During the 2019/20 academic year, faculty and administrators of the College of Arts & Sciences continued to improve on experiential learning, curricular innovation, and teaching excellence, which together form the foundation of a CAS education. This past year we:

  • Launched four new interdisciplinary majors, a new interdisciplinary minor, a BA/MA program, and a BA/MS program.
  • Developed innovative courses to ensure that students who matriculated in the fall of 2018 or after could continue their progress through the BU Hub, BU’s general education curriculum.
  • Continued to add to the broad range of cocurricular experiences offered to our students, from the First Year Experience to Senior Year 101.
  • Brought all of our ingenuity and expertise to bear to support faculty and students through the quick transition to remote learning as the global pandemic forced the world to shut down this spring.
  • Worked diligently and collaboratively—including during the summer months—to ensure that the hybrid learning model Learn from Anywhere, which offers both remote and in-person options, will be a success this coming year.

Expanding a Diverse Curriculum

A CAS education crosses disciplinary boundaries in ways that illuminate concepts and develop complementary knowledge. This past year, we continued forging new paths through our degree program for our students:

  • We launched four new interdisciplinary majors: Classics & Archaeology, Linguistics & Computer Science, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages & Literatures, and Statistics & Computer Science.
  • We offered, for the first time, a BA/MS in Biology and a BA/MA in Classics & Archaeology.

Fostering Experiential Learning

In recent years, CAS faculty and leadership at the college and program levels have built a broad platform of opportunities for our students to engage in experiential (out-of-the-classroom) learning—often collaborating with other schools at BU. Our students can participate in a wide range of internships, community engagement initiatives, and hands-on research both in the lab and in the field through programs like MetroBridge, the CAS Internship Program, and BU Spark!.

In 2019/20, CAS students engaged with the world outside the classroom to gain new skills and insights, including:

  • Six CAS humanities majors participated in remote internships or other engaging work in summer 2020 through our new Public Humanities Undergraduate Fellows program, creating a bridge between their academic accomplishments and their future careers. They worked with Year Up and the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, and they worked on analyzing the making of the documentary Shoah, to name a few placements.
  • Eighty-nine CAS students got creative to finish their Cross-College Challenge projects (part of the BU Hub) during quarantine—like Evangeline Wang who, marooned in a hotel in China, created art out of minimal supplies for the second BU Puppet Slam. Or Sophie Richards, who teamed up with students from across BU to build an online game to help minority applicants and others navigate the challenges of applying for equity licenses to open cannabis dispensaries.

Improving Advising and Student Enrichment

In 2019/20, we continued to expand the broad range of student advising and enrichment offerings that our Student Academic Life team has developed over the past 10 years. This past year:

  • We created a new course section titled Intro to Careers in the Humanities, part of our career development program for first-year students. This initiative helps students identify, develop, and demonstrate the skills that define a liberal arts education.
  • Twenty-six CAS faculty and staff members volunteered to mentor students from backgrounds traditionally underrepresented in higher education, helping them navigate BU’s academic, structural, and social systems—through the Wheelock College program College Access & Student Success.

A Quick Transition to Remote Learning

When we suddenly found ourselves in the midst of a pandemic in March, it was all-hands-on-deck:

  • Faculty, staff, and students transitioned to remote learning in just under a week.
  • Staff from units across the college and University—including the Center for Teaching & Learning, the Center for Digital Learning & Innovation, and CAS Information Technology—collaborated to ensure a relatively smooth switch.
  • In all, every one of our 3,149 course sections moved to remote learning.
  • CAS offered students the option to take spring courses for credit/no credit, rather than receiving letter grades, to accommodate each student’s unique circumstances during the pandemic.
  • The college provided a seamless transition to remote student advising services, with academic advisors available for scheduled or drop-in hours via Zoom.

Hear from three CAS students and a CFA student about what this abrupt switch was like for them.

Watch how CAS Master Lecturer in Chemistry Binyomin Abrams connected with 181 students from around the world this spring, from an empty lecture hall.

Creating a New Learning Model for Unusual Times

Over the summer of 2020, CAS leadership worked closely with the University to develop an extraordinarily ambitious plan for returning to residential education in the fall in a safe way. The recovery planning involves:

  • Allowing students to attend classes in person or remotely as best fits their circumstances (called Learn from Anywhere, or LfA).
  • Daily COVID-19 testing of each student on campus, rigorous data collection, contact tracing, and strict safety protocols.
  • Classroom technology upgrades to ensure students learning remotely receive consistent, high-quality video and audio access to teaching and discussions.

Over the summer, our dedicated faculty put much time, energy, and creativity into adapting their courses to the LfA format, and the college worked hard to ensure that they were fully supported. CAS Information Technology offered support and assistance with Blackboard, Zoom, and other educational technologies essential to Learn from Anywhere.

In addition, 34 faculty coaches were identified and trained over the summer to work with instructors across the college to ensure their courses integrate remote and in-person learning as seamlessly and creatively as possible during the 2020/21 academic year. The CAS faculty coaches, trained by the Center for Teaching & Learning, are drawn primarily from among the faculty of the departments they serve.

Welcoming and Recruiting New Students—Virtually

Emily Lynn Perelman (CAS’22) has been illustrating since high school. She’s also used her design skills for good as an intern with ARCK Boston as part of BU’s Yawkey Nonprofit Internship Program. Read More.

The March shutdown happened just as a new class of admitted students was about to receive word of their acceptance into BU. CAS staff and faculty responded with an unprecedented effort to ensure that these high school seniors received a warm welcome, timely and detailed information, and programming to help them envision their path forward at CAS and BU. This effort involved:

  • Virtual Open House programming in April complete with remote information sessions, webinars on specific CAS academic programs, a customized web page with complete information on learning at CAS, and presentations by current students and staff.
  • Over 40 CAS Info & Insights sessions this summer hosted by academic departments to introduce matriculating students to majors they might choose.
  • One-on-one remote academic advising appointments offered to each incoming first-year student over the summer so they can get a jump on the school year.

To learn about the talented Class of 2023—CAS first-year students who matriculated to BU in the fall of 2019—go here.

Stellar Students

CAS students excelled both in and out of the classroom in the 2019/20 academic year, in too many ways to list all. Here are just a few examples:

  • Salvatore Pace, who graduated in the spring with both a bachelor’s and a master’s in physics, was Boston University’s first-ever recipient of the Churchill Scholarship, given to students for their commitment to scientific research and academic scholarship in theoretical physics. As part of the scholarship, he will participate in a yearlong science, math, and engineering fellowship at the University of Cambridge, at no cost.
  • Junior Rishab Nayak and his collaborators took the top prize at HackHarvard for their app, which allows users to upload documents, which are then converted to their native language using Google Translate.
  • UMOJA: The Black Student Union, led by CAS junior Delice Nsubayi, held a fundraiser in June for Black Lives Matter that raised over $140,000 from more than 150 student groups and 3,000 individuals.
  • CAS senior Bayley Connors, a political science major, spent his four years at BU probing the history of social policies in the US aimed at alleviating poverty, culminating in his paper this spring titled, “Some Kids Are Worth Less: The Neoliberal Politics of Indirect Social Spending.”
  • As COVID-19 spread rapidly this spring, Junior Uma Khemraj, president of the campus group Healthcare Improvement, helped organize the group’s effort to collect hand sanitizer for Boston-area homeless shelters.