoughtful remarks.  Simply put, these contributions were invaluable and critical to my work.  I remain grateful that I had the opportunity to learn and interact with so many members of the BU community.

For more than 25 years at BU, teaching in the Core Curriculum, the English Department, and the Arts & Sciences Writing Program, of which he was a member of the founding faculty, David Green has served as a model for introducing students to the spirit of intellectual and creative inquiry that is at the heart of a liberal arts education. “Approaches to Death,” his mainstay WR course, was “not a fun topic,” as one student evaluation noted.  But to quote another: “Dr. Green made us think very hard about this subject!”  He did so by helping students reckon with challenging material, think seriously about what they wanted to say about it, and strive to say it as well as they could.

Dr. Green is legendary for his careful responses to student writing. The Journal of the Core Curriculum once featured a photo of the drawer where he stashed pens he’d run dry commenting on student writing—rows of pens stacked upon rows, all emptied of their red ink. This was not blood drawn from students, though; it was blood given, and they knew it. “I really appreciated the care he put into criticizing our papers.” It’s hard to think of any greater goal for a liberal arts education than to have students become grateful for criticism, but David achieved it repeatedly.

Yet talk of criticism (and blood and death) may give the wrong impression. Dr. Green’s classes are lively, engaging, fun. “Dr. Green is the man!!! Great discussions, pretty fair grader, so funny and often stylish as well!!” His stylishness is legendary, too, and not just because he’s a famously natty dresser, but because in his teaching and in his bearing, in his very person he conveys the idea that substance and style are one—in his fiction, too, most recently in the novel Porto Lúa, published just this year. Dr. Green’s 2010 story “The Reader” is narrated from the quintessential literary perspective, that of a book: “Every book wants to be read,” thinks this book as it sits in a bookstore. “But on any given day, the likelihood of being browsed is slight, of being bought slighter still, of being bought and read by someone who appreciates your subtleties of style or grace or humor, well, the chances of that are more remote than anyone would care to admit. Of course in the end… we’re all pulped anyway, but before that happens, you want to know you were worth the ink and paper.” If this passage captures Dr. Green’s attitude toward literature and his own writing, it also captures the attitude he instilled in his students—the desire to make their own writing worth the sweat and yes blood and maybe tears, not to mention the ink and the paper.

—Chris Walsh, Associate Professor, Department of English

Interview with David Green, conducted by Mara Mellits (COM`26)

Can you first tell me about your book Porto Lúa?

The novel is set in the Spanish region of Galicia, more specifically, in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula known as Costa da Morte, or Coast of Death, and tells the story of a young man growing up among the traditional customs and beliefs of the region when people, as the narrator explains, were still “living in a time before the disenchantment of the world, still engaging the mysteries of nature, of life and death, creatively without the explanations of modern science.” Among the places and customs that appear in the novel are a spring where people wash evil from their bodies, carvings on stones meant to call souls down from the stars to enter the bodies of women, a procession of dead souls who come for the dying, and a celestial map for a departed soul on the side of a megalithic tomb. Readers might be surprised to learn that much of what appears to be invented in the book is an actual place or custom or belief. 

Why did you decide to write it?

Between 1979 and 1985, I lived in Galicia and often accompanied a good friend, who is an expert on the Celtic heritage of the region, on his trips to the countryside when he was researching the history of the area around Finisterre. Before Christianity, people as far away as central France believed that making a pilgrimage to the end of the world during one’s lifetime would facilitate the passage of one’s soul to paradise—which lay off the western shore of Iberia—after death. When the tomb of St. James was purportedly discovered in a Roman necropolis roughly forty miles inland, the Catholic Church appropriated this pilgrimage and made the shrine to St. James the destination of a Christian pilgrimage now known as the Camino de Santiago. The final leg of the original, pagan route, known as the via lactea, was forgotten until my friend discovered it on several of our excursions and wrote a book about it that is so popular many pilgrims of the Camino now continue on to Finisterre, boosting the local economy there. My shared interest in the stories of this region led me to write Porto Lúa. 

What is your favorite part of the book?

It’s difficult to say which part of the book is my favorite. I have different reasons for liking different sections and passages. The short chapter describing the cycle of the year in Porto Lúa and the final pages of the book are among the most satisfying. If I were to select a longer section, it might be the letter to his unborn child that the dying teacher, or mestre, of Porto Lúa wrote to the child he never had. 

How did you decide to get involved with teaching?

 By chance. I graduated with a degree in English as the country was coming out of a recession in the mid-seventies with no marketable skills, so I went to New York to look for an entry-level job in publishing or advertising. Unsuccessful in that quest, I applied for a job in a bookstore and was hired. After a year of living in relative poverty, I decided, since I had nothing to lose, I would move to Europe, so, carrying a small canvas suitcase and my typewriter, I arrived in Oxford, where I found work in an antiquarian bookstore for fourteen, then twenty-four, and finally forty pounds a week, but, due to the difficulty of obtaining a work permit, I was paid under the table. After six months, I left the UK to renew my tourist visa and upon returning, was stopped at Dover and only given provisional leave to re-enter the country because I had no visible means of support. The plodding bureaucracy of the Home Office enabled me to extend my stay for another six months, by which time a friend who worked in the bookstore had put me in touch with the head of the English Department at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain, where I was hired as an “ayudante de clases practicas” on the condition that I take a three-week summer course in Spanish. That’s how I became a teacher. 

I understand you’ve taught all over the world—what are some of your most memorable experiences?

There were many experiences, from learning different languages to understanding that different cultures have different approaches to teaching. In Spain I assisted the tenured faculty who taught language and literature. In addition to consulting with them and setting questions for written exams and conducting oral exams, I taught classes in conversational and written English. At the beginning of my first semester, the head of the department was still in America, so he asked me to fill in for him before he returned. The first class I ever taught was a lecture on the history of self-consciousness in English Literature. I worked very hard to prepare the talk and thought it went well. When I asked a friend who knew some of the students what they thought of it, she hesitated to respond, but after I asked her several times, she said their only comment was that I had a hole in my sweater. I learned more that day than the students did. Teaching in China was a very different experience. I had three groups of students at the Wuhan Institute of Hydro-Electric Engineering: undergraduates who would become English teachers, mature engineers who built the dams on the Yangtze River, and two graduate students in a course on English Literature. When I attempted to generate discussions by asking my students questions, they told me what they thought was not important. They were there to learn from me because I was the teacher. Their lives in the mid-eighties were very austere. The dining hall where they ate was crowded and chaotic, and a typical meal consisted of a scoop of rice and ladle of onion soup. Their dorm rooms had bare cement floors and bamboo bunk beds. Hot water for bathing and electricity for lighting were strictly rationed. Because of the challenges of that life, we formed close bonds and I’m still in touch with many of them today. 

Where was your favorite place to teach?

While China offered the most impactful experience—because I learned not only about a very different culture, but also about myself—it was also the most physically and mentally demanding because of the lack of creature comforts (like food and warmth) and the constant monitoring and control by an aggressive security apparatus, so Spain was more enjoyable. When I arrived, I was only two years older than the fifth-year students and was not in a position of authority, so I was able to spend time with the students and share their way of life. I’ve returned to Spain on many occasions, and every time I go, my schedule is full of day trips to the countryside and coast, as well as evenings wandering from one café to another with friends I’ve known for more than forty years. 

Do you find that your worldly view provides a unique perspective when teaching?

It helps in many ways. For example, the broader one’s experience, the more one is able to understand what Cardinal Newman called “the relative disposition of things” (similar to the effect of our readings in Core). Not only do you learn new languages and customs, you’re also  presented with more choices on what to value and how to live your life. Unfortunately, the things you like in different places can’t be combined in any one of them, so you are always a bit frustrated. In a perfect world, you would enjoy the social life of Spain and the efficiency of America. This also applies to the classroom. I learned to teach in a culture where I could be relaxed and friendly with my students and where I discovered that generating enthusiasm for a subject is a more effective way of teaching than simply providing information, but at times I was frustrated by the number of puentes or bridges between holidays and weekends that meant far fewer class days than scheduled, as well as by the policy of allowing students to take an exam seven times before failing a course, which often meant the instructor had to waste time grading exams students weren’t prepared to take. Perhaps the most important thing I learned by experiencing new cultures and languages is what it’s like not to understand, and I have tried to show the same patience and empathy toward my students that others have shown toward me.  

Why did you decide to teach in the Core Curriculum?

I began teaching at Boston University in the Writing Program and the English Department on an ad hoc basis with no contract, so when the opportunity to teach in Core presented itself, I saw it as a way to increase the odds of steady employment. The second year I taught in the program, the college considered the possibility of granting Core students an exemption from the writing courses, and because I had experience teaching in both programs, I was asked to write a report on how Core could satisfy the basic requirements of the WR courses. Core students were granted the exemption, and I received a dual appointment with a contract to coordinate the writing component of the program. Of course, examining the greatest writers and artists of our civilization and discussing the most ethical and rewarding ways to live one’s life with bright, dedicated students was also very appealing.  

What would you say about your career in Core?

It’s been an education. I was in a similar program as an undergraduate at the University of Notre Dame, but studied modern literature in graduate school many years later, and so, while I had some familiarity with many of the works we read in Core, I didn’t know them well enough to teach them at the college level, and for each of the four humanities courses, I had to prepare rigorously by reading not just the books on the syllabus, but also numerous critical studies on each work. The lectures given by my colleagues who are experts on the literature and art and music and philosophy of the various periods we cover were also very helpful. If I have any regrets, it’s that we were never able to include a course on the great works of the twentieth century.   

Do you feel like Core is a small community nestled inside BU?

Yes. I think this is true for both the students and the faculty. Smaller class sizes and an overall enrollment limited to several hundred applicants mean our students often find themselves in a class with friends they’ve made in previous courses who share similar interests. They also see each other once a week in lecture. Additionally, many get to know each other by living together in the Core House or on the Core Floor and by attending the barbeque and banquet and numerous cultural events throughout the semester. Because of smaller class sizes, the faculty also have an opportunity to get to know their students well. It’s not unusual to have the same student in more than one course, and I once had a student in all four of the humanities courses. This makes it easier to write personalized letters of recommendation and more likely that we’ll stay in touch with students as they complete their careers at Boston University and begin their professional lives. The faculty are also a closely knit community. We meet regularly to discuss the texts and our teaching and to set exams, and we see each other frequently in the office and at lectures and scheduled events. Core really is like a college within the college. 

Do you have a specific class that was your favorite to teach? Any texts that stand out to you?

I’ve enjoyed teaching all the humanities seminars in Core as well as my classes in the Writing Program. One of the most rewarding was a course entitled “Approaches to Death” because many of the students had experienced the death of a friend or family member and took the course as part of their effort to come to terms with their loss. Among the Core texts I looked forward to teaching were Plato’s Republic, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy, Montaigne’s Essays, Hamlet, Faust, The English Romantic Poets, and Genealogy of Morals. I’ve lectured on Shakespeare and Dante, but also enjoy the intimacy of Montaigne’s company, the humanity of Virgil, and the compelling honesty of Faust, which I see as a watershed in our intellectual history. 

Any outstanding students?

Many. Two former students immediately come to mind because I’ve been in touch with both recently. One is currently working with Kids in Need of Defense to provide legal aid for unaccompanied migrant children and will be entering the University of Maryland School of Law in the fall in order to become more knowledgeable about the legal protections for those who are most vulnerable in our society. Another, who studied the problem of food spoilage in rural India, worked with local farmers there to develop inexpensive solar-powered refrigeration units to boost their productivity and wealth. She is now overseeing the development of large-scale solar farms in Utah to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. As Sartre wrote, when we commit ourselves, we are not just the individual we are choosing to be, but also the legislator choosing what humanity as a whole should be. 

BU is about to lose a treasured member of its faculty.  Professor Charles Griswold began his BU appointment in 1991.  An expert in Ancient Philosophy, Moral and Political Philosophy, and Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Charles was a much admired instructor, receiving BU’s Neu Family Award for Excellence in Teaching in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2014.  He is the author of a large body of highly regarded and internationally recognized work, including the monographs: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith (Routledge, 2018), Forgiveness: A Philosophical Exploration (Cambridge, 2007), Adam Smith and the Virtues of Enlightenment (Cambridge 1999), and Self-Knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus (Yale, 1986).  Charles is the philosopher’s philosopher: an erudite scholar, a rigorously critical, and open minded thinker (in the true Socratic tradition), whose philosophizing is never far from matters of the heart.  While chair, he successfully recruited major gifts to the Philosophy Department, gifts that have greatly enhanced the opportunities the Department is able to offer its students.  Athough Charles is approaching retirement, his philosophizing continues.  He is now preparing a series of podcasts on such topics as wonder, walking in nature, solitude, self-delusion, aging, philosophy, perfectionism, and happiness.  As a much loved and outstanding member of the BU community, Charles will be sorely missed.  For more information about Professor Charles L. Griswold, see: https://blogs.bu.edu/griswold/

—Professor Sally Sedgwick, chair, Philosophy

 It has been an extraordinary honor as well as a great pleasure to serve as a faculty member at Boston University. I am grateful to have had the chance to teach our wonderful students, collaborate with first-rate colleagues, and work with BU’s excellent staff.  I truly wish this community the very best.

Dr. Hagen is the author of the controversial book, Whores of the Court: The Fraud of Psychiatric Testimony and the Rape of American Justice. She is an expert in the field of visual perception and an avid proponent for eliminating all psychiatric testimony from our courtrooms. Dr. Hagen believes that psychiatric testimony is based on subjective opinions, intuition and “junk science.”

Professor Hall earned his PhD at the University of Minnesota in 1982. He was awarded a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Mathematics Research Institute at University of Wisconsin in Madison. He joined us here at Boston University as an assistant professor in 1984, was promoted to associate professor in 1989 and to full professor in 2014.

Professor Hall’s major fields of research intersect with both pure and applied mathematics, specializing in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Systems.  From 1986-1990, he was awarded the highly prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship in Mathematics in recognition of the revolutionizing nature of his research contributions. He has published 30 research papers and, together with Paul Blanchard and Bob Devaney, has co-authored a widely used and innovative textbook on Differential Equations.

Over the years, Professor Hall has made deep and lasting contributions to the research and teaching missions of the University through his research publications and his work with students—both PhD students and undergraduates.  These contributions have been recognized by several awards and citations, including the Citation for Excellence in Student Advising in 2000, the Honors Program Distinguished Teaching Award in 2002, and the Wiesneski Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2004. Noteworthy has been his long and dedicated service to the Department over the past 25 years in his role as the director of undergraduate studies and mathematics instruction. He has also advised countless undergraduates on their senior theses over the years.

Professor Hall is particularly famous for his remarkable generosity in sharing ideas and expertise with his students and colleagues.   His legacy includes a total of 15 graduate students who have written their PhD theses under his guidance.  Of these, more than half have gone on to establish themselves as professors of Mathematics, Computer Science, and/or Data Science, in departments at prestigious universities and liberal arts colleges, including Smith College, University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, Holy Cross, and Oberlin.

Over the years, the Department of Mathematic and Statistics has built a strong and close-knit community of research mathematicians and statisticians. Dick Hall has been a highly regarded key member of that community for all of his years in our department. We wish him the best for life beyond Boston University and look forward to keeping him close to our community in the future.

—Glenn Stephens, Chair, Mathematics & Statistics

Thinking about the last 40 years and my working life during that time, the thing that amazes me the most is my remarkable, even unfathomable, good luck.  Over the years I have visited many Mathematics Departments, and with each visit, I’d thank my lucky stars the department I called home was collegial and supportive to the point of being like family. 

Looking at the talent and energy of the young people who have joined the department (here “young” is defined as “younger than me”), I know they will continue the department’s commitment to highest quality scholarship and superb education at all levels.  I hope that they have the camaraderie and the fun that I had.

Born and raised in Wales, schooled at Imperial College of the University of London, with postdoctoral postings to the University of Colorado, UCLA, and Imperial College, Professor W. Jeffrey Hughes joined Boston University as an assistant professor of Astronomy in 1978. Throughout his 45-year career at Boston University, he has been a prominent international scientist, faculty leader, and a core member of the Astronomy Department. An expert in the physics of the space environment associated with the solar wind’s interaction with the Earth’s magnetic field, he has been a prolific author of over 160 papers published in the most prestigious journals of the field. He was one of the founding members of the Center for Space Physics in the mid-1980s and served as its first director for 10 years, during a period when the Center greatly expanded and thrived. He was the department’s director of graduate studies for seven years, and later director of undergraduate studies for three years. Professor Hughes became chair of the Astronomy Department in 1997, carrying out those duties with distinction for five years. Next, the National Science Foundation awarded a 10-year grant funding the Center for Integrated Space Weather Modeling (CISM), based at Boston University, with Professor Hughes as principal investigator and center director for eleven years. From 2010 through 2017, he served as associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He was very active in Faculty Council and University Council, serving on numerous committees and as a CAS representative. Professor Hughes taught at all levels, ranging from advanced graduate courses in his specialty to cosmology for undergraduate non-science majors, and was well-received by his students in all of his courses. He taught with a superbly animated style, well-organized presentations of topics, and challenging but instructive assignments. He guided the research of many graduate students to advanced degrees, from which they moved on to productive careers in the field and into society. His thoughtfulness, commitment, and clear-eye reasoning were a boon to the department, to the university, and to the scientific community. We wish him all the best in his well-earned retirement.

—Professor Dan Clemens, Chair, Astronomy

I came to Boston University from London, not knowing whether I’d stay more than a few years, but I ended up being here for 45 years. BU allowed me to thrive. I came from a post-doctoral research position so BU is the only place I’ve been a faculty member, and during that time I’ve learned, I’ve taught, and I’ve grown (and accumulated a lot of stuff). How BU has changed! My first year the faculty went on strike for three days until the administration relented and agreed to abide by a negotiated pay raise. Having served in the past decade both within the CAS/GRS administration and on Faculty Council, I know first-hand that faculty/administration relations are far more cordial and productive today. The other big change I’ve seen is the steady improvement of the quality of both our students and the faculty, as well as our classrooms and research spaces. I have benefited from wonderful supporting colleagues and great students in my department, within the college, and the University more widely. I’ve taught and mentored students and helped hire new faculty colleagues, the two critical tasks that faculty must accomplish in order to sustain a university, and it’s been a privilege to do so. I’ve learnt a lot. I can confirm that the old adage if you want to learn something, volunteer to teach it, is absolutely true. So let me end by thanking all my colleagues who’ve made my life here so fulfilling, but especially those colleagues who, over the years, have convinced me to teach a course outside my immediate area of expertise.

Professor James (Jim) Iffland earned his PhD in Spanish from Brown University and joined Boston University in 1974. During his almost 50 years in the Department of Romance Studies, he has excelled in all areas of teaching, research, and service. From the very beginning, he challenged disciplinary boundaries and methodological frameworks and defined new approaches to the study of literature and culture. Thus, as he forged a path as one of the foremost specialists in Golden Age Spanish Literature with outstanding works such as the two-volume Quevedo and the Grotesque (1978, 1982), De fiestas y aguafiestas:  risa, locura  e ideología en Cervantes y Avellaneda  (1999), and Usos y abusos:  ensayos sobre el destino social del “Quijote” (in press), he also became a leading voice in Latin American Studies in trailblazing works like Ensayos sobre la poesía revolucionaria de Centroamérica (2016), and the two-volume and critically-acclaimed Para llegar a Roque Dalton:  pequeños infiernos y otros paraísos (estudio político-poético) (2021). It is this interdisciplinarity and openness to new methods of research and collaboration that have become a hallmark of not only Jim’s pedagogy, but also his remarkable scholarly career.

Jim’s indefatigable spirit and unrelenting hard work in Peninsular and Latin American Studies have been recognized with the highest honors. In 2010, he was inducted into the Royal Order of Isabel la Católica by the Spanish government, receiving The Officer’s Cross in recognition for his contributions to the study and dissemination of Spanish and Latin American culture. In 2014, he was conferred a Certificate of Recognition by the Salvadoran Consul-General in Boston for his contributions to the study of Central American culture and history. And in 2016, he was invited by King Felipe VI of Spain to the Royal Palace in Madrid as part of the awarding of the 2015 Premio Cervantes. Over the years, he has also held several visiting professorships, including at Brown, Brandeis, Boston College, Colegio de España, Harvard, MIT, and Università degli Studi di Pavia.

Jim’s teaching and service to the department, the College of Arts and Sciences, and Boston University over the years have been exemplary. Indeed, he has served with distinction in several positions, including as chair on the BU Faculty Council, and always championed the causes of equity and inclusion. He has been a tireless advocate for social justice at Boston University who was an outspoken participant in the 1979 BU faculty strike, the student protests of the 1980s, and the long “good fight” for strong faculty governance and academic freedom.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to highlight Jim’s boundless generosity. Throughout the years, he has left an indelible mark on the BU community. He has personally counseled dozens of students, faculty, and friends in times of need, and his compassionate and supportive leadership is everywhere evident in Romance Studies. The department has been exceedingly fortunate to have Jim as a colleague and friend. As he enters a new phase of his professional journey as Emeritus Professor, he will be sorely missed.

-Nicolás Fernández-Medina, Professor of Spanish & Iberian Studies

I began teaching at BU in September of 1974, a month after Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency.  Second semester of that year coincided with the fall of Saigon and the conclusion of the Viet Nam War.  BU itself was in the middle of a war of its own, with the Silber administration seeking to improve the institution but doing so in a way that generated huge resistance among faculty, staff, and students.  The next 30 years were tumultuous ones.  Among the highlights, the BU faculty strike of 1979 as well as the subsequent breaking of the faculty union via the National Labor Relations Board and the U.S. Supreme Court.   We then had the student and faculty mobilizations in opposition to the U.S. government’s role in the Central American conflicts and its tacit support of the South African regime just as the anti-apartheid movement was reaching its zenith.  All of this was soon followed by the upheaval over the investigation of the Massachusetts Attorney General into the BU Board of Trustees in the early nineties, the intense battle over academic freedom initiated by an investigation of the BU Faculty Council (I was Chair at the time), and the fiasco over the Silber succession at the beginning of the new millennium. The last two decades, on the other hand, have been comparatively tranquil under the administration of President Brown, and those of us who endured the 30-year conflict of the Silber age have much appreciated the difference.  Yes, there have been problems, and the “Covid moment” was definitely not much fun.  But all in all, compared to the previous incessant turmoil, BU has been a much easier place at which to work. 

Among the many fulfilling experiences I have had over these five decades, I must highlight the privilege of having been able to work with such wonderful colleagues and staff members and to have taught and mentored so many great students, both undergraduate and graduate.  Others include my three stints serving on the Faculty Council, my service as vice president of the BU faculty union, and my work with the local Hispanic community, largely in the role as coordinator of my department’s Hispanic Voices initiative.  Working with BU student activists has been a steady source of satisfaction, including my service as the faculty advisor for the BU chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine. 

Looking toward BU’s future, I sincerely hope that my younger colleagues will respond to the pressing need to participate energetically in faculty governance.  As the current obsession over “productivity” translates almost exclusively into the pressure to publish, younger faculty often tend to shirk their responsibilities as citizens of our university community.  This only helps to foster the turn toward top-down, managerialist models in American higher education in general.