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.

Building a Better Boston: Behind the scenes at Boston City Hall, BU PhD candidates are solving problems small and big

If you walk through Boston City Hall, chances are you’ll bump into someone from BU working on the front lines, building a city that works for all. In recent years, several PhD candidates from BU have accepted fellowships or internships with the City of Boston, forming a brain trust and working on many of the city’s most ambitious initiatives. Some come from disciplines not traditionally thought of as feeders for public service—like history and sociology—but end up contributing in significant ways, many times picking up a love for municipal government that sticks. And many of those students arrive at City Hall via BU’s Initiative on Cities (IOC).

How Michelle Wu can become a global mayor on climate

Climate Ready Boston is the city’s initiative to get Boston ready for the long-term impacts of climate change. The initiative seeks to prepare for heat, flooding, and social vulnerability. In Michelle Wu’s 2020 Planning for a Boston Green New Deal and Just Recovery campaign proposal, she committed to climate justice and a suite of policies. She said, “Cities have tremendous power to lead the charge to mitigate the threat of climate change, eliminate the violence of poverty and economic inequality, close the racial wealth gap, and dismantle structural racism.”

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.

The Semester That Was: A look back, in pictures

Before we delve into the new semester, we thought we’d take a last look back at the old one. We’ve assembled more than two dozen Close Ups that ran on on BU Today from late August through December of last year.