News
SheHacks Boston Student Organizers Are #makingthenewnormal
Weekend hackathon tackles the gender gap in computer science
A negative experience at a New York hackathon gave Fiona Whittington (COM'19) the idea for SheHacks Boston. Photo by Jake Belcher.
Fiona Whittington went to her first hackathon by herself. It didn’t go well.
“When I walked in some guy came up to me and was like, ‘Do you even code?’” she says, imitating his sneer. “And I’m like, ‘Look at my laptop, it says Girls Who Code. Of course I belong here.’”
That hackathon in New York a year ago was pretty traumatic, says Whittington (COM’19). There were hardly any other women, and she felt unwelcome, at least until a couple of BU guys took her under their wing. “Women should never have to feel that way at a hackathon,” she says.
She decided to do something about it. This weekend, BU plays host to SheHacks Boston, which she created in response to that reception in New York and hopes will be the largest-ever female and femme nonbinary hackathon. The event has a target of 1,000 attendees, and more than 800 college and high school students have already registered. Most are from the United States and Canada, but a few are coming from as far away as Ethiopia and Morocco.
The SheHacks mission statement: “Empower women and femme nonbinary individuals in technology to achieve. Provide them with opportunities to explore the tech industry in an inspiring, encouraging, and energizing environment. Create a community of inclusivity within the tech industry.”
The chosen hashtag? #makingthenewnormal.
Whittington (left) and Natalie Pienkowska (CAS’20) are among the leaders of SheHacks Boston, the largest ever (they hope) all-female hackathon, scheduled for this weekend at BU. Photo by Jake Belcher.
“What drove me to do it is that there are such amazing opportunities to learn and grow and network,” says Whittington, director of SheHacks. “An all-female hackathon is a great way for women to have access to those opportunities to learn and grow in a safe environment.”
For the uninitiated, a hackathon isn’t some quasi-criminal identity-theft fest, but a programming marathon where coders collaborate to create software that could be used to meet a variety of challenges.
Headquartered at the George Sherman Union’s Metcalf Hall, but spreading out to rooms in several other campus buildings, SheHacks will bring together teams of two to six coders who will compete for prizes ranging from consumer technology such as Amazon Fire tablets to a pitch session with a venture capital firm. Numerous challenge categories include Gender Equality (help victims of sexual assault raise their voice and access resources) and Political Polarization (help combat the fake news phenomena) as well as She </Laughs> (for the team with the most hilarious and creative hack).
SheHacks begins at 8 pm Friday and runs until 2 pm Sunday, with hacking, prizes, pizza, hacking, music, guest speakers, hacking, and more. BU students make up the majority of the central organizing group of about a dozen, but MIT, UMass Boston, Northeastern and NYU are also represented, and students from other local schools are among the 100 volunteers.
SheHacks is funded by more than $130,000 from dozens of sponsors, among them Major League Hacking, Facebook, Bloomberg, and Mass Housing. Other supporters are the College of Arts & Sciences, the CAS computer science department, the College of Engineering electrical and computer engineering department, the Questrom School of Business, Innovate@BU, BUildLab, and BU Spark! Whittington says she’s also received key support from Natalie McKnight, dean of the College of General Studies, and Tracy Schroeder, vice president of information services and technology.
“The world needs the perspective of women in all aspects of technology,” says Schroeder. “Women have different needs and perspectives on these things than men, and if women are not involved, women will not be well served.
“Is it lonely for women in tech? Short answer: yes,” Schroeder says. “I can’t tell you how many meetings I attend where I am the only woman in the room. I’m over it, I can handle it, but it shouldn’t be that way. What do I hope comes from SheHacks? More women in the technology profession. It’s that simple.”
“This is an ambitious undertaking, particularly for undergraduates,” says McKnight, who made a personal donation to SheHacks. “I am very impressed with their courage and professionalism.”
Surprise: “You can do it.”
Whittington is an advertising major, but she jokingly calls herself an unofficial computer science minor and spends a lot of time at the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, where Spark! the initiative to support student innovation and entrepreneurship in technology, is housed. She is also the founder and president of the BU chapter of Girls Who Code, a club that promotes diversity in technology through weekly Coffee, Code, and Chill events and held a small BU-only hackathon, Hack the Gap (that would be the gender gap), last fall.
“This has really been a full-fledged student effort,” says Ziba Cranmer, director of BU Spark! “Fiona was my star employee at Spark! and we spoke often about how to create an innovative and inclusive computer science community at BU, and specifically about the issue of women and underrepresented minorities in tech.”
“Fiona started this because she recognized the problem and how it affects everyone, especially at our age, in classes, and especially hackathons,” says SheHacks head of finance Natalie Pienkowska (CAS’20), who is majoring in computer science and minoring in business and environmental analysis. “We all shared this, how we’d end up being the only female on our teams and be a little pushed aside and wouldn’t have a major role.”
Whittington and Pienkowska are collaborating on an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) project studying how women’s interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields is affected by a gender-restricted environment versus a coed environment, using SheHacks as a case study. UROP pairs students with faculty mentors and provides funding for their projects.
SheHacks Boston organizers Julia Bighetto (CGS’18) (from left), Pienkowska, Sreeya Sai of Northeastern University, and Whittington during a recent planning session for SheHacks Boston at BU Spark! Photos by Jake Belcher.
Whittington says it’s not the condescension that bothers her most, or the failure to take her seriously at male-dominated hackathons. “The surprise is what bothers me most, surprise from both genders,” she says. “The girls who say, ‘That’s really cool, but I could never do that.’ That’s what really irks me. You can do it. Just copy and paste a couple of lines of code and press run, you know?
“But that’s also what’s beautiful about computer science, when you see someone for the first time believe in themselves, and how easy it really is,” she says. “People believing in themselves, that’s all I’m really hoping for.”
Iccha Singh, a 15-year-old high school sophomore and coder from Princeton, N.J., believes in herself. She met Whittington and other SheHacks organizers at a hackathon in Pennsylvania last year and immediately got excited. Now listed as SheHacks high school ambassador, Singh raised just over $2,500 via a Kickstarter campaign to pay for a bus to bring 50 women from New Jersey high schools and colleges to Boston for the event.
“I’m currently taking AP computer science at my high school, and there’s not many girls there,” says Singh. “I expected to face this in the workforce as well, because women make up only 25 percent of coders, and this is going to be an issue until everyone accepts it as a real issue and starts changing their act.” At SheHacks, she hopes, she’ll see women treating one another not as competitors, but helping one another learn and grow and using software to make the world a better place—“that’s the biggest thing.”
“Technology is amazing, and we’re creating a community around it,” Pienkowska says. “With everything going on in the media today with #metoo and things like that, it’s a great time for all females to come together, and we’re just focusing on this one little part of it.”
SheHacks Boston will be held at the George Sherman Union Metcalf Hall from 8 pm Friday, January 26, until 2 pm Sunday, January 28. Walk-in registrations will be accepted in the GSU second-floor lobby beginning at 8 pm on Friday.
Author, Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@bu.edu.
Government Reopens After Shutdown
BU IN DC
Graham Wilson, Katharine Lusk, Katherine Levine Einstein, David Glick, Maxwell Palmer, Stacy Fox, and Patricia Cahill of the Initiative on Citiesreleased the annual Menino Survey of Mayors at the National Press Club on January 23.
Dean Sandro Galea of the School of Public Health discussed his book, Healthier, with more than 100 alumni at the Army Navy Country Club on January 24. He and Catherine Ettman also met with officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and on Capitol Hill.
Tony Janetos of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Futureattended the National Council for Science and the Environment's annual conference on January 23 and 24.
GOVERNMENT REOPENS AFTER SHUTDOWN
The federal government reopened Monday evening after a three-day shutdown that forced federal agencies to temporarily cease operations; agencies are now operating under a continuing resolution that lasts through February 8th. The new deadline is designed to give Congressional leaders additional time to negotiate a bipartisan agreement to protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients and lift caps on federal spending to enable the completion of fiscal year 2018 appropriations. Federal grant-making agencies will continue to withhold funds to grantees until they have certainty about their budgets for the remainder of the fiscal year.
BUZZ BITS...
- The Department of Defense released a summary of its National Defense Strategy last week. Among other things, the document highlights the need to modernize space and cyberspace capabilities, utilize advanced autonomous systems, and cultivate a skilled workforce with expertise in areas ranging from history to data science.
- The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee held a hearing on access and innovation in higher education this week as it continues preparing to renew the Higher Education Act. Two New Englanders were among the witnesses: Dr. Barbara Brittingham of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and Michael Larsson of Match Beyond.
- Dr. Nina Schor has been named deputy director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) at the National Institutes of Health. Schor previously chaired the department of pediatrics at the University of Rochester.
EVENTS NEWS YOU CAN USE
The Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) released its call for abstracts, including a specific competition for young investigators. This year, MHSRS will feature breakout sessions on infectious disease, blast injury research, health information technology, medical and surgical care, manufacturing innovation, and precision medicine. The Symposium offers an opportunity for academia to engage with program managers and Department of Defense officials, who are often hard to reach, on military biomedical and health-related research topics. Abstracts are due by March 16.
SPH Dean Galea’s “Healthier” Book Talk in Washington, DC
Details
Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2018
Time: 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Location: Army Navy Country Club
1700 Army Navy Drive
Arlington, VA 22202
"Healthier: Fifty Thoughts on the Foundations of Population Health" is a collection of essays on the social, economic, and cultural forces that shape population health. The book builds off of two years of contributions to Boston University School of Public Health Dean’s Notes. The voices of SPH students, faculty, staff, and alumni all informed Healthier’s perspective on a range of important public health topics, including climate change, inequality, racism, and the health of LGBT populations.
On Wednesday, January 24, 2018, SPH Dean Sandro Galea held a book talk to continue the discussion on how we can improve health by promoting justice and improving the social, economic, and environmental determinants of well-being. Healthier was published by Oxford University Press in July 2017. This event was hosted by Christine S. Hunter, MED ’80, CAS ’80, Chief Medical Officer, US Office of Personnel Management, BU School of Public Health Dean’s Advisory Board Member.
Leaders of US Cities Worried about Lack of Affordable Housing
IoC Menino Mayoral Survey finds cost drives people away
Affordable housing and climate change were two of the biggest concerns addressed in the University’s Initiative on Cities 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors. Photo by iStock/RSfotography.
If you want to get mayors of US cities talking, says BU political scientist David Glick, ask them about affordable housing. Republicans and Democrats alike, mayors of big coastal cities and medium-size Midwestern towns “are all worried about it,” says Glick, a researcher with the University’s Initiative on Cities (IoC). “Some are more worried about middle-class housing, some are worried about subsidized low-income housing.”
Glick, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of political science, is a co–principal investigator of the IoC’s annual Menino Survey of Mayors, and he says that widespread worry was one of the most striking findings of the current survey (its fourth). The survey explored mayors’ attitudes and concerns about a number of issues, among them sustainability, their relationship with state and federal governments, and how to thwart Trump administration actions that they oppose. Katherine Levine Einstein and Maxwell Palmer, both CAS assistant professors of political science, are the survey’s other principal investigators.
The IoC released the 2017 findings January 23 at a public event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Of the 115 mayors of cities in 39 states across the country surveyed, only 13 percent said they thought their housing stock matched the needs of their constituents. Over half cited housing costs as one of the top three factors prompting residents to move away, outpacing other important concerns such as jobs, schools, and public safety.
Graphic showing the top reasons mayors gave for why residents leave their cities. Courtesy of Boston University Initiative on Cities’ 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors.
Unsurprisingly, the survey noted that mayors of cities with the highest housing costs—those in the top one third of the national housing price distribution—expressed the most concern about their housing stock. But even in the least expensive cities—those in the bottom one third of the housing price distribution—“only 18 percent of mayors believed their housing served constituents ‘extremely well’ or ‘very well.’”
The lack of federal funds and insufficient bank financing were the obstacles to addressing affordable housing problems most frequently cited by mayors, according to the survey. For all the optimism mayors expressed about their ability to get things done, said Einstein, addressing the Washington audience, “the reality is that mayors are still limited by a lack of federal resources, particularly in important areas such as affordable housing.”
The mayors surveyed were all from cities with populations over 75,000. They represent cities “across every demographic, every region of the country, racial demographics, income, population,” Einstein said. They were interviewed in summer 2017 by IoC researchers, either by phone or in person. They were promised anonymity, she said, to encourage them to speak openly about sensitive issues, such as their relationship with state and federal governments.
“I think this is the gold standard of research on mayors and their leadership roles in cities because of the care researchers take to make sure they are really getting the voice of mayors captured in the responses,” said IoC director Graham Wilson, a CAS professor of political science, speaking at the press club. Wilson cofounded the IoC, a cross-University research initiative, in 2014 with Boston’s longtime mayor, the late Thomas M. Menino (Hon.’01), a CAS political science professor of the practice and IoC codirector.
Concern about climate change was another survey finding that Einstein highlighted: 84 percent of mayors said that human activities, rather than natural changes, have caused increases in Earth’s temperature. According to 2017 Gallup data, only 68 percent of the public believe that climate change is a result of pollution from human activities. In general, the survey noted, “Midwestern and Northeastern mayors—in line with their general political liberalism—were more likely to attribute climate change to human activities relative to leaders of Southern and Western cities.”
About two thirds of mayors agree, or strongly agree, that cities should aggressively address climate change even if it means making financial sacrifices. “This is again striking,” said Einstein. “Not only do they believe it’s a consequence of human activity, they also think we should take strong action to address climate change even if it means losing some revenue.”
The mayors highlighted an array of steps cities could take to mitigate climate change; the top three were reducing the number of vehicles on the roads, energy-efficient upgrades, and green, or alternative, energy sources.
Graphic illustrating mayors’ top priorities for sustainability investments for their city. Courtesy of Boston University Initiative on Cities’ 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors.
Democratic mayors were 50 percent more likely than Republican mayors to say that cities should address climate change even if it means sacrificing revenue, the survey found.
“This was by far the most polarized area of our survey,” Einstein said. Noting that IoC researchers asked the question about climate change in both 2014 and 2017, she added that while “Democrats’ views appear to be unchanged, Republicans’ appear to be trending more toward disagreeing and falling a bit more in line with national party trends.”
“Mayors have been leading on climate change for a number of years,” said IoC founding executive director Katharine Lusk, who was a policy advisor to Menino when he was Boston’s mayor. “What’s different this year is the tone and actions of the Trump administration, which have created newfound energy for local action and city-to-city cooperation. We wanted to know where mayors stand. It’s exciting that overall more mayors are willing to make financial sacrifices to mitigate the effects of climate change, but also troubling that the issue has become polarized even in local politics.”
On the question of their ability to counter Trump administration actions that they may disagree with, the mayors were divided, by party and by issue. They were optimistic, the survey noted, that they could do “a lot in response to objectionable federal-level actions pertaining to the environment or policing, but are less sanguine about their ability to counteract the administration when they disagree on education and immigration policies.”
The survey also showed that mayors were looking for new ways to be heard and to influence policymakers, including hiring lobbyists and working with their congressional delegations. They were more pessimistic than in years past about the financial support they were getting from federal and state governments, and this pessimism was shared by Republican and Democratic mayors. They told IoC researchers that they thought they had the resources to fund just half of their city’s infrastructure needs over the next five years.
And yet for all the obstacles mayors confront, Glick and other IoC researchers say, a significant number of those surveyed seemed to agree with Menino, who liked to say that being mayor was “the best job in politics.”
“Mayors really cheer you up,” Wilson told the Washington audience. “You can see them working with other people. These are people who will restore your faith in the capacity of democratic institutions to come to grips with problems in people’s lives.”
The 2017 IoC survey was supported with funding from Citi Community Development and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Author, Sara Rimer can be reached at srimer@bu.edu.
2017 Menino Survey of Mayors Briefing Event
Professor Graham Wilson, co-founder and Director of the Boston University Initiative on Cities kicks off the 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors briefing in Washington, DC. Photo by Jennifer Grodsky, BU Federal Relations.
On January 23, 2018, an exclusive briefing on the 2017 Menino Survey of Mayors, a project led by the Boston University Initiative on Cities and supported by Citi and The Rockefeller Foundation, was held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.
The Menino Survey is the only systematic survey of American mayors. Based on interviews with 115 mayors, this year’s Survey delves into the ways in which our mayors are increasingly taking the lead as they tackle critical urban issues such as the need for affordable housing and sustainability, while simultaneously confronting federal and state funding shifts. The Survey also offers insight into how mayors are rallying individually and as a collective to address certain challenges and opportunities where they believe cities can achieve positive change.
Any questions or comments about this event, please contact Stacy Fox at the BU Initiative on Cities by email at sfox@bu.edu or by phone at 617-358-8086.
ABOUT THE SURVEY: The Menino Survey of Mayors, now in its fourth year, is the only nationally representative and scientifically rigorous survey of American mayors. It was created by the Boston University Initiative on Cities, an urban leadership and research center, to reveal the priorities, challenges, perspectives and relationships of mayors across the country as they seek to build vibrant, sustainable, and inclusive communities. The Survey is named for the late Mayor Tom Menino, the Initiative’s co-founder and a transformative and renowned Mayor of Boston.
Air Pollution Inequality Growing in Massachusetts
RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT
Air Pollution Inequality Growing in Massachusetts
A BU study funded by the National Institutes of Health shows a persistent and widening gap in how pollution impacts different racial and ethnic communities in the Commonwealth, despite the state's major reductions in air pollution overall. See for yourself
FACULTY EXPERTS
Head Injuries May Cause CTE
A federally-funded BU-led study shows brain injuries, not just concussions, may cause the progressive brain disease Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Learn about the study
COMMUNITY RESOURCE
Helping Moms Cope
A team of BU researchers are helping the mothers of Head Start children prevent depression. See the details
What a Government Shutdown Means to BU
Investigators should continue working on and submitting proposals to Sponsored Programs
The shutdown of the federal government has stretched into a third day after Capitol Hill lawmakers failed to reach agreement on a spending bill over the weekend. Photo By Drew Stephens.
- Shutdown of federal government enters third day
- BU investigators should continue working on and submitting proposals to Sponsored Programs as indicated
- Federal student financial aid should not be impacted by shutdown
With Congress and the White House locked in a failure to agree on a spending bill, the federal government remains shut down for the third day. The shutdown, the first since 2013, affects the lives of Americans in numerous ways, as described in this Washington Post story.
At Boston University and universities across the country, the shutdown’s most immediate effects are likely to impact researchers working with federal grants. In a letter being sent to BU faculty Monday morning, Jean Morrison, University provost and chief academic officer, advises investigators to assume that deadlines for proposal submissions will remain unchanged.
To learn more about what the government shutdown means to the BU community, BU Today spoke with Jennifer Grodsky, the University’s vice president for federal relations.
BU Today: What does the shutdown mean for investigators who are submitting proposals for federally sponsored research?
Grodsky: For now, it means that some of their program managers and contacts at federal agencies may not be available. But even though it is unsettling to hear that agencies are closed, faculty should continue to work on their proposals as if the government were still open. It’s possible some government systems may not be working. For example, the National Science Foundation has announced that FastLane, its web-based grants management system, is closed during the shutdown. But the best thing investigators can do is have their proposals ready so that Sponsored Programs can process them according to the most up-to-date guidelines given by each specific agency.
Will the shutdown delay deadlines for a grant proposal?
We don’t know yet, so it’s really important that investigators continue to prepare and submit their proposals to Sponsored Programs in a timely manner. It’s also really important to remember that regardless of the headlines about the political situation, we need to proceed as if there will be no change in grant submission deadlines.
What about researchers who are currently working under federal contracts grants? Should they continue to work?
Yes, researchers should continue to work on their grants and contracts unless their agency or program officer has advised them otherwise. Faculty should keep in close touch with their Sponsored Programs contacts and check the Research Support website for updates.
Are some federal agencies still operating? Which agencies are open and which are closed?
Essential federal personnel are working, and each agency defines “essential” differently. You can see how every agency operates in a shutdown by looking at the agency contingency plans on the White House Office of Management and Budget website.
What does the shutdown mean for students?
Fortunately, federal financial aid should not be impacted. The US Department of Education has explicitly stated that Pell Grants and student loans will continue as normal. The small number of students enrolled in the BU Study Abroad Washington program who were scheduled to begin internships with federal agencies on Monday may see those internships delayed.
Will the shutdown affect faculty and staff at all?
Faculty and staff who planned to travel to Washington, D.C., for meetings with federal officials should check whether their federal contact will be available to meet. Most federal agency staff will not be working during the shutdown. Similarly, if a faculty or staff member has invited a federal official to visit BU, it’s possible the visit would need to be rescheduled.
How long is the shutdown likely to last?
That is the question everyone in Washington is trying to answer. A bipartisan group of legislators is working to negotiate a deal that would reopen the government for several weeks and give lawmakers more time to find a long-term solution. While a shutdown could last just a few more hours, I’m mindful that the last government shutdown, in 2013, lasted more than two weeks.
Author, Art Jahnke can be reached at jahnke@bu.edu.
New CFA Dean Is Arts Historian and Advocate
Harvey Young champions transformative experiences of the arts
Harvey Young, a prominent theater historian and arts advocate, is the new dean of the College of Fine Arts. Young comes to BU from Northwestern University, where he was chair of the School of Communication department of theatre. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi.
- Young authored the award-winning book Embodying Black Experience
- Wants to promote and expand BU’s reputation in the arts
- A film major at Yale, his favorite movie is McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Internationally recognized theater historian Harvey Young, whose work centers on race, history, and performance, officially begins his new role this month as dean of the BU College of Fine Arts.
Young comes to BU from Northwestern University, where he was a professor and chair of the School of Communication department of theatre and held appointments in African American studies, performance studies, and radio/television/film.
Jean Morrison, BU provost and chief academic officer, says Young’s dynamic leadership will help advance the University’s arts reputation and programming.
“Dr. Young is among the nation’s most respected scholars in theater and the black experience, with a demonstrated record of leadership, interdisciplinary collaboration, and advocacy advancing excellence and broad engagement in the arts,” Morrison says. “He brings enormous talent, energy, and creativity to this role, and we are confident in his ability to further elevate CFA as a national destination for artistic study and creation.”
It’s no accident that Young’s CFA corner office on Commonwealth Avenue offers a prime view of the new Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and College of Fine Arts Production Center. Every student needs to be exposed to the arts and all the University has to offer, Young says, no matter their major. That may mean expanding the curriculum to include a first-year course about the arts or finding another way to build broad awareness at student Orientation.
“What is it that makes life worth living?” he asks. “Culture, music, these transformative experiences that give you a perspective from another person’s point of view. I challenge anyone to live their life without music and the arts and see what happens.”
Harvey Young, the new dean of the College of Fine Arts (right), talks with CFA School of Theatre students during a tour of the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre and Boston University Production Center with Jim Petosa (second from right), director of the School of Theatre, in October. Photo by Cydney Scott.
A passionate advocate for the arts and arts education, Young has served as a trustee and a board member of several national and Chicago area arts organizations and has published seven books on the aesthetics of art, including Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body (University of Michigan Press, 2010). The book won the National Communication Association Lilla A. Heston Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies and the American Society for Theatre Research Errol Hill Award in 2011.
Parts of the book unflinchingly chronicle the lynchings of black men and women in the decades after the Civil War, describing the ritualistic and disturbing ways that white communities treated such events. For example, Young documents from archived newspapers how white children sold the fingers or toes of deceased victims as mementos.
He has said that his work is “a means of working through my own complicated relationship with this image while simultaneously spotlighting an often-neglected area of lynching scholarship.”
The new dean has long been interested in the ways people talk to one another about race and gender and is currently editing a book on the performance of race. Another book project, in its early stages, is about the way people write about race, whether during the heyday of mailed postcards or on contemporary platforms such as Twitter.
“Our assumptions of what race and gender are don’t come from conversations with people,” he says. “People don’t come up to me and say, ‘What’s your life like as a black man?’ What happens is you consume media and you have a sense of what that other person’s reality must be like based on what you’ve consumed.”
Young, who was selected as dean of CFA after a two-year search, graduated from Yale University in 1997 with a BA in film studies. He later earned a master’s degree and a PhD in theater at Cornell University, before joining the faculty at Northwestern University 15 years ago. During his tenure at Northwestern, he oversaw a number of initiatives, including the renovation of its performing arts complex. He also became a sought-after pop culture commentator, appearing on CNN, and ABC’s 20/20 and Good Morning America, where he discussed topics from Trump’s presidency to former student Meghan Markle, who is now engaged to England’s Prince Harry.
Rafael Ortega, a School of Medicine professor of anesthesiology and associate dean for diversity and multicultural affairs, sat on the eight-person CFA dean search committee. Ortega says Young brings a multidisciplinary perspective, with fresh ideas. He is also impressed by Young’s desire to create new programming in collaboration with other schools across campus.
“Students will find his ideas inspiring and gain a better understanding of how the arts can be used as an instrument of change in society and how we can use the arts to open up difficult conversations,” he says.
Young, who is also a CFA professor of theater and a College of Arts & Sciences professor of English, took over from Lynne Allen, who had been dean ad interim since Benjamin Juarez left in 2015 after five years as dean. Allen, a CFA professor of art, resumes her post as director of the School of Visual Arts.
Search committee member Kristen Elizabeth Hall Coogan, a CFA associate professor of graphic design, says Young will build upon the important work of his predecessor, who made the arts program more open and forward-thinking.
“The committee is thrilled over the appointment of Dr. Young,” Coogan says. “Dr. Young shared incredible vision for connectivity between the college and those it serves, from BU students, faculty, and administration to local and national arts audiences. We believe in Dr. Young’s universal advocacy for the arts and specific mission for our institution.”
Young says that CFA should be an integral partner with other BU schools and that he will reach out to deans to further strengthen those ties. And he looks forward to a full slate of programming at the University’s new 250-seat theater.
The theater and production space, with an abutting outdoor arts plaza, opened in November and will be home to arts programming that he hopes will draw audiences from not only the BU community but across the metropolitan region.
“There are lots of universities in the Boston area, but there’s an opportunity here for BU to be the University that is known for the arts at large,” Young says. “That’s my goal. That’s my commitment.”
Author, Megan Woolhouse can be reached megwj@bu.edu.
Government Shutdown Looms
BU IN DC
Diane Baldwin and Ryan Russell of Sponsored Programs and Kate Mellouk of Research Compliance participated in the Federal Demonstration Project's meeting on January 8 and 9.
GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN LOOMS
The U.S. Senate is poised to vote on a continuing resolution that will keep the federal government operating at its current spending level through February 16, but the outcome of the vote is unclear due to political disagreements over immigration, health care, and other issues. Should the resolution fail, the federal government will temporarily cease operations until lawmakers can reach agreement. If the resolution passes, Congress will give itself more time to negotiate the fiscal year 2018 spending package that is nearly four months overdue. Federal grant-making agencies will continue to withhold funds to grantees until they have certainty about their budgets for the remainder of the fiscal year.
See how agencies plan for a shutdown
WHAT'S ON WASHINGTON'S AGENDA?
With Congress back in session, what can we expect from Washington in 2018?
- Budget: The President's State of the Union address and budget release early in the year will set the stage for fiscal year 2019 budget deliberations. While the President may propose cuts to key research and student aid priorities, Congress is unlikely to go along.
- Higher Education: Leaders of the Senate's education committee are working on a bipartisan bill to renew the programs of the Higher Education Act. Should they succeed, it would stand in contrast to the bill passed on a party-line vote by the House Education and the Workforce Committee last year. Separately, the U.S. Department of Education plans to release new rules this spring governing sexual misconduct on college campuses.
- Immigration: Policymakers are struggling to reach agreement on the fate of young immigrants in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which is set to expire in March. Later this fall, the Trump Administration plans to release rules impacting student and employment visas.
BUZZ BITS...
- Dr. Peter Highnam has been appointed Deputy Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Highnam has held roles in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, and the National Institutes of Health.
- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration released its 2018 Strategic Policy Roadmap on January 11. The roadmap addresses priorities such as opioid policies, reducing the harm caused by tobacco, generic drug availability, advanced drug manufacturing, nutritional advice, digital health, and scientific computing in support of product review.
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Brenda Fitzgerald denied reports the CDC had "banned, prohibited, or forbidden employees from using" words such as "fetus" or "transgender."
BU-Led Study: CTE May Occur without Concussions
Progressive brain disease could be caused by repetitive head injuries
Sections from two brains used in the current BU-led study. The left sample comes from a 17-year-old American male high school football player who died by suicide two days after a closed-head impact injury. The brown stain indicates a widespread immune response, pointing to an abnormal increase in the number of astrocytes, a type of helper cell in the brain, due to the destruction of nearby neurons. The sample on the right, from the control group, shows the brain of a 22-year-old American male former high school football player who also died by suicide, with no history of recent head injury. Images courtesy of BU School of Medicine.
- BU-led study explains CTE in nonconcussed athletes
- Head injury causes brain vessels to leak protein, inflame tissues
- 20 percent of athletes with CTE had no diagnosed concussions
A new BU-led study published Thursday in the journal Brain suggests that chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is caused by head injuries, not by concussions. The research explains why 20 percent of athletes who exhibited the early stages of the progressive brain illness postmortem never had a diagnosed concussion.
“It’s the hits to the head, not concussion, that trigger CTE,” says study coauthor Lee Goldstein, a School of Medicine associate professor of psychiatry, who also has an appointment at the College of Engineering.
The study suggests that head injuries can cause blood vessels to leak proteins into adjacent brain tissues, inflaming them. CTE is a brain disease characterized by accumulation of tau protein around the brain’s blood vessels. It is found in athletes, soldiers, and others who have suffered repeated concussions and other brain trauma and is associated with dementia, mood changes, and aggression. Concussions are injuries that impair a person’s functions, such as memory or balance.
The study’s finding is important because efforts to protect athletes focus on preventing concussions rather than repeated hits to the head, says Christopher Nowinski, co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation.
“In order to reduce CTE risk” in athletes and military veterans, “there must be a reduction in the number of head impacts,” says Ann McKee, director of the CTE Center and another study coauthor. “The continued focus on concussion and symptomatic recovery does not address the fundamental danger these activities pose to human health.”
McKee and her team first examined the brains of four dead teenage athletes who’d suffered head injuries one, 2, 10, and 128 days before they died. They found a range of post-trauma pathologies, including one case of early CTE (the disease has four stages) and two brains with abnormal tau accumulations. When researchers compared the brains to those of four teenage athletes who had not suffered recent head trauma, they found that those brains did not have the same pathologies.
The researchers speculated that early CTE could result from damaged brain blood vessels that leak blood proteins into nearby tissue, causing inflammation of the brain. They tested the hypothesis by exposing lab mice to two different triggers linked to CTE: repeated head impacts and blast exposures.
They then scanned the mice brains and found leaky blood vessels, as well as persistent changes in electrical functions, possibly explaining cognitive impairment in some people after similar injuries.
“The same brain pathology that we observed in teenagers after head injury was also present in head-injured mice,” says Goldstein. “We were surprised that the brain pathology was unrelated to signs of concussion.”
The findings, he adds, “provide strong causal evidence” linking head impacts to both traumatic brain injury and early CTE, “independent of concussion.”
The researchers focused especially on capillaries, the smallest “and most important blood vessels” in the brain, Goldstein says, through which oxygen, nutrients, and waste removal occur. “Head impact results in focal disruption” of capillaries, resulting in proteins leaking into the brain, he says.
The researchers also used computer simulations from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and mechanical models from BU, both of which showed that triggers for concussion and CTE may be distinct.
The study, by a multinational team of universities and government agencies from the United Sates, Israel, Canada, and the United Kingdom, was funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of Energy, and the National Football League, among others.
Author, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu.