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A Message from Dean Sapiro 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.

Hope and Afghanistan

Qais Akbar Omar (GRS’16), a graduate student in the Creative Writing Program, has published a much-praised memoir, A Fort of Nine Towers: An Afghan Family Story. Read more

Graduate Education

At the cutting edge

Students entering the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences are exposed to the technology, faculty guidance, and academic rigor required to become leading thinkers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. But the world is changing, human knowledge is growing by leaps and bounds, and we need your support to stay at the cutting edge of graduate research.

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Mostly the apple pie

Art history doctoral candidate Austin Porter is passionate about the connections between commercial art and propaganda.

Porter recently became a 2012 Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Dissertation Fellow in American Art (among many other awards, including a Horowitz Fellowship from BU). Porter found that during World War II, American artists and government bureaucrats debated whether the content in propaganda posters and advertisements should depict the war’s actual violence and devastation, or whether artists—most of whom supported the war effort—should instead show Uncle Sam, baseball, apple pie, and a kind of Saturday Evening Post sensibility suggesting postwar prosperity. “By the end of the war,” says Porter, “it was mostly the apple pie.”

Porter has found the perfect confluence of his interests in American art, history, photography, and research at GRS. He’s also found the kind of welcome, support, and staff collegiality that colleagues say can be tough to find at other universities. And to top it off, he says, he doesn’t know where to begin praising his BU faculty advisor, Americanist Patricia Hills. “She doesn’t hold my hand,” he explains, “but provides opportunities” that are helping him find his own unique path.

Donors who have made a difference already

  • The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. provides fellowships to graduate students studying the history of art and architecture at BU for dissertations on 19th- and 20th-century American art.
  • The estate of John A. Gerda, MD (GRS’51) provided two generous gifts to the Peter A. Bertocci Scholarship Fund for the support of PhD students in philosophy.
  • George Bernard has given $10,000 annually to allow graduate students in the Biology Department to travel for their research.

Our impact

Creating a world-class environment for investigation

How do you take the measure of a truly great university?

One answer is, by the quality of both its research and its graduate programs. At Arts & Sciences, we are committed to producing the next generation of teachers, scholars, and researchers—people who will literally change the world.

This is our investment in the future of discovery. Our most important assets in this pursuit are our graduate students. Attracting the best and most passionate among them is, therefore, an overriding priority.

During 2012/2013, BU made a bold move to strengthen the quality of doctoral programs by offering five years of funding for all entering PhD students. This approach, already common at the best doctoral institutions, will allow us to compete for the best students.

But to compete with other great universities to attract the best PhD students, we must continue providing teaching fellowships that help them become great teachers—and research grants to support their fieldwork around the world. You can help make this happen.

Your impact

Support tomorrow’s scholars, leaders, and innovators

You and your fellow donors help make it possible for our graduate students to shape the future of science, technology, and the arts.

You can provide graduate students with teaching fellowships or research grants. You can choose to support a specific program at the Graduate School, or make a general gift. Or you could throw your weight behind our effort to ensure that we attract the best PhD students by offering them a full five years of funding support. However you choose to give, your support will be used to enhance the opportunities available to budding specialists.

The impact of gifts like these can’t be overstated. For talented young people just starting out in their academic or professional careers. Your support literally opens doors.

Make Your Impact
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