Dean's Message

Dean’s Message

I write to you during what has been the most surreal and challenging start to an academic year that any of us have experienced. The COVID-19 global pandemic, and the consequences it will have on our society, will be felt for many years to come. Certainly, the personal tragedies that many have experienced in terms of loss of life and livelihood eclipse any challenges we have had in returning to our campus.

Here at BU Wheelock, there is much to be grateful for. As I write this letter, Boston University has opened safely and has put in place numerous safeguards to ensure the good health of students, staff, and faculty. I am proud to be part of a university that has worked very hard to prepare and made it possible for students to pursue their degrees from anywhere in the world.

While the pandemic caused us to move to remote learning and working this spring, BU Wheelock faculty and staff continued the work we started last year of creating a meaningful strategic plan that will guide us for the next decade and help us achieve what we’re calling the BU Wheelock GuideStar. Our GuideStar is what motivates us as a college. Specifically, we are dedicated to transforming the systems that impact learning and human development for a thriving, sustainable, and just future in Boston and beyond.

Our GuideStar is especially timely as we have watched communities struggle with the racist and unjust treatment that has pervaded the very places—including schools, hospitals, and clinics—where children and families are expected to grow, learn, and be healthy together. Our college plans to work together with our community partners to continue the difficult process of changing for the better. Our strategic plan will help guide us in our decision-making and will help us hold ourselves accountable as we work to help make Boston a more just and equitable place.

At BU’s 2020 matriculation ceremony, Nahid Bhadelia, a BU School of Medicine associate professor of infectious diseases and the medical director of the Special Pathogens Unit at Boston Medical Center, spoke about her experience with epidemics, saying, “They serve as a mirror to our societies and time, they break us along our fault lines. They prey on those we fail to protect, and COVID-19 is no exception. . . it has sharply laid out the inequalities and the lack of access to care.”

The stories in this issue of BU Wheelock magazine show how our community is uniquely prepared to address some of the greatest challenges we face as a society: systemic racism; exclusion; discrimination; economic, environmental, and social injustice; mental and physical health challenges. We are a team that can make a difference in very real ways to mend our fault lines. We have the capacity to create and share knowledge, to serve as allies and advocates for causes that will make the greatest difference in people’s lives.

I hope you, our alumni and supporters, find the contents of the magazine as inspiring as I do and that you will take action in your community to further an important cause. Thank you for your continued support.