Like communities all over the world, the BU Arts & Sciences community had to make significant and rapid adjustments this spring in order to meet the challenges of the global pandemic. Our faculty and staff came together to make remote learning a success, welcome incoming students creatively, plan for an efficient and safe return to research labs, study the COVID-19 pandemic and its societal impacts in order to find solutions, and create a whole new hybrid learning model for the 2020/21 academic year—Learn from Anywhere.

Throughout it all, the pandemic has demonstrated very clearly the value of an arts and sciences education. The breadth of education and research that we undertake at CAS could not be more important to the world during a time of crisis, when interdisciplinary and innovative solutions and leadership are required. This is a moment of great change in higher education, which has the potential to redefine what higher education is and how that education is provided. Our goal is to come out of the pandemic stronger in our fundamental commitments to innovation, experiential learning, and fostering a dynamic breadth of knowledge and skills.

The breadth of education and research that we undertake at CAS could not be more important to the world than during a time of crisis, when interdisciplinary and innovative solutions and leadership are required.

In this annual report, which looks back at the 2019/20 academic year, you will hear how far we have come despite all of these challenges. This past year we:

  • Launched a long-term strategic planning process to help BU Arts & Sciences continue improving and evolving.
  • Created a Social Sciences Taskforce and a Humanities Taskforce to promote the growth and dynamism of these critical areas of study.
  • Launched four new interdisciplinary majors, as well as a BA/MA program and a BA/MS program, to give students more paths through a CAS degree.
  • Established new master’s programs and welcomed a new associate dean of the graduate school, Malika Jeffries-EL.
  • Hired 27 dynamic new faculty members, including Professor of History Ibram X. Kendi, a nationally renowned scholar who in summer 2020 founded the BU Center for Antiracist Research.
  • Saw broad participation from the CAS faculty, staff, and student communities in efforts to combat racial discrimination, including a day of action on June 10 to draw attention to structural racism in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) disciplines and BU’s Day of Collective Engagement on June 24.

We also responded to the challenge of the global pandemic with an unprecedented and coordinated effort to ensure the safety and continuity of our educational and research work. This spring and summer we:

  • Brought all of our ingenuity to bear to support faculty and students through the quick transition to remote learning as the global pandemic forced the world to shut down.
  • Worked diligently and collaboratively with the University to develop the hybrid learning model Learn from Anywhere, which offers both remote and in-person options, and to ensure it will be a success this coming year.
  • Used our expertise as faculty members to help society respond to the global pandemic, from developing an app to trace whether someone has been exposed to someone with COVID-19 to taking cues from American culture to advise policymakers on how to encourage physical distancing.
  • Made sure the recruitment of undergraduate and graduate students for fall 2020 admissions stayed on track through vigorous remote outreach and communications.
  • Carefully planned the necessary budget cuts for fiscal year 2021 in response to increased costs and reduced revenue as a result of the pandemic, cutting 4.95% out of our base budget while avoiding any major layoffs.
  • Partnered with other University offices to train a cadre of approximately 100 PhD students to help peers and faculty with online courses this coming year—thus preparing for Learn from Anywhere while also supporting PhD students whose summer plans changed due to the pandemic.
  • Completed a massive, detailed, and coordinated effort to allow research labs, particularly in the natural sciences, to reopen safely and efficiently this summer so that their work, which has a myriad of benefits to society, could continue.

I certainly didn’t envision my first full year as long-term dean (after my year as interim dean) going the way that it did. But from crisis to crisis, I could not be prouder of how our faculty, staff, students, and alumni have handled their work and shown their commitment to each other and to our institution’s goals. Thank you, and may the year to come bring hope, good work, good health, and safety to all.