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.
Kevin Nylen Named Men’s Soccer Head Coach
After a three-year stint as the head coach of Florida International University’s (FIU) men’s soccer team, Kevin Nylen takes the helm of Men’s Soccer at BU. His former team made the Conference USA tournament all three seasons under his direction and made the NCAA Tournament during his first season in charge. Five of his former players were drafted by Major League Soccer teams.
Wheelock’s Interim Leader, David Chard, Appointed New Dean
David Chard, who led Wheelock College of Education & Human Development as interim dean since the merger of BU’s School of Education and Wheelock College, has been appointed dean of the college. “Lucy Wheelock viewed education as a path to a better society,” Chard says of the 19th-century early education pioneer who founded what became Wheelock College. “BU Wheelock College will be at the vanguard of this important work.”
New Wheelock Policy Center Examines Educational Inequities
The Wheelock Educational Policy Center (WEPC), a new interdisciplinary hub for research, will inform policy decisions that impact educational outcomes for historically marginalized students. The center’s research will focus on rethinking policies that have contributed to persistent inequities within the education system for students of color, students with disabilities, and English learners, among others.
Sujin Pak Appointed New Dean of the School of Theology
Sujin Pak is the new dean of the School of Theology, the oldest United Methodist Church seminary in the United States. Pak hopes to focus on LGBTQIA+ inclusion, visibility for STH faculty’s academic and social justice work, and silver linings taken from remote learning.
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.
Rockefeller Foundation Awards $1.5 Million to BU Antiracism Center
The Rockefeller Foundation, a global science-driven philanthropy founded more than a century ago, is giving the BU center $1.5 million over two years to tackle questions around racial disparities in the United States—and to provide solutions. While most of the grant is unrestricted, a significant portion will fund the center’s COVID-19 Racial Data Tracker.
