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.
Class of 2020 Commencement Planned for May 2021
Boston University will give the Class of 2020 “an appropriately festive, in-person Commencement” in May 2021, “on or around” the same weekend it says farewell to the Class of 2021, President Robert A. Brown announced. BU’s original plan to hold the 2020 event in August or early fall of 2020 proved not to be feasible, due to ongoing concerns about the safety of mass gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.
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.
Ibram X. Kendi to Join BU and Launch BU Antiracism Center
One of the nation’s leading scholars and historians of racism will join Boston University’s faculty on July 1 and launch the BU Center for Antiracist Research. Kendi, 37, is the author of the 2019 best-selling book How To Be an Antiracist. He won the National Book Award in 2016 for Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. The new center will foster collaborations across the University; build multidisciplinary problem-centered research teams, and collect, organize, and utilize data on racial inequity.
BU Excels in Latest Grad Rankings from U.S. News & World Report
Several BU schools and programs advanced in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of the country’s best graduate schools. The School of Law jumped 3 spots to number 20 among 198 law schools. Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation's Occupational Therapy program retained its first-place ranking. Sargent’s Speech-Language Pathology program jumped 2 spaces, to number 10. Questrom School of Business full-time MBA program rose 2 spaces to 48th, among 477 business schools ranked.
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.
2020 Metcalf Cup and Prize Conferred on LAW’s Sarah Sherman-Stokes
Sarah Sherman-Stokes teaches students how to be immigration lawyers by being immigration lawyers. They represent immigrants in court under her supervision. They visit detained clients in jail. Sherman-Stokes’ teaching—and action—has helped win national recognition for BU’s immigration law program and the University’s most prestigious award for educators. A gift from the late Arthur G. B. Metcalf (Wheelock’35, Hon.’74), a BU Board of Trustees chair emeritus and former professor, funds the Metcalf Cup and Prize and the Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching, created in 1973 and presented at Commencement.
MED Class of 2020 to Make History with Early Graduation
Lending new credence to the school’s informal motto, “frontline medicine,” MED’s Class of 2020 will graduate a month earlier than scheduled so these new MDs can do their part to combat the coronavirus pandemic—and without the glory and ritual of an in-person convocation. Instead, they will graduate remotely, with a virtual—and memorable—ceremony conducted via Facebook Live.
President Brown Outlines BU’s Path Forward
A system for rapid testing and contact tracing. Technology for remote and in-person teaching and learning. New and better hygiene and public health practices on campus. Keeping our campus community together while we’re apart. Our whole effort, President Brown says, is focused on restoring the residential campus for teaching and research. “We will bring back the residential environment of BU and it will be as strong as ever.”
Commencement Postponed
Prioritizing safety amid the pandemic, Boston University is postponing its 147th Commencement scheduled for May 2020, to either late August or early fall, President Robert A. Brown announced. For the 7,200 soon-to-be graduates, it is emotionally wrenching news and the deferral of a milestone moment in their young lives.
