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A Message from Dean Cudd Undergraduate Education Graduate Education Faculty Facilities Community Global University Make Your Impact Boston University
What will you do? Irene and Thomas Kelley are giving students in the Department of Earth & Environment the tools they need to measure crucial data. David S. Katz is giving students in the CAS Astronomy program the power to quickly analyze and download data. George Bernard enables biology graduate students to travel for research, making the planet their laboratory. CAS board member Steve Karbank is bringing leading environmental philosophers to speak to the BU community. Generous supporters helped renovate our organic chemistry labs, resulting in three state-of-the-art labs in 6,000 square feet of space. Bob Hildreth and Susan Tane are bringing great poets to campus through The Favorite Poem Project. Living fully to 102, poet Ida Fasel (CAS’31, GRS’45) funded a fellowship in Jewish Studies. Benjamin Lambert is bringing chemistry to life with the gift of the department's first endowed colloquim series.

Finding Planets before They Happen

Thanks to BU’s major contribution to funding the $53 million Discovery Channel Telescope, CAS astronomer Catherine Espaillat is able to decipher the puzzle of planetary formation. Watch the video

Facilities

Keeping the focus on what matters

The College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences are efficient operations, making good use of every inch of classroom and lab space available to us. We need your support to keep improving our infrastructure so that our scholars only need to worry about string theory and Renaissance art—not tools, space, or technology.

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Boston Playwrights’ Theatre

Founded in 1981 at Boston University by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott, Boston Playwrights’ Theatre is the only New England theater devoted entirely to new plays—three or four new plays are mounted by BU each year and it is well-used by other community theater groups at other times. At the core of its programs is the Playwriting MFA offered in the English department. Works by award-winning alumni have been produced in regional and New York houses as well as in London’s West End, and many have garnered national, regional, and Boston awards.

The theatre has widespread support as a proving ground and incubator of new talent, so its physical maintenance and upkeep have become matters of high importance for the University and the larger community.

”As with any theatre, the physical attributes—good, reliable lighting equipment and set storage, soundproofing, and air-conditioning—can have a major impact on productions,“ says artistic director Kate Snodgrass (GRS’90), a longtime and vigorous advocate for new playwrights and local actors. ”We could then focus entirely on the challenges of the plays themselves, rather than on the limitations of our venue—a huge step forward for our writers.“

Donors who have made a difference already

  • Irene (CAS’54, GRS’55, SED’92) and Thomas (CAS’54, GRS’55) Kelley gave $50,000 to enable the Department of Earth & Environment to purchase vital equipment.
  • Thanks to generous support, CAS’s organic chemistry labs have undergone significant renovation resulting in three new modern labs in 6,000 square feet of space, along with major changes in the pedagogical approach to teaching undergraduate organic chemistry.
  • CAS mathematician Robert Devaney became the first CAS Feld Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in 2010. The award, established through a $10 million gift to three BU schools attended by Feld family members, honors scholarship and teaching excellence.

Our impact

Creating spaces that inspire

Facilities are where our work happens. Most often, they are taken for granted by the outside world and even by those who use them—and yet, they are critically important.

One example of how facilities can transform the work we do is our inspiring new Center for Student Services, just off Kenmore Square and recently opened. It houses expanded CAS student academic and career advising, writing assistance, and a host of other services for students.

More humble spaces can also transform the way we view the world. CAS is full of spaces that help great ideas come to fruition, like the Rooftop Lab, run by environmentalist Nathan Phillips at the very top of the CAS building. There, Phillips and his students assess Boston’s carbon footprint, measuring greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks and from fuels burned to power factories, utilities, homes, and offices.

We make the best use of our space, but our longstanding space crunch persists, and we continue to work with University planners to address that challenge. With your help, we will create and equip additional classrooms, labs, and offices. We will renovate aging facilities, many of them originally built to accommodate commuting students, and now in need of major upgrades.

Your impact

Build something that will endure

Your investment in the CAS physical plant—whether through an unrestricted gift to our Annual Fund or a major capital investment such as the funding of a new astronomy lab—supports our core mission in important ways. For example: we need to add professors to meet ever-increasing student demand; this in turn means that in some disciplines we’ll need to build new lab space.

The CAS campaign is donor-driven. In other words, your support for our physical infrastructure will reflect your personal priorities. Are you a committed environmentalist? You can improve our environmental research and teaching spaces. Are your interests in the traditional sciences? Consider supporting a new lab in any of several different CAS departments.

Make Your Impact
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