The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GRS) made tremendous progress during the 2019/20 academic year.

• We initiated a holistic degree completion review process to help keep PhD students on track.
• In the summer of 2019, we launched a new internship program for social sciences PhD students, building on the success of our humanities internship program.
• We introduced new degree programs: an MS in Artificial Intelligence and an MFA in Literary Translation.
• The Graduate Student Advisory Council, established in 2018, became a partner and leader with the graduate school administration in crafting new initiatives.
• When the global pandemic forced us to switch to remote learning in March, our staff worked hard to help students and programs make the transition smoothly.
• Over the summer of 2020, we 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 who might be unable to get summer jobs due to the pandemic with a stipend of $5,000.

GRS Enters a New Era of Leadership

GRS also began a new era in July 2020 as Professor of Chemistry Malika Jeffries-EL became the new associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. A decorated academic, she was elected a fellow of the American Chemical Society and previously held a Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professorship at MIT. Malika is also a veteran leader, having served as the director of graduate studies for the Department of Chemistry; a member of the Graduate Recruitment and Admissions Committee, the University’s Recruitment Committee, and the CAS Diversity and Inclusion Committee; and a student mentor for BU RISE and BU GROW.

The new associate dean wants to strengthen existing graduate programs, open up career opportunities for students, and diversify the student body. Her vision for GRS includes taking a fresh look at what core competencies we are training students in and making sure students develop a broad range of skills, from professional writing to teaching to entrepreneurship. Malika wants to look at existing resources at BU that can be leveraged to improve graduate education. She will build on the considerable success that her predecessor, Emily Barman, has had in modernizing GRS and expanding its programming and student support.

She also sees opportunities for the future in the University’s newfound facility with remote learning, necessitated by the global pandemic. “Now that we have experienced it, it does seem that the Learn from Anywhere model [allowing students to choose either remote or on-campus learning, or a mix] may be an asset for many of our graduate programs,” she says. “For example, I can envision this being a mechanism for professional students to take courses who may not be able to be on campus daily. Or to provide greater flexibility to students with families.”

“…the Learn from Anywhere model [allowing students to choose either remote or on-campus learning, or a mix] may be an asset for many of our graduate programs,” she says. “For example, I can envision this being a mechanism for professional students to take courses who may not be able to be on campus daily. Or to provide greater flexibility to students with families.”

Maintaining Competitive Master’s Programs

In recent years, GRS has significantly expanded enrollment in master’s programs while maintaining their selectivity. In 2019/20, we achieved year-to-year enrollment growth in key master’s programs.

Promoting Community & Inclusiveness

GRS student leadership got creative this past year to foster a greater sense of community and connectedness among students.

• The Graduate Student Advisory Council, which the GRS administration had helped establish the year before, proposed and helped create the first annual GRS Winter Social.
• Students from the group Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWISE) took up the challenge of maintaining connectedness during the pandemic, organizing virtual trivia nights, movie screenings, monthly book club discussions, and weekly fitness classes.
• GRS and ENG graduate students formed a new group, oSTEM at Boston University, to empower LGBTQIA+ graduate students in STEM disciplines to succeed personally, academically, and professionally.

Meanwhile, GRS leadership continued our work to increase the diversity of our student population and make a GRS degree affordable to as many students as possible, using scholarship funding to attract more underrepresented students and waiving application fees for any students who need it. Learn more about diversity and access initiatives and programs for graduate students at GRS and BU.

Helping Students Stay on Track during a Pandemic

When the pandemic forced us to switch quickly to remote learning in March, our faculty and staff worked tirelessly to ensure graduate students had the resources and support they needed:

• We worked closely with academic departments to provide up-to-the-minute information to students about remote learning, campus services, and policies.
• We developed policies to help students manage during the crisis: allowing students to take courses for credit/no credit instead of letter grades, demonstrating flexibility for dissertation defense completion, and showing leniency in guidelines for research projects and internships.
• We distributed emergency federal funding and GRS gift aid to graduate students to help with basic necessities, such as helping students who had lost jobs pay for their groceries.
• While University Commencement exercises were postponed, GRS celebrated its PhD graduates through an online scrapbook, inviting families, friends, and faculty to share their well-wishes.

Planning for a Year Like No Other

During the summer, GRS administrators, staff, and academic departments worked closely with the University to create the forward-looking Learn from Anywhere (LfA) learning model to be employed in the 2020/21 academic year:

• GRS staff worked closely with each academic department and degree program to ensure the feasibility of the LfA model for their programs, modify their curricula to facilitate hybrid in-person and remote learning, and even make sure that some courses with a high number of international students would accommodate the schedules of those choosing to learn from overseas.
• Over the summer, GRS partnered with the Center for Teaching & Learning and the Professional Development & Postdoctoral Affairs office to train approximately 100 PhD students to help fellow students and faculty with online courses this coming year—thus preparing for Learn from Anywhere while also supporting PhD students who might be unable to get summer jobs due to the pandemic with a stipend of $5,000.

Recruiting Students during Unusual Times

The GRS staff also worked creatively to ensure that the recruitment of master’s students for fall 2020 admissions stayed on track once the pandemic hit. To do this, we:

• Held virtual information sessions on financial aid, housing, and student services for admitted students, varying the times so that international students could easily participate.
• Enlisted current students to reach out virtually to admitted students and answer their questions.
• Provided regular information for admitted students on social media about a wide range of resources, and showed a day in the life of a student doing remote learning and advice on how to manage remote learning and take care of yourself physically and emotionally.

For details on recruitment and enrollment numbers in our master’s and PhD programs, please see the graduate education section of the Appendix.

Outstanding Students

GRS students impressed in so many ways this past year. Here are just a few:

• Economics PhD student Giovanna Marcolongo authored a paper along with Economics Professor Randy Ellis analyzing the effect of the pandemic on job and income losses, focusing on how vulnerability varies by occupation.
• Archaeology PhD student Katie Berlin used travel funds provided by GRS to conduct research in the Mycenae area of Greece, where she employed cutting-edge large-data analysis to compare what kinds of shellfish the ancient Mycenaeans were eating with the marine motifs used in their pottery.
• Each year, the BU Center for the Humanities cosponsors internships across the city for PhD students. Rachel Kirby (GRS’23), whose dissertation is focused on the artistic, social, and commercial representations of Southern American agriculture, took a detour last summer to work for the Boston Red Sox.
• Chemistry graduate student Michael Smith won a National Institutes of Health award from the National Cancer Institute for his work on the chemical synthesis of an anticancer agent and its mechanism of action.
• Fourteen PhD students in seven different disciplines earned highly competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.