Category: Campus
First Day Back for Fully Residential Campus
September 2 marks the first day back to a fully residential campus for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic struck the country and emptied the campus in March 2020. In-person classroom instruction returns, student clubs and organizations can meet in person, workouts at FitRec can resume, and gathering with friends in University dining halls and at BU Athletics events is again possible. In an effort to stop the spread of COVID, masks and weekly COVID tests are still a part of everyday life.
Return to Campus on June 14
Campus repopulation at 50 percent capacity begins June 14. During a recent webinar-style Town Hall to prepare for the gradual return, President Brown acknowledged faculty and staff anxiety and emphasized the importance of vaccinations. The findings from the Committee on the Future of Staff Work were sent out in late June.
BU Declares Juneteenth an Official University Holiday
BU’s decision to add Juneteenth as an official holiday is part of an ongoing effort to make BU “the diverse, equitable, and inclusive community that best embodies our values,” President Robert A. Brown announced in a letter to the University. Juneteenth, long celebrated in the African American community, is traditionally observed on June 19, marking the day in 1865 when the last enslaved people in America—in Texas, where the holiday began—were told they were free.
BU Requires Students to Get COVID-19 Vaccine
Students enrolled in fall semester classes are required to be vaccinated against COVID-19. BU joins schools across the country taking this same step to return campus life to normal after more than a year of disruption from the pandemic.
BU Gives First COVID-19 Vaccines
Nearly a year after Student Health Services began fielding calls about strange flu-like symptoms, BU began the painstaking process of inoculating as many as 45,000 people—students, faculty, and staff—across its campuses against COVID-19.
Newbury Center Will Support First-Generation Students
BU announces a new support hub for first-generation students from matriculation through graduation. The Newbury Center is named for and endowed by a contribution from Newbury College, which closed in 2019 after more than half a century serving students of all backgrounds, 70 percent of whom were first in their families to go to college. At BU, about 17 percent of undergraduates and 18 percent of the freshmen are first-generation college students.
Launch of Phase 4: Implementation of Strategic Plan
The new Strategic Plan establishes a vision for the future of Boston University, and a set of measurable goals to guide institutional investments between now and 2030. BU’s strategic priorities are: a vibrant academic experience; research that matters; diversity, equity, and inclusion; community, big yet small; and global engagement. BU is entering Phase 4 of the Strategic Plan, which will run through early 2021, and will engage stakeholders across BU to develop specific actions to turn the plan into reality.
2020’s Historic Move-In
During BU’s longer-than-usual 2020 Move-In, students have mostly positive things to say about their return to residential life. They admit to being leery about the future of the fall semester, given that many schools have pulled back on plans to reopen and are now opting for fully online teaching and learning.
BU Children’s Center Gets Expanded Home, Now Accepts Infants
In its new home in a completely renovated early-20th-century mansion in Brookline’s historic Cottage Farm neighborhood—within walking distance of the George Sherman Union—the new Children’s Center has triple the space of its old home at 32 Harry Agganis Way, allowing an increase in the number of children it can serve and enabling it to begin caring for infants (starting at eight weeks old) and younger toddlers. The center accepts children up to those entering kindergarten.
BU Campuses to Reopen with In-Person Classes in Fall
The residential experience of Boston University will resume this fall, President Robert A. Brown announced in letters to new and returning students. But, he wrote, it will be a “very different campus,” than what students, faculty, and staff are accustomed to—with COVID-19 testing and tracing, a blend of in-person and remote teaching and learning, redesigned experiences inside campus residences, dining halls, classrooms, and labs, and daily activities where masks and social distancing are expected.
