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.”
Kilachand Honors College Opens
Kilachand Honors College welcomes its first class of 75 entering freshmen. The new four-year, campuswide program replaces the University Professors Program. Students will study in cross-disciplinary classes and intensive seminars and tackle a senior research project during their undergraduate studies.
Green Light for Biosafety Lab
The Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs announces a draft decision allowing researchers to conduct lower-level biosafety research in BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories (NEIDL) on the Medical Campus in Boston’s South End. The first research scheduled for the state-of-the-art facility are two projects involving nonpathogenic tuberculosis.
