Campaign for Boston University Is Announced
The community holds a dazzling, celebratory gala to mark the formal announcement of the Campaign for Boston University—BU’s first major comprehensive fundraising effort. With an ambitious goal of raising as much as $1 billion for financial aid, faculty support, research, and facility improvements, the campaign will place the University on a list of just 53 universities that have attempted 10-figure fundraising initiatives. More important, it will help elevate the University’s academic standing, extend its global impact, and make the BU experience more accessible for students across the broadest possible socioeconomic spectrum.
Kilachand Honors College Students Get Their Own Home
The Kilachand Honors College receives another $10 million donation from Rajen Kilachand (Questrom’74), who donated $25 million last year and renamed the University Honors College for his parents, Arvind and Chandan Nandlal Kilachand. The newest gift will renovate Shelton Hall, now known as Kilachand Hall, as a dorm for Kilachand Honors students.
Redstone Gives $18M to School of Law
The Viacom executive chairman’s gift will kick-start the construction of an addition to LAW’s main tower at the center of the Charles River Campus. The addition will bear the media giant’s name. “I feel a very close relationship with Boston University,” says Redstone (Hon.’94).
BU to Establish Autism Center of Excellence
The National Institutes of Health announces an award of $10 million to establish an Autism Center of Excellence (ACE) at Boston University. The five-year grant will fund research devoted to the least probed aspects of the increasingly common disorder—autism spectrum disorder—which remains baffling for scientists. With the NIH funds, the BU center, which will marshal researchers from several fields to study autism and language, is the first federally designated center in the nation established to address the critical needs of this largely neglected end of the autism spectrum.
Center for Student Services Opens
The University invests roughly $70 million in new summer construction, renovations, and technology upgrades. Among the most anticipated projects on the Charles River Campus is the Center for Student Services. The building is now home to six academic advising programs, including the Educational Resource Center, the Center for Career Development, and several College of Arts & Sciences programs, as well as a new dining hall that can accommodate more than 1,000 students.
First Men’s Varsity Lacrosse Coach Named
Five months after announcing plans to establish a Division I varsity men’s lacrosse team, BU taps 11-year coaching veteran Ryan Polley as the new team’s head coach. Polley spent the last six seasons as an assistant coach at Yale. He helped the Bulldogs claim the 2012 Ivy League tournament title with wins over lacrosse powerhouses Princeton and Cornell, earning the team its first NCAA bid since 1992. BU currently has a club team, which plays in the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association’s Pioneer Collegiate Lacrosse League, finishing this past season with a 2–10 record. Lacrosse was officially designated as a club sport in 1972.
New Sports League
The University accepts an invitation to join the Patriot League, beginning with the 2013–2014 academic year. BU will leave the America East conference, of which it was a founding member in 1979. The University will be the ninth full member of the Patriot League, which, like America East, is a Division I conference. Division I is the highest competitive level recognized by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). “We are very impressed by the academic quality of the institutions in the Patriot League and by the league’s commitment to student athletics while effectively competing at the NCAA Division I level,” President Brown says.
State-of-the-Art Med Dorm a Game-Changer
A nine-story building is now home to 208 medical students. The $40 million project was in the works for more than five years, since the MED dean’s advisory board decided to make it more afforable to attend BU’s medical program, which is among the 10 most expensive nationwide.
First Knox Professorship
The Robert and Jeanne Knox Foundation gives BU $2.5 million to create a professorship. School of Public Health Professor Jonathon Simon is named the inaugural Robert A. Knox Professor. Simon, who leads BU’s Center for Global Health & Development (CGHD), has spent a quarter-century battling childhood illnesses and death in the developing world. The focus on urban health, Knox says, is appropriate for big-city BU, “which in some ways has in its own DNA the problems of living in an urban environment.”
Google Chairman Addresses Grads
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google, delivers the 139th Commencement address. “You can write the code for all of us,” Schmidt says. “You’re connected to each other in ways those who came before you could never have dreamed of.” While he has spent most of his life in the technology sector, Schmidt also urges students to have “real” conversations with friends and family. “Life,” he says, “is not lived in the glow of a monitor. Life is not a series of status updates. Life is not about your friend count. It’s about the friends you count on.”
