Welcome Back and Meeting This Moment
Dear Members of the Boston University Community,
Welcome back. It’s wonderful to see our campuses bustling again with the vibrancy of our students, including many new faces. I hope you are starting 2026 feeling refreshed and engaged.
As we begin this new semester, I am heartened by the work we have done in several areas key to Boston University’s mission—and am looking forward to the future.
We are living in a time of significant change in the world and at Boston University. Change is not easy; however, our students, faculty, and staff are meeting this moment. I am grateful for all you do in the day-to-day activities of this University—whether in teaching and learning, research, service, or patient care—as we continue to move forward together.
Members of our University community have given generously of their time, creativity, and energy. Together, we have: developed a new orientation program, formulated our shared values, begun envisioning how our physical campus might evolve to better meet the needs of the future, created resources to support faculty teaching, developed a new performance evaluation system, generated recommendations for a new budget process, and launched new online programs.
Each of these efforts involved gathering input from community members and will have a real impact on the University. Thank you to everyone who has participated in these efforts so far, even as we know there is still more to do. We’ll continue to align our activities to our strategic goals and to learn whether our systems and processes are serving us well.
Collaboration is one of our shared values—and one of our greatest strengths. From our women’s hockey team’s strong showing in the Beanpot tournament to our music students’ performances, I have witnessed teamwork across this institution. Indeed, there are many examples of us working together to position BU to be both resilient and nimble in the face of any challenge or opportunity. I’d like to share some updates on a few of them.
Convergent Research and Education Task Force
Boston University is uniquely collaborative: Our researchers routinely work across disciplines to solve some of today’s biggest problems, the University has substantial experience in interdisciplinary faculty hiring, and BU is home to exemplary University-wide institutes and centers. For months, the co-chairs of the Task Force on Convergent Research and Education—Ken Lutchen and Darrell Kotton—have consulted with deans, department chairs, center directors, hospital partners, and more than 200 research-active faculty across all campuses to identify possibility-rich research themes as part of our convergent research initiative.
Career Strategy Working Group
Making sure our students have the skills, experiences, and competencies needed to navigate an evolving world of work is one of the most important parts of our mission. Harnessing our collaborative strength, the Career Strategy Working Group—a cross-disciplinary collection of faculty and staff—is developing a University-wide career curriculum to do just that. This curriculum will complement the lifelong learning and global engagement that our students already receive through the BU Hub—a general education program made possible through collaboration between the Office of the Provost and the University’s academic units.
Critical Embrace of Artificial Intelligence
Members of the AI Development Accelerator (AIDA) team are ensuring that our students, faculty, and staff have the tools they need to use artificial intelligence thoughtfully and critically. I commend the many faculty and staff who are leading this effort within AIDA and across the University, including John Byers, AIDA executive director, and Debbie Cheng, who was recently named AIDA director. I encourage everyone to learn about the many new opportunities to hone your own AI skills and connect with others.
Office for the Arts
We value the arts as core to our institution. Under the leadership of CFA Dean Harvey Young, interim vice president for the arts, we are developing new opportunities to more fully integrate and enrich the arts on our campuses. This past fall, we launched the first two of eight core initiatives in the arts: a new Office for the Arts and new arts programming that was incorporated into Orientation 2025. Last week, I had the pleasure of meeting with the alumni and parents who comprise our newly formed Arts Task Force, and I am delighted by the expertise and passion of this esteemed group.
There is so much to be proud of here at BU. I look forward to sharing much more about the University’s future at this critical time in higher education, our country, and our world at my upcoming Presidential Address on January 28. I hope to see you there.
I wish all of you the very best for the spring semester.
Sincerely,
Melissa Gilliam
President
*1/22/26 This message was sent to students, faculty, and staff.