Celebrating “You Are Why”
Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff,
As we near the end of the semester and look ahead to a new calendar year, I want to celebrate a project that has created positive energy and enthusiasm about the life-changing work happening at Boston University.
The “You Are Why” initiative was launched in September to showcase the best of who we are as a community through our research, scholarship, and service. We improve the lives of our students as well as people in Boston, across the country, and around the world.
This effort has already made significant progress in raising awareness of our impactful work, opening doors to new partnerships and raising funds for faculty research, graduate student fellowships, and undergraduate research opportunities.
We are pleased to engage partners—new and existing—in innovative ways and to encourage boundary-crossing collaboration among our faculty, students, staff, supporters, and alumni. The resounding start to this effort is thanks to so many of you, including:
Center for Neurorehabilitation Director Terry Ellis, who is dedicated to improving Parkinson’s disease care; Menino Scholars advisor Michael Dennehy (CAS’92, Wheelock’01), who is deeply committed to our students and the programs that serve them; and City Scholar Summer Fellow and Menino Scholar Maisha Kazi (CAS’26), who has already begun her career in public service interning with Boston Mayor Wu’s Office of Cultural Affairs. These impressive community members are among others highlighted in “You Are Why,” and as the initiative continues, we will add more examples of how our scholarship, research, and teaching impact people’s lives.
Our campus-wide communicators, who developed the tremendous content showcasing the groundbreaking work we are doing in service to society, through compelling videos, an interactive website, our Annual Report, and a strong social media campaign featuring excellent engagement. Within the first month of the effort, the content was seen on social media 280,000 times and a variety of videos were viewed nearly 200,000 times. Our “Boston University Is a Community of Doers” video was featured at halftime at all home hockey games and during Red Hot Hockey at Madison Square Garden in New York, where our Terriers prevailed over Cornell.
Our government relations teams, which are sharing these messages in our call for enhancing and building new partnerships. That outreach has earned meetings with leaders and prospective collaborators in government and industry, with whom we are discussing shared goals and how we might work together to reach them.
Our Advancement team, which has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in support of a scholarship fund for PhD students, our Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, and a research futures fund to drive convergent research. The team continues to carry this message—in conversations with individuals and groups across the country and around the world—while working toward fundraising goals to support our mission now and to invest in the scientists and scholars of the future.
Our trustees, who are organizing their own collective support and developing plans for engaging their networks to support us.
Others in our community, who have given their energy and resources to the idea that we are better when we work together in pursuit of the greater good.
I am invigorated by this community’s strong response to “You Are Why” and our calls to action. In these often disorienting times, it is more important than ever that we think differently and boldly about how we can work together and challenge one another, engage collaboratively internally and externally, and ensure that Boston University’s mission continues to flourish. We must also take time to share how our activities are vital to everyone’s future.
Over the next few weeks, I hope that you enjoy some well-deserved rest and take advantage of opportunities for quiet and reflection. Let us come back to campus in January refreshed and ready to continue to pursue what is important to us and those we serve.
I’m looking forward to sharing and celebrating our work and ambitions during my upcoming presidential address on January 28. I hope to see many of you there.
As our “You Are Why” campaign video captures so well, Boston University is truly “a community of doers,” and each of you makes this community special and our impact so widely felt.
Sincerely,
Melissa Gilliam
President
*12/16/25 This message was sent to students, faculty, and staff.