Transit providers help improve voter turnout with free rides to the polls for 2024 Election Day
The U.S. joint general, special, charter and bond elections are upon us and voters throughout the country will be planning their trips over to their local poll station to cast their vote. Transportation challenges should not prevent a U.S. citizen from casting his or her ballot this Election Day. Many voters are experiencing connectivity issues on Election Day due to a lack of a personal vehicle or efficient mode of transportation.
Professor Partners with Boston Public Schools to Study Classroom Air Quality
The most comprehensive database of Massachusetts’ affordable housing inventory spotlights the use of age-restricted housing to maintain racial segregation, its creators say. In 44 cities and towns, not a single unit of non-age-restricted affordable housing has been built despite state laws such as Chapter 40B that make it easier for developers to build income-restricted projects.
Gastronomy Student Helps Bring New Life to City Farmers Markets through Mayor’s Office Fellowship
When Andrea Catania first heard about an opportunity to join the Boston Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, she didn’t think her Master of Arts in Gastronomy studies would qualify her. But she soon learned the program was open to graduate students of all types, and with the help of the BU Initiative on Cities, she was able to land a summer fellowship that gave her eight weeks to make a difference in the lives of Boston residents.
Building a Better Boston
BU’s campuses aren’t the only place where the Arts & Sciences community learns—Greater Boston itself is a classroom, laboratory, and workplace. Governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private sector companies are partners, and their challenges—from education to the environment—provide opportunities to contribute to solving real-world problems.
Building Better Cities
Two global trends collided in 2023: the warming of the atmosphere and the growth of urban areas. Phoenix, Ariz., the fifth-largest city in the US, reached 110 degrees on 31 consecutive days. Heat-related hospitalizations spiked and people burned themselves on scorching asphalt. Texas, home to several of the country’s largest and fastest-growing cities, experienced the second-hottest summer ever, leading to a BBC headline that asked if the Lone Star State could “become too hot for humans.”
Four Mass. residents awarded MacArthur ‘genius’ grants
Four people from Massachusetts — a cellular and molecular biologist, an environmental ecologist, a computer scientist, and an interdisciplinary scholar — on Wednesday received “genius” grants from the MacArthur Foundation, which awards fellowships to individuals pursuing a range of intellectual and creative interests. Hutyra is a professor in Boston University’s Department of Earth and Environment and has been a member of BU’s faculty since 2009. She is investigating impacts of urbanization on environmental carbon cycle dynamics.
February 2023 Spotlight – Judith C. Scott, PhD
My primary research interest focuses on how trauma such as physical child maltreatment and racism (interpersonal and structural), protective processes including ethnic-racial socialization and coping, and contextual factors affects parenting and mental health among families across cultures. However, it was my secondary research interest in program evaluation that led to my interest in Asian children and families. Right before I started as faculty at Boston University, a community organization, Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, sent a request for an agency-level and community-level program evaluation. During the two-year evaluation, through talks with BCNC staff and reading existing literature, I realized that I rarely read about the perspectives and experiences of Chinese immigrant families living in low-income communities in relation to parenting.
Community, Conflict, and Change: CAS Course Shines New Light on Boston’s Past
It’s a narrative that Bostonians cherish, reinforced by centuries of reformers and academics and decades of Kennedys—but it’s also a narrative worthy of a fresh look, according to Andrew Robichaud, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of history. Robichaud’s CAS course, History of Boston: Community and Conflict, seeks to reconcile the celebrated aspects of the city’s history—Puritans, pilgrims, and all—and the parts that are forgotten.
“A Lasting Legacy of Excellence”: Reflections on President Brown’s Impact on BU Research
To see President Robert A. Brown’s impact on research at Boston University, you just need to take a walk through its campuses. A series of striking buildings, all built within the past two decades, are the physical representation of the University’s emergence as a world-class research institution during Brown’s tenure: the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering, the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, and—most recently—the eye-catching Center for Computing & Data Sciences.
‘We’re afraid the building is going to collapse’ – Malden residents can’t get through to housing management, form coalition
Gathered in the parking lot of Malden Towers apartment complex at 99 Florence St., those present witnessed three Malden tenant associations come together. The event, which started at noon, was organized by the City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) housing nonprofit. The nonprofit brought together the Malden Towers Tenant Association, the United Properties Tenant Association and the Maplewood Square Tenant Association into a coalition with one mission: dignified housing.