Metcalf Cup and Prize First Awarded
The Metcalf Cup and Prize and the Metcalf Awards for Excellence in Teaching are first awarded. These teaching honors are created by an endowment from the late Dr. Arthur G. B. Metcalf, Chairman Emeritus of the Board of Trustees.
Boston Scholars Program Initiated
The Boston Scholars Program is initiated and provides full-tuition scholarships and pre-college courses for local high school students.
John H. Knowles Keynote Address
President of the Rockefeller Foundation John H. Knowles delivers the Keynote Address at Commencement.
Prison Education Program
The Boston University Prison Education Program, founded by labor organizer, tenant activist, and poet Elizabeth Barker, offers its first credit-bearing college courses at MCI/Norfolk prison. The program strives to provide the means whereby, through education, students currently imprisoned can become informed, successful, and contributing citizens. Students who earn 30 to 60 credits can apply the credits towards a Boston University bachelor’s degree and even go on to pursue a master’s degree. In 1991, the Prison Education Program expands to include MCI/Framingham, the only penal institution in Massachusetts for women. Boston University continues to be nationally recognized for its contribution to the lives of prisoners in the program, and by extension, its contribution to the prisons they inhabit, the families they left behind, and the communities to which they will return.
John Silber, Seventh President
from 1971–1996
Texas native John Silber graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio and earned a PhD in philosophy from Yale University. Appointed Boston University president in 1971, Silber took charge of an institution in financial and educational disarray. His first task was to balance the budget. He also hired distinguished new faculty, raised admissions standards, expanded the campus, built the endowment, reinstituted academic requirements, and had protesters who broke the law arrested. His actions during the 1970s provoked opposition and controversy but, by the 1980s, even Silber’s critics conceded that he had transformed Boston University. Among his other notable achievements were managing the school system of neighboring Chelsea for 10 years and establishing the Prison Education Program and Boston University Academy. In March 1994, he announced that he would step down on May 31, 1996, to become Chancellor.
BU doctors become co-directors of the Framingham Heart Study
In 1971, Boston University doctors become co-directors of the Framingham Heart Study, a landmark series of physical exams and lifestyle interviews that began in 1948 with 5,209 residents of Framingham, Mass. After more than 60 years, the study is one of the largest and longest-running epidemiological research projects in the world.
John Silber Inaugurated as President
John Silber is inaugurated as President of Boston University; his inaugural address is entitled "The Pollution of Time." Silber succeeds in persuading the graduating class to wear academic dress and argues that the ceremony and its trappings are important symbols of tradition in defiance of the day's "instant culture."
University Professors Program Created
The University Professors Program (UNI), an interdisciplinary program for gifted students, is created. The first course is taught in 1972.
Men’s Hockey First NCAA Championship
The Terrier hockey team wins the NCAA Championship, its first of four over the next quarter-century.
First Rhodes Scholar
Richard Taylor (COM'73) becomes Boston University’s first Rhodes Scholar.
