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BU Academy makes Boston magazine’s best-of list
“Few schools — public or private — can compete with the facilities accorded BU Academy,” reads Boston magazine’s September cover story, an analysis and ranking of greater Boston’s schools. “The students there have full access to one of the top universities in the country.” Indeed, BU Academy students enroll in college courses at the Charles River Campus, use the University’s laboratory spaces, libraries, and other facilities, and even enlist BU professors as advisors on their senior projects. For that reason and others, the magazine placed BU Academy among the region’s 10 best private schools. It reported that BUA students’ average SAT score of 1430 is better than those at all competing private schools except Roxbury Latin, beating out schools more than 200 years old, such as Phillips and Milton academies. “This ranking is an affirmation that BU Academy has become a permanent member of the top tier of private schools in this very august area for independent schools,” says James Tracy, BU Academy headmaster. “A school is only as good as its community, and BU Academy is part of an enormously engaged community.”
Giles named one of 50 top black research scientists
Roscoe Giles, an ENG professor of electrical and computer engineering and deputy director of the Center for Computational Science, was recently named one of the 2004 “50 Most Important Blacks in Research Science” by Career Communications Group, Inc. The annual award from the Maryland-based publishing company recognizes the accomplishments of minority scientists who promote diversity in their professions and provide young people of color with role models in science and research.
Giles is a theoretical physicist whose research focuses on using high-performance computers to solve problems in physics and materials science, and on the development of algorithms for large-scale micromagnetic modeling and molecular dynamic simulation. He also is a founder and executive director of the Institute for African-American ECulture, a National Science Foundation–funded institute that addresses the so-called “digital divide” limiting access to information technology among minorities and the poor in the United States.
The Career Communications Group’s awards will be conferred during the Emerald Honors Conference for Research Science, in Nashville, Tenn., September 17 and 18. Giles and the other 2004 award recipients will be featured in the September issue of Science Spectrum.
Daneel’s novel among best Zimbabwean books
Marthinus L. Daneel, an STH professor of missiology and codirector of STH’s Center for Global Christianity and Mission, was honored recently in Harare, Zimbabwe, as the author of one of the 75 most important pieces of Zimbabwean literature of the 20th century. Daneel published the English-language novel Guerilla Snuff in 1997 under his Shona name, Mafuranhunzi Gumbo. In it, he describes the roles of traditional spirit mediums and indigenous church prophets during the 1965-1980 Zimbabwean chimurenga liberation war. Daneel, who spends six months of the year in Zimbabwe engaged in research and Christian missions work, led an ecumenical movement of rural, indigenous, Shona-speaking churches there during the war. A white Christian, he refused to bear arms against blacks and was publicly condemned as a traitor by the country’s pro-apartheid regime. Of the 75 books chosen to comprise a canon of “classic Zimbabwean” literature by the Zimbabwe International Book Fair and the nation’s British Embassy, Guerilla Snuff is the only one by a white person.
10 September 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations