Partner with MetroBridge

Municipalities and community-based organizations can learn how to partner with MetroBridge below. Click here to join our mailing list list to receive updates and requests for proposals via email.

BU Faculty interested in teaching a MetroBridge course should contact David Gross, MetroBridge Program Manager, at davgross@bu.edu.

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Overview

MetroBridge embeds real-world projects for municipalities and community organizations into courses at BU, enlisting our students and faculty as allies in addressing urban issues. MetroBridge cultivates projects by seeking out the distinct research needs of cities, towns and community-based organizations and collaborating with faculty across the university to find the best course match for each project. We view our approach as a win-win solution as it provides tailored research support to under-resourced communities, while simultaneously providing real-world learning experiences to students from various disciplines to prepare them for their future careers.

The MetroBridge team serves as a one-stop-shop and point-of-contact for project partners, supporting the project from idea submission to project completion. We assist with project scoping and development, handle the matching of courses for each project, assist with project management, and ensure effective communication between BU and project liaisons. At the end of each semester, students present their work and the MetroBridge team coordinates the development of final deliverables.

Submit a Project Proposal

We invite local governments and community-based organizations to submit project ideas for upcoming semesters. Submitting a project idea as soon as possible increases the likelihood of a course match, and we strongly encourage submission by early to mid-November whenever possible. 

You can view a selection of recent MetroBridge projects below. 

A member of our team will contact you after your submission. We do our best to match each project idea with a course, but if we are unable to do so for the upcoming semester, your project idea will also be considered for future ones.

Submit a Project Idea

Topics & Areas of Focus

The MetroBridge program is university-wide, which means our government and community partners can leverage all of the academic expertise at Boston University on a wide-range of topics, including those that are not listed below. If you have a project idea that does not fall under one of the below topics, we still encourage you to submit a proposal. 

The following topics* either (1) pertain to relevant courses taught by faculty interested in incorporating a MetroBridge project during the upcoming 2025-2026 academic year or (2) are MetroBridge priority areas of focus. Please note this list is updated frequently, and we encourage submissions on topics not listed below:

  • Community engagement & assessment
  • Climate change, environment, and sustainability (including, but not limited to, urban heat)
  • Economics (including, but not limited to, cost benefit analysis, funding, economic analysis of public sector policies)
  • Entrepreneurship (creative and innovative potential solutions)^
  • Environmental justice (including, but not limited to, climate justice, community gardens, rats and EJ, and land rights issues)
  • Education
  • Homelessness
  • Housing
  • Health (including, but not limited to, racial inequities, structural solutions, social determinants of health, health policy, and mental health)
  • Intercultural communication
  • Mechanical engineering and public works
  • Planning & development
  • Policy analysis (including, but not limited to, policy implementation and economic analysis)
  • Public administration and management (including, but not limited to, determining a path forward on policy implementation, analyzing root causes of issues faced by departments and public sector agencies)
  • Public health & human services
  • Racial equity and justice (including, but not limited to, reparations policy, health inequities, social determinants of health, and environmental justice)
  • Statistical analysis of existing datasets (particularly in areas pertaining to health and/or the environment).
  • and more!*

*Please note that the above list is not a comprehensive list of possible project topics & focus areas. It may change as we continually hold conversations with our faculty network. 

^We work with an entrepreneurship course in which students come up with creative, innovative solutions over a 2–5 week period. Projects that are a good fit for this course are often in a brainstorming phase or otherwise looking for solution-driven possibilities. 

Project Timeline

The MetroBridge program operates on the academic semester cycle.* Each semester is 14 weeks long, although projects may not run for the full 14 weeks. While we accept submissions for summer semesters, please note that summer semesters have limited courses available to match and are most suitable for limited scope or sprint-type projects.

  • The Fall Semester runs from September until December break. A student-led presentation is typically held in December, with final deliverables completed in December or January.
  • The Spring Semester runs from late January until late April or early May. A student-led presentation is typically held in April or May, with final deliverables completed in May.
  • *In limited instances projects run across both semesters (fall and spring, for nine months). These projects begin at the start of the fall semester  (September) and conclude at the end of the spring semester (April or May).  At this time, these projects are limited to mechanical engineering and city planning. 

If a project is large in scope, we may work with partners and faculty to divide the project up across multiple semesters. These may be in back-to-back semesters (e.g. fall 2025 and spring 2026) or in back-to-back years (e.g. fall 2025 and fall 2026).

Partner Requirements

Local governments and organizations serving as MetroBridge partners should be prepared to donate their time, in addition to sharing data and reports relevant to the project(s). However, we work to ensure the time commitment is not onerous, and the amount of time required is typically far less than supervising a fellow or intern.

Project partners may be expected to:

  • Attend planning and check-in meetings with MetroBridge program team and faculty, and occasionally with students.
  • Visit the class on campus at the beginning of the semester to provide an overview of the project and the city/town.
  • Attend the final presentation (depending on class time and partner location, this may be on campus or at the partner’s offices).
  • Host a student site visit (if applicable, depending on class time and partner location)
  • Coordinate meetings with key local government staff and community partners (if applicable)
  • Providing information such as existing reports, plans, or data related to the project and meeting minutes with pertinent agenda items (if applicable)

The MetroBridge team provides assists with project scoping and project management, assists with arranging meetings between students and community partners if applicable, provides assistance to faculty and students, and ensures effective communication between BU and project liaisons. At the end of the semester, students present their work directly to partnering local governments and or community organizations, and the MetroBridge team provides support to the development of final deliverables.

Select MetroBridge Projects

Recent News: In partnership with MetroBridge and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), Urban-H Associate Director Katherine Levine Einstein and students enrolled in the Inequality in American Politics (CAS PO 519) course during the fall 2023 semester recently published their findings concerning the implementation of the 2021 MBTA Communities Act (MBTA-C) in Arlington, Brookline, Milton, and Newton. This brief was first released at the Initiative on Cities event Zoning for Change: Insights from the MBTA Communities Act Implementation on March 4, 2024. Read more.

Stay in Touch / Contact Us

To receive email updates from MetroBridge regarding calls for project ideas and faculty course matching, please click here to sign-up to our email list. In addition to signing-up — or if you have any questions — please reach out to our Program Manager directly:

David Gross, MetroBridge Program Manager
davgross@bu.edu