A Historic Inauguration for BU: Melissa L. Gilliam Installed as 11th President
BU President Melissa L. Gilliam sitting in the leather chair that belonged to one of BU’s founders, Isaac Rich. The chair was used in 1869 when BU’s three founders signed a petition to charter BU as a new corporation, and it has been featured at nearly every inauguration since. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi
A Historic Inauguration for Boston University: Melissa L. Gilliam Installed as 11th President
She calls for greater investment in student internship opportunities, in faculty interdisciplinary research, and ensuring access for all
This article was originally published in BU Today on September 27, 2024. By Joel Brown
Boston University leapt to its feet Friday to celebrate the historic inauguration of Melissa L. Gilliam as the institution’s 11th president since its founding in 1839.
“Boston University has been a place for courage in the face of challenges,” Gilliam said in her speech at Agganis Arena to more than 2,000 students, faculty, staff, and dignitaries gathered on a beautiful fall afternoon. “A place of openness in a society that was often closed; a place of optimism during times of hopelessness; and a place that has been open to an increasingly global world, when many others could only see what was directly in front of them.
“To Boston University’s trustees, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends: now is our moment,” she said. “Let us use our traditions of intellectual courage, academic rigor, service, openness, art, and creativity to drive our next transformation.”
Her words were answered with a rousing ovation, in a ceremony that also featured remarks via video from Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey.
“Today, we continue our journey forward, taking BU to its next level of transformation and commitment to excellence—at this critical time in the world, both home and abroad, and also in higher education,” said Ahmass Fakahany (Questrom’79), chair of the BU Board of Trustees. “We could not be more pleased and excited to have Dr. Melissa Gilliam leading us on this journey as we continue to unravel our potential.”
Access for all was a key theme of the speech by Gilliam, who follows the 18-year tenure of Robert A. Brown and the yearlong interim presidency of Kenneth Freeman during the presidential search process. Both Brown and Freeman attended Friday’s ceremony.
“As we look forward, we must continue to ensure that Boston University provides a singular and transformative educational experience, and that all qualified students, regardless of their background, can access opportunity,” Gilliam said in her address. “We must find ways to address the rising costs of higher education, while also ensuring that our students are prepared for life after graduation, so they can see a return on the significant investment of their time.”
To that end, she announced a new vision for student career advancement: to increase internship participation and improve career outcomes across all academic programs, while at the same time offsetting the cost of education. Funding for working in laboratories and workplaces will be widely available for students to complete career-building internships, she said, with details on the program to follow in the coming weeks and months.
Other initiatives that she will roll out include a commitment to fully embrace the power of interdisciplinary collaboration. “Let’s transformthe University by redefining integrated research,” she said, “by enabling the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities to converge, in laboratories, spaces, and in classrooms across our campuses.” She noted that her administration will provide seed grants and create a multidisciplinary faculty advisory council to remove unnecessary barriers to collaboration in research, teaching, and learning.
Gilliam, a physician, will be BU’s first president to have a second office on the Medical Campus. She pledged to continue the University’s “fierce commitment” to Boston by reinvigorating its partnership with Boston Medical Center and better integrating the Charles River Campus and the Medical Campus, which are separated by two miles across the city’s Back Bay and South End neighborhoods.
A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Gilliam is also a BU clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology, professor of sociology, and professor of epidemiology. She is a distinguished educator, scholar, research scientist, and physician. Her scholarship focuses on interventions to promote adolescent health and well-being. She spent the majority of her career at the University of Chicago, where she was vice provost before joining Ohio State University as executive vice president and provost.
“At times when the logic, beauty, and grace of science fail to convince minds, I can think of nothing more salient, more penetrating, more perfect than art.”
-BU President Melissa L. Gilliam
Arts at the forefront
Gilliam also described an “ambitious vision” to put the arts “front and center across our campuses” and named Harvey Young, dean of the College of Fine Arts, to lead a President’s Advisory Council on the Arts.
“My own dear father, Sam Gilliam, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933, was inspired by the improvisation of jazz music, the most original of American musical forms,” Gilliam said, “and he transformed painting into sculpture by draping canvases from ceiling to floor and along the outside of buildings, now gracing museums around the world. At times when the logic, beauty, and grace of science fail to convince minds, I can think of nothing more salient, more penetrating, more perfect than art.”
The ceremony featured the singing of the BU anthem “Clarissima,” performances by the alumni group Sons of Serendip, the BU a cappella group the Treblemakers, and the BU Brass Choir, with singer Arielle Rogers-Wilkey (CFA’25). Robert Pinsky, a William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor, director of the Creative Writing Program, and former US poet laureate, read a poem, Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays.”