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Ricks receives Mellon Award
Literary critic Christopher Ricks has received an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award. The three-year, $1.5 million award is given for significant contributions to the humanities and to recognize the interdependence of scholars and their academic institutions by enabling scholars to teach and do research while increasing the opportunities for scholarship at the institutions. Ricks, the William M. and Sara B. Warren Professor of the Humanities, course coordinator of the CAS Core Curriculum, and codirector of the Editorial Institute, intends to use the money to support the work of the Editorial Institute. He plans an edition of the works of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, a Victorian judge, legal historian, and man of letters. “Boston University is honored to accept this award on behalf of Professor Christopher Ricks, a dedicated educator and prolific author who embodies both the phrase ‘gentleman and scholar' and the University's longstanding commitment to academic excellence in the humanities,” says President ad interim Aram Chobanian. Recipients are selected through a process of nomination and review, with final selections made by a panel of distinguished scholars.
Ricks hopes to leave several legacies from the work supported by the Mellon Award. “First, a substantial and substantiated edition of Stephen,” he says. “Second, the training of, and the contribution to, the careers of young scholars by postdoctoral funding, for instance. Third, collaboration with publishers and with visiting scholars in a range of disciplines. And fourth, the consolidation of the Editorial Institute more widely as well as within Boston University, where it grants an M.A. and a Ph.D. in editorial studies and where it has already enjoyed many successes, including the publication, by very good houses, of its students' work.”
Note: See next week's B.U. Bridge for a full article on Ricks.
Elie Wiesel Award to BU's Hillel
Hillel's Elie Wiesel Award for outstanding arts and culture programs, presented at its International Professional Staff Conference in late December, was given to Boston University's Hillel for cosponsoring the 2002 Holocaust traveling exhibition entitled Visas for Life: The Righteous Diplomats. The exhibition, comprising photos, videos, oral histories, and biographical materials, told the story of the several diplomats who jeopardized their careers and sometimes their lives to help Jews and other refugees escape Nazi-occupied countries.
BMC awarded grant for residency training
The Kenneth B. Schwartz Center has awarded Boston Medical Center a competitive $35,000 grant in recognition of its innovative proposal for residency training. The proposal, a collaborative effort by the departments of medicine and otolaryngology with the School of Medicine's Office of Graduate Medical Education, will build on extensive curricula in communication skills already developed and in place in the internal medicine training program. The existing residency curricula, some developed with past Schwartz Center funding, will serve as a template addressing matters such as how well residents understand and empathize with the patient experience, and how effectively they communicate and successfully build an honest and respectful relationship with patients. The pilot program will be taught to all 651 trainees at BMC, which will also develop extensive evaluation tools.
BMC was chosen from 13 applicants. “Among the reasons for the selection of BMC was the strong patient and community involvement in the curricula for residency training, the development of broad-based faculty education, and its viability as a model,” says Marilyn Yager, executive director of the Schwartz Center. The center's innovation grant was created to recognize model responses to recently mandated requirements from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Outcomes Project that residents show they can communicate, connect, and empathize with patients and that they understand the standards of professionalism.
MED forms collaboration with NitroMed, Inc.
The School of Medicine recently formed a multiyear research collaboration with NitroMed. Inc., a pharmaceutical company developing nitric oxide–enhancing medicines, to support basic research into the clinical and pharmacologic roles of nitric oxide. For the extended research program, the Bedford, Mass.–based company opened a second research facility in BU's BioSquare. NitroMed's technology platform is based on the critical discoveries made by its scientific founder, Joseph Loscalzo, a MED professor and chairman of the department of medicine, a BMC physician in chief, and director of the Whitaker Cardiovascular Institute, and his colleagues. Under the agreement, NitroMed scientists will collaborate with Loscalzo and his team at the BU NitroMed laboratories on uncovering new information and new and improved nitric oxide–targeted medicines.
SED dean selected by DOE for Teacher Assistance Corps
School of Education Dean and Professor Douglas Sears has been invited by the U.S. Department of Education to serve as a member of the Teacher Assistance Corps, a group of educators who visit state departments of education to advise and assist in the implementation of the “highly qualified teacher” provision of the No Child Left Behind Act. The teams visit by invitation, offer suggestions, and learn of promising approaches that can, in turn, be recommended to other states' departments. The Teacher Assistance Corps hopes to help states ensure that all schoolteachers have a solid grounding in their subject matter.
Huntington Theatre Company capital campaign secures Kresge Foundation grant
The Huntington Theatre Company has received a $1 million challenge grant from the Kresge Foundation for its Setting the Stage Campaign, a $19.7 million, two-phase effort to fund construction of two new theaters at the Boston Center for the Arts and to raise its endowment to support expanded operations. The grant comes from Kresge's Bricks and Mortar program, which provides funds to build facilities and to challenge private giving. The Huntington must raise the $3.9 million balance necessary to meet its Phase One goal of $16.5 million by January 1, 2005, to meet the terms of the Kresge challenge.
9 January 2004
Boston University
Office of University Relations