$10M Gift Names New CFA Theater
Global financier and BU Trustee Steve Zide (LAW'86) donates $10M to name a new BU theater, which is part of a 75,000-square-foot artistic complex under construction on the Charles River Campus. The gift is a tribute to his theater-loving wife, Janet Zide, and will be named after his in-laws, Joan and Edgar Booth, who brought the joy of stage performance into his family's life.
School of Hospitality Administration Offers Master’s Degree
To meet the need of the hospitality industry for more job applicants at all levels of employment, the School of Hospitality Administration adds a one-year graduate degree. For the past 36 years, the school has offered only undergraduate programs. “Companies now require those at upper management to have a solid foundation in the business of hospitality,” says Makarand Mody, SHA assistant professor of hospitality marketing. “A master’s degree is becoming the norm, not the exception, for progression in the industry.”
Trustee’s Gift Ignites Student Entrepreneurship
BU Spark!, a new incubator for technology-driven student entrepreneurship, comes to life thanks to a $1M gift from the Mullen Family Foundation. Based at the Rafik B. Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, BU Spark! will offer programs and resources to help students pursue next-stage development of projects.
BU and Red Hat Forge $5M Partnership
Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open-source enterprise software, joins the University in a five-year partnership aimed at advancing research into emerging and translational technologies, such as cloud computing and big data platforms. The collaboration will involve researchers from both Red Hat and BU, and will provide opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to drive new ideas and new technologies. The plan includes support for two research labs, one at Red Hat’s new corporate space in Boston’s Seaport District and one on the Charles River Campus.
$2M Gift Names the Dahod Family Alumni Center
BU Trustee Shamim Dahod (CGS’76, CAS’78, MED’87) and her husband, Ashraf Dahod, donated $2M toward a new alumni center. The Dahod Family Alumni Center will be housed on the second and third floors of the BU Castle, along with the Alumni Relations office. The gift bolsters a $9M top-to-bottom restoration project of The Castle, preserving its distinctive architecture and décor.
BU Grads Ranked Among the World’s Most Employable
The employability of BU graduates is ranked 11th in the world and 7th in the nation, according to Times Higher Education. The 2016 Global University Employability Ranking survey queried the opinions of thousands of management-level recruiters and managing directors of international companies.
University Lands 32nd in U.S. News Global Rankings
BU places 32nd in this year’s assessment of global universities by U.S. News & World Report. The University matched last year’s ranking despite increased competition from a pool of universities that was expanded by one-third. BU also earns high marks in several academic disciplines. In a field of 200 programs evaluated, BU ranked 38 in neuroscience and behavior, 43 in molecular biology and genetics, and 56 in immunology. In a field of 400 programs evaluated, BU ranked 26 in physics and 63 in biology and biochemistry.
Award–Winning Professor Takes Over at Kilachand Honors College
Carrie Preston, an associate professor of English and director of the Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies Program at CAS, takes the helm of Kilachand Honors College, succeeding founding director Charles Dellheim who led the school since 2011. Preston is the recipient of a Peter Paul Career Development Professorship, the CAS Wisneski Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the University’s United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year Award. She also received the national De La Torre Bueno Prize, given to a dance studies book, for Modernism’s Mythic Pose: Gender, Genre, Solo Performance (Oxford University Press, 2011). “I hope to develop a curriculum that attends to issues of diversity and multiplicity, prejudice and power, in a global context,” Preston says.
Surgeon and Former US Health Official to Lead New Health Innovation Institute
Jonathan Woodson, a vascular surgeon and former Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs for the US Department of Defense, is tapped to lead the University’s new Institute for Health System Innovation & Policy, based in the Questrom School of Business. Woodson, who served with the DOD from 2010 to 2016, assumes the Larz Anderson Professorship in Management and Professor of the Practice. A collaborative endeavor, the new institute will focus on expanding health system research initiatives, deepening connections between scholars, policymakers, and corporations, and advancing curricular initiatives across the University.
Trustees Adopt Broad Climate Change Strategy
Expanding the University’s efforts to curb the impact of climate change, locally and globally, the Board of Trustees approves a broad strategy, including the avoidance of investments in companies that extract coal and tar sands oil, the most carbon-intensive fuels. The board also authorized a Climate Action Plan that will map out goals and timetables for greater energy efficiency, green energy use, and climate research and education on campus. President Brown announces he intends to fold these efforts and goals into the University’s Strategic Plan.
