Category: Community
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.
St. Elizabeth’s Joins List of MED Teaching Hospitals
As part of an agreement between the University and Steward Health Care, St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton will become BU’s newest teaching hospital. The five-year partnership deepens and expands the existing relationship between BU and St. Elizabeth’s in a way that benefits students, faculty, and patients.
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.
Student COVID-19 Safety Campaign Gets National Recognition
F*ck It Won’t Cut It, the student-led campaign to encourage students to take preventive measures against COVID-19 to stay safe on campus, gains national attention from public health leaders. The American Marketing Association asked the student team to lead a virtual audience engagement session at its 2020 Symposium for the Marketing of Higher Education, and the group spoke at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webinar for university administrators and health staff.
BU-Supported Wind Farm Generates Clean Electricity
BU is buying clean energy from the South Dakota wind farm that the University enabled, fulfilling a goal of our Climate Action Plan. BU will buy 205,000 megawatt hours of electricity annually for 15 years from wind farm developer, builder, and operator ENGIE North America. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says BU has the largest single, active, clean power purchase agreement out of the 126 colleges and universities in the EPA’s Green Power Partnership, a consortium of organizations that voluntarily commit to clean power.
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.
New Trustees Committee on Diversity and Inclusion
The Board of Trustees has created a new Diversity and Inclusion Committee to further the University’s antiracism agenda. The committee’s creation comes in a year of racial introspection for the University, and the country.
Pain, Anger, and Hope as BU Comes Together to Talk Race and Racism
Amid a charged national climate, almost 5,000 students, faculty, staff, and alumni logged on for the BU Day of Collective Engagement: Racism and Antiracism, Our Realities and Our Roles—an array of webinars held following weeks of national protests over recent, high-profile police killings of Black people across the country. While the current protests were front of mind for many, conversations also focused on effecting change in hiring, curriculum, and other areas within the academy.
BU to Set Up COVID-19 Testing for Students, Faculty, and Staff
Boston University announced plans to set up its own COVID-19 testing program this fall for faculty, staff, and students—a critical step toward repopulating its residential campus. Samples will be tested for the coronavirus at a lab inside the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. Specialized robots will help speed the process, and results will be delivered electronically.
Expanded Thurman Center Gets a New Look on Campus
The relocated and expanded Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground (HTC) opens at 808 Commonwealth Ave., the latest addition to a culture and arts city block that includes CitySpace, the Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre, and CFA’s Production Center. With windows looking out on Comm Ave and the BU Bridge, HTC’s increased visibility - both literal and figurative – is wholly intentional, redoubling the University’s commitment to frank discussion and the cross-pollination of ideas. Balancing public spaces like a performance venue and open floor plans with private spaces like a tech-free meditation room, the new, larger HTC comforts and invigorates students in ways impossible in its former space.
