Improving Undergraduate Education

Class of 2021 Profile

Profile of the Class of 2021, Registered and Settled Through Fall 2017 Final (Official Mid-Semester)

Total Number of Entering Students, Fall 2017: 1,578

Male 39.4% (621)
Female 60.6% (975)

Top 10 Programs/Majors

Undeclared 270
Biology 215
Economics 111
Computer Science 108
Psychology 101
International Relations 70
Biology-Cell/Molecular/Genetics 69
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 66
Political Science 58
Neuroscience 52

 

Academic Accomplishment

The class entering in Fall 2017 was the most accomplished academically in the college’s history.

Credentials Average Middle 50%
SAT ERW 683 640-720
SAT Math 710 660-760
SAT Composite (1600) 1393 1330-1460
ACT Composite 31 29–32
High School Rank in Class 91.4 --
High School GPA 3.69 --

 

Rank in Class
Top 5% 45.3%
Top 10% 69.2%
Top 15% 84.8%
Top 20% 91.8%
Top 25% 95.2%
Top 30% 97.0%
Top 50% 99.6%

 

The Class of 2021 demonstrates a wide range of ethnic diversity; 23.3% of the class identifies as international.

Ethnicity Number % of Class % of Domestic Known
African American 116 7.4% 10.1%
Hispanic 179 11.3% 15.7%
Native American 3 0.2% 0.3%
Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 7 0.4% 0.6%
Asian 293 18.6% 25.6%
Caucasian 545 34.5% 47.7%
International 368 23.3% --
Unspecified 67 4.2% --
Total 1,578 100.0% 100.0%

 

Geography


Most domestic students who entered in Fall 2017 are from the Northeast and California, with Massachusetts leading the way. The largest contingent of international students is from the People’s Republic of China (including Hong Kong) (176 freshmen).

Geography
# of states 42
% from out of state 84.7%


Top States
Massachusetts 242
New York 193
California 128
New Jersey 104
Florida 66
Pennsylvania 65
Connecticut 48
Texas 42
Illinois 39
Rhode Island 25
Other states, DC 245
Territories, APO 12
Foreign address 369
Territories represented: PR, VI, GU, APO
State(s) not represented: AK, ID, MS, MT, NM, ND, SD, WV


Region
New England 22.2%
Mid-Atlantic 24.6%
Midwest 6.1%
South 8.7%
Southwest 3.2%
West 2.0%
Pacific 9.5%
Other 23.8%



The majority of entering international students in Fall 2017 came from Asia, with the greatest number coming from China.

Geography
44 countries


Top Countries by Citizenship
China (Incl. Hong Kong) 176
India 35
Republic of Korea 27
Taiwan, R.O.C. 8
Canada 8
Republic of Singapore 8
Thailand 8
Brazil 7

 

First-Year Student Enrollment

The table below shows the intended majors of first-year students who matriculated at CAS for Fall 2017 and Fall 2016.

Intended Majors
Program/Major 2017 2016
Accelerated Dental 1 1
Accelerated Medical Program 20 25
American Studies 2 1
Ancient Greek 0 1
Ancient Greek & Latin 0 3
Anthropology & Religion 1 2
Anthropology 10 7
Archaeology 7 6
Architecture 2 5
Asian Studies 6 5
Astronomy 3 4
Astronomy & Physics 14 23
Biology—Cell/Molecular/Genetic 69 70
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 66 59
Biochemistry 1 1
Biology 215 160
Biology—Behavioral 10 12
Biology—Ecology & Conservation Biology 4 11
Biology—Neurobiology 31 28
Biology—Quantitative 0 1
Chemistry 39 46
Chemistry—Biochemistry 21 20
Chemistry—Teaching 0 1
Chinese Language & Literature 1 1
Cinema & Media Studies 1 2
Classical Civilization 2 2
Classics & Philosophy 2 0
Classics & Religion 0 1
Comparative Literature 1 1
Computer Science 108 87
Earth Sciences 0 1
Earth/Environmental Sciences 9 0
East Asian Studies 0 0
Economics 111 122
Economics & Mathematics 38 21
English 31 41
Environmental Analysis & Policy 8 6
Environmental Science 0 15
European Studies 2 1
French & Linguistics 0 1
French Studies 0 1
Geography—Human Geography 0 1
Geophysics & Planetary Sciences 1 1
German Language & Literature 1 0
Hispanic Language & Literature 3 2
History of Art & Architecture 5 10
History 18 15
International Relations 70 91
Italian & Linguistics 0 0
Italian Studies 1 0
Japanese Language & Literature 1 4
Japanese & Linguistics 0 1
Latin 1 0
Latin American Studies 1 0
Linguistics/Speech Language/Hearing 4 0
Linguistics 7 7
Linguistics & Philosophy 1 0
Marine Science 16 11
Mathematics & Computer Science 10 9
Mathematics & Mathematics Education 4 2
Mathematics & Philosophy 3 4
Mathematics 42 49
Middle East/North Africa Studies 1 2
Music 0 2
Neuroscience 54 62
Philosophy 6 6
Philosophy & Physics 5 0
Philosophy & Political Science 6 3
Philosophy & Psychology 4 2
Philosophy & Religion 2 0
Philosophy/Neuroscience 6 0
Physics 21 25
Political Science 58 47
Predentistry 0 0
Premedical 2 1
Psychology 101 103
Religion 1 0
Russian Language & Literature 0 1
Sociology 15 23
Spanish & Linguistics 1 2
Undecided 270 355
Total 1,578 1,636

 

Enrollments and Bachelor’s Degrees Awarded by Major, AY 2017/2018

The table below lists the number of enrolled students in each CAS major and the total number of degrees awarded in each major during academic year 2017/2018.

Major Fall 2017 Enrolled Students Degrees Awarded (AY 2018)
Undeclared 590 -
Economics 730 207
Psychology 642 197
Computer Science 618 134
International Relations 569 204
Biology 490 102
Neuroscience 349 80
Mathematics 309 95
Political Science 303 60
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology 288 66
Biology with specialization in Cell Biology, Molecular Biology & Genetics 237 56
English 178 50
Economics & Mathematics 146 26
Sociology 127 41
History 109 44
Chemistry 100 24
Biology, Neurobiology 83 16
Physics 79 24
Environmental Analysis & Policy 73 25
Anthropology 67 18
Medical Science 64 22
Marine Science 63 7
History of Art & Architecture 57 17
Math Computer Science 54 11
Philosophy 53 21
Chemistry: Biochemistry 51 6
Astronomy & Physics 47 7
Earth & Environmental Science 47 7
Biology w/ specialization Behavioral Biology 39 11
Archaeology 36 8
Linguistics 36 15
Architectural Studies 32 16
Biology, Ecology & Conservation 31 4
Philosophy & Political Science 22 6
Environmental Science 17 17
Classical Civilization 15 6
Philosophy & Psychology 15 7
Philosophy & Neuroscience 12 3
Japanese Language & Literature 11 7
Cinema & Media Studies 10 1
Comparative Literature 10 4
Astronomy 9 3
Math & Philosophy 9 0
Asian Studies 8 0
Middle East/North Africa Studies 8 1
Philosophy & Physics 8 1
Spanish & Linguistics 8 2
Ancient Greek & Latin 7 3
Spanish 7 2
French Studies 6 4
European Studies 5 2
Geophysics & Planetary Science 5 0
Linguistics and Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences 5 1
Music 5 1
Chinese Language & Literature 4 1
Independent Concentration 4 4
Philosophy & Religion 4 0
Religion 4 2
Russian Language & Literature 4 0
Classics & Philosophy 3 1
French & Linguistics 3 2
Linguistics & Philosophy 3 1
Math & Math Education 3 0
American Studies 2 0
Anthropology & Religion 2 0
German Language & Literature 2 1
Hispanic Language & Literature 2 0
Italian Studies 2 2
Latin American Studies 2 1
Predental Science 2 0
Classics & Religion 2 0
Italian 1 0
Japanese & Linguistics 1 0
Latin 1 0
Classical Studies 0 1
Earth Sciences 0 2
East Asian Studies 0 1
Geography/Human Geography 0 1
Total Students 6,949 1,712

 


Post-Graduation Destination Profile CAS Class of 2017

BU surveys its undergraduate degree recipients each year to learn about paths taken following graduation, including employment, graduate school, military service, and volunteer or service activities. View the PDF.

 

Strengthening the Graduate Education

GRS-Registered MA/MFA/MS Students (by Department):

The following table lists Fall 2017 admissions statistics for MA/MFA/MS programs.

Program # Applications # Admitted % Admitted # Accepted
African American Studies 5 5 100% 2
Applied Anthropology 11 2 18% 1
Archaeology 22 8 36% 1
Astronomy 5 0 0% 0
Biology 95 17 18% 7
Biostatistics 84 53 63% 1
Chemistry 17 0 0% 0
Classical Studies 4 2 50% 0
Computer Science
(All Programs)		 884 270 31% 62
Creative Writing
(MFA)		 725 18 2% 18
Earth & Environment
(All Programs)		 94 63 67% 13
Economics
(All Programs)		 777 623 80% 103
Editorial Studies 3 0 0% 0
English 76 64 84% 14
French Language & Literature 1 0 0% 0
Hispanic Language & Literature 1 0 0% 0
History 31 10 32% 1
History of Art & Architecture 76 35 46% 3
Linguistics 35 19 54% 6
Mathematics & Statistics
(All Programs)		 647 210 32% 48
Molecular & Cell Biology, Biochemistry 46 12 26% 3
Pardee School (All Programs) 426 340 80% 57
Philosophy 23 15 65% 6
Preservation Studies 13 13 100% 0
Psychology 211 101 48% 21
Sociology 24 3 13% 0
Total (All Programs) 4,336 1,883 43% 367



Program Total Enrollment Fall 2017 AY 17-18 Graduates
Biology 8 2
Biostatistics 6 4
Computer Science (All Programs) 115 44
Creative Writing (MFA) 30 17
Earth & Environment (All Programs) 23 16
Economics (All Programs) 170 132
English 15 15
History of Art & Architecture 11 6
Linguistics 7 3
Mathematics & Statistics 76 37
Pardee School (All Programs) 108 49
Playwriting (MFA) 6 1
Preservation Studies 6 5
Psychology 24 24
Total (MA/MS/MFA) 634 368

 

GRS-Registered PhD Students (by Department):

The following table lists Fall 2017 admissions statistics for PhD programs.

Program # Applications # Admitted % Admitted # Accepted
American & New England Studies 64 11 17% 8
Anthropology 89 11 12% 7
Astronomy 90 25 28% 9
Bioinformatics 112 24 21% 9
Biology 151 25 17% 13
Biostatistics 148 21 14% 11
Chemistry 280 53 19% 22
Classical Studies 29 6 21% 5
Computer Science 260 68 26% 30
Earth Sciences 61 18 30% 10
Economics 770 97 13% 25
English 117 11 9% 5
French Language & Literature 18 9 50% 4
Geography 48 10 21% 7
Hispanic Language & Literatures 26 8 31% 4
History 75 12 16% 3
History of Art & Architecture 75 13 17% 6
Mathematics 148 17 11% 6
Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry 104 18 17% 6
Musicology 29 6 21% 3
Philosophy 146 14 10% 6
Physics 360 73 20% 9
Political Science 114 17 15% 5
Psychology 775 21 3% 13
Sociology 117 15 14% 7
Statistics 142 18 13% 9
Total (all programs) 4,348 621 14% 242



Program Total Enrollment Fall 2017 AY 17-18 Graduates
American & New England Studies 45 3
Anthropology 43 4
Astronomy 31 3
Bioinformatics 57 6
Biology 57 11
Biostatistics 45 7
Chemistry 122 13
Classical Studies 22 4
Computer Science 74 8
Earth Sciences 26 1
Economics 147 18
English 39 6
French Language & Literature 11 3
Geography 25 3
Hispanic Language & Literatures 25 2
History 38 6
History of Art & Architecture 44 3
Mathematics 39 0
Molecular Biology, Cell Biology & Biochemistry 35 6
Musicology 16 1
Philosophy 45 4
Physics 69 14
Political Science 35 7
Psychology 76 14
Religious Studies 46 5
Sociology 37 8
Statistics 22 5
Total (all programs) 1,319 177

 

 

Enhancing a World-Class Faculty

Promoted, Tenured, and Retired Faculty, AY 2017/18

Promoted to Full Professor:
In AY 2017/18, six CAS faculty were promoted to the rank of professor: Emily Barman, sociology; Nancy Harrowitz, Italian; Stephen Kalberg, sociology; Emanuel Katz, physics; Hengye Man, biology; and Carrie Preston, English and women’s, gender and sexuality studies.

Promoted to Associate Professor with Tenure:
In AY 2017/18, nine CAS assistant professors were promoted to the rank of associate professor with tenure: Joanna Davidson, anthropology; David Glick, political science; Phillip Haberkern, history; Hiroaki Kaido, economics; Rebecca Martin, Greek art; Russell Powell, philosophy; Kate Saenko, computer science; Konstantinos Spiliopoulos, mathematics and statistics; and Yoon Sun Yang, Korean and comparative literature.

This past year, three CAS faculty members retired from active service as professors. These newly retired faculty include: Farouk El-Baz, archaeology and electrical and computer engineering; Leroy Jones, economics; and Pedro Lasarte, romance studies. After a vote of the faculty, 10 additional retiring faculty members were granted the title of emeritus or emerita, a mark of respect for colleagues who exemplify the highest values of the academic profession. They are as follows: Geoffrey Cooper, biology; Julia Brown, English; Robert Levine, English; Bonnie Costello, English; Robert Devaney, mathematics and statistics; William Keylor, history; Sheldon Glashow, physics; J. Scott Whitaker, physics; Rama Bansil, physics; and Christine Rossell, political science.

New CAS Faculty, AY 2018/2019

Each year, the College of Arts & Sciences recruits leading scholars and researchers from around the world to grow the ranks of its faculty. The faculty members listed below arrived new on campus for the 2017/18 academic year, unless stated otherwise.

African American Studies

  • Joyce Hope Scott, Clinical Professor of African American Studies

    Joyce Hope Scott joins us from Wheelock College, where she was a professor of American studies. She is the author of numerous publications on African American writers and African diaspora literatures and culture. She is an alumna of the Oxford Round Table (United Kingdom) and a former Fulbright scholar/professor in Burkina Faso and the Republic of Benin, West Africa.

    Joyce is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including the Gordon Marshall Fellowship Award for outstanding scholarship and the Cynthia Longfellow Award for outstanding teaching. She was also named the Massachusetts Council of the Humanities Lead Scholar for the University of Massachusetts Trotter Institute’s “Emancipated Century” and “Driving to the American Dream” projects, as well as an Africanist fellow at the Center for African, Caribbean, and Community Development (University of Massachusetts Boston).

American & New England Studies

  • Mary T. Battenfeld, Clinical Professor of American & New England Studies

    Mary Battenfeld comes to BU from Wheelock College, where she was on the faculty since 1993 and granted tenure in 2001. She earned her MA and PhD in American studies from the University of Maryland in 1985 and 1990, respectively. As an undergraduate at Swarthmore College, she studied linguistics, with minors in English and French, earning a BA with honors. At Wheelock, Mary served as the chair of general education, leading efforts to revise the college’s general education program. Her scholarship has focused upon the role of social studies in primary education. In 2017, she published Notable Books, Notable Lessons: Putting Social Studies Back in the K–8 Curriculum, co-edited with Andrea S. Libresco and Jeannette Balantic.

Anthropology

  • Ayse Parla, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

    Ayse Parla received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD in anthropology from New York University. Her field is best defined as political anthropology of Turkey and its connected geographies. Her specific areas of research include migration and minority governance; the legal, political, and cultural production of differentiated rights for migrants and citizens; gendered morality and the law; and the politics of emotion and, more broadly, the interplay between the political-legal and the affective-moral realms.

    Ayse has written on state-authorized virginity examinations in Turkey as modern forms of surveillance of young women’s honor, the appropriation of Bulgarian-Turkish migrants as refugees and ethnic kin in 1989, and the subsequent marginalization of post-1990s migrants from Bulgaria as part of the cheap informal labor force. Her current book manuscript, titled Anxious Hope: Bulgarian-Turkish Labor Migrants, Ethnic Privilege and Everyday Law, proposes a legal anthropology of hope.

Astronomy

  • James J. (J.J.) Hermes, Assistant Professor of Astronomy (Starts 1/1/19)

    J.J. Hermes earned his PhD in astronomy in 2013 from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation, titled “Gravitational Waves and Pulsations from High-Speed Photometry of Low-Mass, Helium-Core White Dwarfs,” was co-advised by professors Donald Winget and Michael Montgomery. While pursuing his PhD, J.J. spent more than 220 nights acquiring data at the McDonald Observatory in West Texas. Prior to joining BU, he was an ERC postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom (2013–2015) and a Hubble post-doctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2015–2018).

    J.J. is an expert on white dwarfs, which are the most common end stage of stellar evolution. His work is allowing him to place empirical boundary conditions on the final stages of stellar, binary star, and planetary evolution. The ubiquity, simplicity, and homogeneity of white dwarfs make them unique tools that are capable of confronting questions central to astrophysics, including problems as diverse as mass loss on the red giant branch, tides in close binaries, and the compositions of exoplanets. He has published 68 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 18 as first author. He is also in high demand as a speaker at professional conferences, where he delivered eight invited review talks in the past five years.

Chemistry

  • Qiang Cui, Professor of Chemistry

    Q.C., a biophysical computational chemist, joined the BU chemistry department from the chemistry department at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. After receiving his BS at the University of Science and Technology of China, he earned his PhD at Emory University in 1997, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship with Nobel laureate Martin Karplus at Harvard University. After his appointment as assistant professor of chemistry at Wisconsin in 2001, he was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 2007 and then to full professor in 2010. His expertise and interests are in developing theoretical/computational methods for complex biological systems, including enzyme reactions, energy transduction in biomolecular machines, and interactions between biomolecules, lipids, and inorganic materials. More currently, he is attempting to pursue problems on a larger scale and with higher levels of complexity, such as muscle fiber assemblies, biomembrane-protein complexes, and large-scale biomechanics problems.

    Q.C. has authored more than 235 publications already at this relatively early stage of his career and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and an NSF CAREER award. He is a member of several journal editorial boards and is a highly sought-after lecturer, delivering 60 research presentations since 2014 alone. His current work is supported by multiple grants from the NSF and NIH.

Classical Studies

  • Brandon Jones, Lecturer

    Brandon Jones received his PhD in classics from the University of Washington in 2015. Since then, he has held teaching positions at the University of Puget Sound, the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, and Millsaps College. With a dissertation on “The Sophistic Roman: Education and Status in Quintilian, Tacitus and Pliny,” his scholarly interests range widely from Greek and Roman historiography and rhetoric, to the social and intellectual history of the Roman Empire, to ancient and modern pedagogy, to allusion and intertextuality and the ancient novel. He has published two book chapters on Cassius Dio, a Greek historian writing about Rome, and also has several articles under review as well as an in-progress monograph on Greek Education, Roman Status: Studies of Paideia in Latin Prose. Brandon has a stellar teaching record with a wide range of courses. At BU, he will teach our undergraduate Greek and Roman history classes while Loren J. Samons and Zsuzsanna Varhelyi are on sabbatical. He will also teach beginning Greek, an advanced undergraduate Latin seminar, and a course on robbers and pirates in Roman law, literature, and society.

Computer Science

  • Manoussos Athanassoulis, Assistant Professor of Computer Science (Starts 1/1/19)

    Manoussos Athanassoulis received his PhD from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), followed by postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He works in the area of databases, in particular developing data systems and access methods that can efficiently access and analyze diverse, dynamic, and large data sets. To achieve this goal, his work focuses on understanding the behavior of different underlying storage technologies, the design of systems and access methods, and system workload requirements. For example, in recent work, he has shown how to use insights from workload analysis to significantly improve systems for accessing large data stores, such as those used by Google and Facebook. Manoussos has won multiple best paper awards at top database conferences, as well as teaching awards at both EPFL and Harvard.
  • Vahid Azadeh-Ranjbar, Lecturer

    Vahid Azadeh-Ranjbar has been teaching introductory courses: CS 103 Introduction to Internet Technologies and Web Programming, CS 235 Algebraic Algorithms, CS 132 Geometric Algorithms, and CS 111 Introduction to Computer Science I. Prior to joining the BU CS department in spring 2017, he was a lecturer at the mechanical engineering department at the City College of New York (CCNY), where he taught fluid mechanics and miro/nano technology for three years.

    Vahid’s research area of interest is computer stereo vision with a focus on digital image correlation and particle image velocimetry, which have tremendous applications to experimental mechanics and robotics. He also has interest in web application and development. He holds a BSc (Iran University of Science and Technology, 2007), an MSc (University of Tehran, 2010), an MPhil (CCNY, 2013), and a PhD (CCNY, 2017) in the field of mechanical engineering.
  • Sofya Raskhodnikova, Professor of Computer Science

    Sofya Raskhodnikova was a professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State University before coming to BU. She received her PhD from MIT, and, prior to joining Penn State in 2007, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Weizmann Institute of Science. She has held visiting positions at the Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics at UCLA, Boston University, and Harvard University, and is also the recipient of an NSF CAREER award. Sofya works in the areas of randomized and approximation algorithms. Her main interest is the design and analysis of sublinear-time algorithms for combinatorial problems, and she has made important contributions to data privacy.
  • Adam Smith, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

    Adam Smith holds a secondary appointment in the BU College of Engineering electrical and computer engineering department, as well as an affiliated appointment in the mathematics and statistics department. He has also been appointed as a data science faculty fellow in BU’s Data Science Initiative. Prior to joining the University, he was a professor of computer science and engineering at Penn State. His research interests lie in data privacy and cryptography and their connections to machine learning, statistics, information theory, and quantum computing. He obtained his PhD from MIT in 2004 and has held visiting positions at the Weizmann Institute of Science, UCLA, Boston University, and Harvard University. He received a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in 2009, a Theory of Cryptography Test of Time award in 2016, and the 2017 Godel Prize. These last two awards were joint with C. Dwork, F. McSherry, and K. Nissim.
  • Derry Wijaya, Assistant Professor of Computer Science

    Derry Wijaya joins BU after completing a PhD at Carnegie Mellon University and postdoctoral studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She works in natural language processing, with particular focus on applications of machine learning. She has studied problems in machine translation, showing how to leverage well-annotated languages to improve translation of less-annotated languages.

    Derry has also studied methods for automatically learning the meanings of verbs by analyzing diverse information sources, such as images and text mined from the web. She has over 20 publications to date, which include significant work in data mining and information extraction and reach back to her MS and BS studies at the National University of Singapore. She is the recipient of multiple awards, including a Fulbright International Science and Technology Fellowship.

Core Curriculum

  • Brett DiBenedictis, Lecturer

    Brett DiBenedictis earned a BS with honors in biology from Trinity College in 2007 and a PhD in neurobiology from Boston University in 2014, working with Professor Michael Baum. He then served as a postdoctoral research fellow at Boston College for two years, working under the direction of Professor Alexa Veenema, and later returned to BU to pursue a postdoctoral faculty fellowship in the biology department. His research is devoted to understanding the neurobiology of social behavior, concentrating on elucidating the role of the neuropeptides, oxytocin, and vasopressin in regulating neural pathways of innate social behavior. Brett is currently working with Professor Ian Davison (biology department), where he has been using chronically implanted mini-endoscopes combined with calcium imaging in the accessory olfactory bulb to observe population-level encoding of different conspecifics during natural social interactions in freely behaving mice. He is also broadly interested in undergraduate science education, with a focus on active learning strategies and innovative approaches to teaching and curriculum development.

Economics

  • Ceyhun Elgin, Lecturer

    Ceyhun Elgin received his BA in economics from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul in 2005 and his MA and PhD in economics from the University of Minnesota in 2009 and 2010. Most recently, he served as a tenured associate professor in the Boğaziçi University economics department, as well as vice chair and director of graduate studies. His research interests are in applied macroeconomics, economic growth, and public economics, with a special focus on the economics of informality. He has been an active researcher and scholar, has lectured for a variety of undergraduate- and graduate-level courses, and received the best instructor award (which included faculty from three departments) based on student voting in 2017. He will be teaching intermediate microeconomics, intermediate macroeconomics, poverty and discrimination, empirical economics 2, and international economics.
  • Jean-Jacques Forneron, Assistant Professor of Economics

    Jean-Jacques Forneron received an MSc in management from HEC Paris, an MA in economics and statistics from ENSAE ParisTech in 2012, and his PhD in economics from Columbia University in May 2018. He is an econometrician, with particular interest in simulation estimation with applications to industrial organization and macroeconomics. For example, in a recent paper, he shows that one can flexibly approximate an arbitrary distribution of economic shocks using certain combinations of Gaussian distributions. He proves theorems establishing asymptotic distributions of these estimators and illustrates their usefulness with simulations.
  • Stacey Gelsheimer, Lecturer

    Stacey Gelsheimer graduated cum laude with a BS in economics in 2006 and with a PhD in economics in 2015 from the University of South Florida. Since graduating, she has been a teaching fellow at Harvard University and has taught at the Questrom School of Business and also empirical economics courses in the CAS economics department. She has taught at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth in Hong Kong each summer since 2015. Her main research interest is the intersection between management and economics.
  • Ekaterina (Katya) Gnedenko, Lecturer

    Katya Gnedenko received an MS in geography, a PhD-equivalent “Kandidat nauk” degree in economics from the Moscow State University in 1997, and her PhD in agricultural and resource economics from the University of Connecticut in 2009. She has a very strong quantitative background in geography and statistics. She was a lecturer at Tufts University from 2008 to 2016 and a lecturer in the BU economics department since 2016, where she has taught empirical economics and will also be teaching environmental economics this fall. Her fields are environmental economics and policy, land-use economics and policy, climate change and land use, and land reform in transition economies.
  • E. Nilay Kafali, Lecturer

    E. Nilay Kafali received a BA in economics from Cornell University in 2007. She was awarded an MA in political economy and a PhD in economics from Boston University in 2010 and 2012, respectively. Her current research specializes in the areas of industrial organization and health economics. Since graduation, she has worked as a research associate at the Cambridge Health Alliance at Harvard Medical School and for RTI International, where she performed statistical and econometric research for a number of projects there. She has been a strong part-time lecturer for the economics department and is excited to be returning to the classroom on a full-time basis. She will be teaching empirical economics courses.
  • Murat Yilmaz, Lecturer

    Murat Yilmaz received his BS in mathematics with a minor in economics from Middle East Technical University in 2002, his MA in economics from Sabancı University in 2004, and his PhD from the BU economics department in 2010. Since graduation, Murat has been an assistant professor in the economics department at Boğaziçi University, one of the top institutions in Turkey. He is a theorist, and his fields of interest are contract theory, industrial organization, behavioral economics, and auctions. He has taught introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in principles, as well as courses in IO game theory, statistics, risk and uncertainty, and games and strategy. He will teach intermediate macro, game theory, economics of information, and the economics of corporate organizations.

English

  • Swen Voekel, Clinical Associate Professor of English

    Swen Voekel comes to BU from Wheelock College, where he became an assistant professor in 2001 and an associate professor in 2007. There, he taught a broad range of courses on ancient, medieval, and Renaissance literature, and, more recently, courses on Holocaust history and literature. From 2001 to 2004, he also taught in the history and literature program at Harvard.

    Swen has published articles on the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser and is completing a book that examines the theme of hospitality in epic literature from Homer to Milton. A chapter from this book project, “Propitious Guests: Paradise Lost and Epic Hospitality,” recently appeared in Milton Studies.
  • Crystal Williams, Associate Provost for Diversity & Inclusion and Professor of English

    Crystal Williams arrived at BU in October 2017 from Bates College, where she served since 2013 as associate vice president for strategic initiatives, professor of English, and senior advisor to the president. At Bates, she developed programs and strategies that resulted in increased diversity among the faculty, staff, and students, while enhancing engagement across campus. She was previously a faculty member and the inaugural dean for institutional diversity at Reed College (2000–2013), leading multiple faculty-driven initiatives to create an infrastructure to support diversity and inclusion.

    In addition to her leadership roles, Crystal is an award-winning poet, the author of four books, and the recipient of several artistic fellowships, grants, and commissions. She is consistently recognized as a thought leader on diversity in the arts and has helped to lead and convene programs at the state and local levels involving arts, civic, and philanthropic leaders. She holds a BA from New York University and an MFA from Cornell University.
  • Harvey Young, Dean of the College of Fine Arts and Professor of English

    Harvey Young arrived in January 2018 from Northwestern University, where he was a professor of theatre, African American studies, and radio/television/film. A theatre historian and performance theorist, he is the author of three books—Embodying Black Experience, Black Theater Is Black Life: An Oral History of Chicago Theatre, and Theatre & Race —and the editor of four books. He is the dean of BU’s College of Fine Arts. In addition, he currently serves as president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

History of Art & Architecture

  • Amy Huang, Lecturer

    Amy Huang comes to BU after completing a PhD in the department of history of art and architecture at Brown University. A specialist in Chinese art, she is mainly concerned with the visual culture and collecting practices of the early modern period. Her dissertation focuses on the visual modes of remembrance in landscape paintings of late imperial China. In 2016–17, Amy was awarded the Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has published her research widely in English-language and Chinese-language scholarly journals. Notably international in her training, Amy holds a BA in management information systems from National Chengchi University in Taiwan, an MA in museum studies from the University of London, and a second MA in art history from Boston University.

Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies

  • Shamiran Mako, Assistant Professor of International Relations

    Shamiran Mako joins the Pardee School as an assistant professor in Middle East & North African contemporary politics and international relations. She comes to us from Brown University, where she was a visiting assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Middle East studies program. She completed her PhD in political science at the University of Edinburgh, where she wrote her dissertation on the subject, “Exclusion and Authoritarianism in Iraq: Explaining the Limits of Institutional Design and Ethnic Conflict Management in a Divided Society.”

    Born in Iraq, Shamiran left the country as a refugee when she was still a child, spending time in Jordan before settling permanently in Canada. As a scholar, she has begun to develop an impressive profile in the study of conflict and comparative politics of the Middle East. Her coauthored book on the comparative politics and sociology of the Arab Spring, titled After the Arab Uprisings: Progress and Stagnation in the Arab World, is forthcoming in fall 2018 from Cambridge University Press. She also has a contract with Cambridge for her first monograph (titled The Institutional Legacies of Ethnic Conflict in Iraq), has published a co-edited volume and several book chapters, and has two scholarly articles out for review.
  • Perry Mehrling, Professor of International Political Economy

    Perry Mehrling joins the Pardee School as a professor of international political economy. He comes to us from Barnard College and Columbia University, where he had served as a professor of economics since 1987. He has established himself as one of the world’s leading historians of economic thought and is an internationally known monetary economist and educator. Well over a hundred thousand individuals have taken his MOOC, “Economics of Money and Banking.” His scholarly work falls into two general areas of inquiry: the history of economic thought as it relates to money and banking and the economics of money and financial stability.

    Perry is best known for his books on economic history, including The Money Interest and the Public Interest, which examines the development of a distinctly American intellectual tradition that drew on institutionalism and monetary policy practice; the prizewinning Fischer Black and the Revolutionary Idea of Finance, an intellectual and personal biography of one of the primary shapers of financial theory and of market practices; and The New Lombard Street, a history of the market operations of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which posits an original and highly influential new understanding of central banking, international money, and the role of the New York Federal Reserve Bank as the “dealer of last resort” backstopping the global monetary system.
  • Joshua Shifrinson, Assistant Professor of International Relations

    Joshua Shifrinson joins the Pardee School with a focus on strategic and security studies. He was previously an assistant professor at Texas A&M’s Bush School of Government and received his PhD in political science from MIT.

    Joshua’s research lies at the nexus of history, international security, and American foreign policy. He uses qualitative methods, including archival research, to address major questions of strategy. His first book, Rising Titans, Falling Giants: Rising States and the Fate of Declining Great Powers, comes out in September 2018 from Cornell University Press’s Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, the most prestigious academic book series in security studies. It addresses a major gap in the power transition literature on the rise and decline of great powers, by focusing on what strategies they adopt and why. He has also published articles in leading journals, including International Security. His 2016 International Security article, on whether the US had given assurances to the USSR regarding eastward expansion of NATO, received the Best Article award from the Diplomatic Studies Section of the International Studies Association and became the basis of a widely read article in Foreign Affairs.

Mathematics & Statistics

  • Yves Atchade, Professor of Statistics

    Yves Atchade earned the diplôme d’études universitaires générales at the Universite Nationale du Benin and a diplôme d’ingénieur from the École Nationale Supérieure de Statistique et d’Économie Appliquée, Côte d’Ivoire. He also earned MA and PhD degrees in statistics from the Université de Montréal, Canada. Since 2006, as a professor at the University of Michigan, he has developed into an internationally recognized expert in Bayesian statistics, high-dimensional data analysis, and computational statistics. He has pioneered efficient new algorithms for high-dimensional data applications, and he has performed seminal analyses validating state-of-the-art approaches to adaptive Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.

    Yves has also published widely on methods to infer change points in time series, penalized likelihood methods, graphical models with large numbers of vertices, empirical Bayesian inference, iterated filtering, exponential random graph models, high-dimensional random graph fields, quasi-posterior distributions, and sparse regression. In addition, he has worked on applications of his new statistical methods in bioinformatics, imaging science, remote sensing, biological networks, social networks, financial networks, and neuroscience. His research is consistently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Annals of Statistics, Bernoulli, Journal of the Royal Society—Statistics, Journal of Machine Learning Research, and Stochastic Processes and Their Applications, and much of it is sponsored by individual and collaborative grants.
  • Debra Borkovitz, Clinical Professor of Mathematics

    Debra Borkovitz received bachelor degrees in mathematics and computer science from the University of Illinois in 1984. Subsequently, she earned her PhD in applied mathematics at MIT in 1992, based on research in combinatorics, which lies at the heart of so many human endeavors. Since 1994, she has taught at Wheelock College, receiving tenure as an associate professor in 2001. There, her teaching was devoted to the training of future teachers, especially of undergraduates who were the first in their families to attend college. She takes great pride in being able to turn math-phobic students into engaged, skilled, and enthusiastic future math teachers.

    At Wheelock, Debra also served as mathematics coordinator and cochair of the mathematics and science department, and she has actively engaged in professional development. She has published a number of articles in The Mathematics Teacher, PRIMUS, and Discrete Mathematics, and she regularly attends the annual national Joint Mathematics Meeting, participating in sessions on mathematics and relations to other human activities, such as art, dance, poetry, crocheting, knitting, sewing, origami, and musical instruments.
  • Yu-Shen Lin, Assistant Professor of Mathematics

    Yu-Shen Lin earned his BS in mathematics at the National Taiwan University and his PhD in mathematics from Harvard University in 2013, with Fields Medalist S.-T. Yau as his advisor. He held a prestigious Szego Assistant Professorship at Stanford University (2013–16), as well as a visiting assistant professorship at Columbia University. His research has appeared in the top journals, Journal of Differential Geometry and Communications of Mathematical Physics, where he has published fundamental new theories for symplectic geometry, algebraic geometry, enumerative geometry, and topical geometry. His research has also led to major advances in topical quantum field theory, for Calabi-Yau manifolds, open Gromov-Witten theory, homological mirror symmetry, K3 surfaces, and wall-crossing. He presented the first proof of a conjecture about combinatorial aspects of curves and surfaces in algebraic geometry, made by the string theorists Gopakumar and Vafa. He has given over 30 invited research colloquia and talks since 2013 and earned two Certificates of Distinction for exceptional teaching at Harvard.
  • Judith Lok, Associate Professor of Statistics

    Judith Lok earned her PhD in mathematics and statistics from the Free University of Amsterdam in 2001. Her research program in the theoretical foundations of causal inference is internationally recognized. She has also developed major new statistical methods for estimation, information censoring, optimization, randomized trials, Missing Not-At-Random data sets, structural nested models, survival analysis, theoretical probability, and uncertainty quantification. Her powerful new methods have been published in the Annals of Statistics, the top journal in statistics; Biometrika and Biostatistics, the top biostatistics journals; as well as in AIDS, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Annals of Thoracic Surgery, Radiotherapy and Oncology, Cancer, and Statistics in Medicine, where her state-of-the-art statistical methods have helped lead to major advances for HIV/AIDS, cancer, bacteria-resistant infections, radiotherapy trials, and maternity-related studies.

    Judith comes to us from the Harvard School of Public Health, and her research program is actively supported by the NIH, NSF, and joint grants with medical doctors. She has also been an outstanding instructor and highly successful mentor to graduate students and postdocs.

Philosophy

  • Sally Sedgwick Professor of Philosophy (Starts 1/1/19)

    Sally Sedgwick (PhD, University of Chicago) is among the most eminent figures working on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism. A recipient of Humboldt, Fulbright, and NEH fellowships, she is the author of the well-regarded book Hegel’s Critique of Kant: From Dichotomy to Identity (Oxford University Press, 2012), as well as a significant commentary on Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and a much-cited conference anthology, The Reception of Kant’s Critical Philosophy: Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000). She has also published more than 30 articles and book chapters in such important venues as the Oxford Handbook of German Philosophy in the Nineteenth Century, The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism, and Blackwell’s A Companion to Hegel, as well as in journals such as Kant-Studien and Owl of Minerva.

    Sally has been an accomplished teacher across a career that has spanned appointments at both Dartmouth College and the University of Illinois at Chicago, as well as visiting professorships at Bern, Berlin, and the University of Pennsylvania. She also has a track record of significant service both to her home institutions and to the profession. A past president of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, she currently serves as co-editor of the International Yearbook of German Idealism.

Physics

  • Zeynep Demiragli, Assistant Professor of Physics

    Zeynep Demiragli graduated with a BS in physics from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2010 and received her PhD in experimental particle physics from Brown University in 2015, under the supervision of Professor Greg Landsberg. Zeynep’s contributions to developing greater sensitivity to the event-selection (trigger) software for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, were recognized with the CMS Achievement Award during her graduate student years. She joins the BU Physics faculty after spending two-and-a-half years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT in Professor Christoph Paus’ group.

    Zeynep is a recognized leader in the development of experimental techniques for the measurement of missing transverse energy that she and her colleagues at the LHC use in (a) the study of properties of the known particles and forces; and in (b) the search for dark matter, supersymmetry, and rare Higgs boson decays. In recognition of her leadership in both the development of experimental tools and in the physics analysis, she was appointed as convener of the 50-member Jets and Missing Transverse Momentum physics object group. At BU, she will continue working on searches for physics beyond the standard model and will become involved in the development of (trigger and tracker) hardware, essential for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC.
  • Indara Suarez, Assistant Professor of Physics

    Indara Suarez graduated with a BS in physics from the University of California at Los Angeles and received her PhD in collider physics from Texas A&M University in 2014, under the supervision of Professor Alexei Safonov. Her PhD research was recognized with the CMS Achievement Award for work on the integration and commissioning of the new electronics for the inner muon detector for the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. After earning her PhD, she joined Professor Claudio Campagnari’s group at UC Santa Barbara as a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow.

    Indara combines experience in building electronics with a broad range of physics analysis expertise. During her postdoctoral work at UC Santa Barbara, she led an analysis group working on a search for supersymmetry, a popular extension to the standard model, and was also the convener of a 30-member Muon Detector Performance Group. In recognition of this work, she was selected as a LHC Physics Center Distinguished Researcher for 2018. At BU, she plans to expand her ongoing efforts on searches for physics beyond the standard model, standard model measurements, and muon electronics for the High-Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. In addition to her research, Indara has longstanding interest and extensive experience in promoting STEM education within underserved populations.

Political Science

  • Lauren Mattioli, Assistant Professor of Political Science

    Lauren Mattioli comes to BU from Princeton University, where she defended her PhD dissertation, titled “Governing the Federal Judicial State,” earlier this year. A specialist in American politics, she held a predoctoral fellowship at Emory University’s Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods. Her dissertation examined the influence of presidents over judicial policy outcomes, and she has also written on legislative-executive relations and gender in US politics. She is the coauthor of articles published in Politics, Groups and Identities, and The Political Methodologist.
  • Lida Maxwell, Associate Professor of Political Science

    Lida is a political theorist who received her PhD from Northwestern University in 2006. Prior to coming to BU, she taught at Trinity College, and in 2016–2017, she was a Mellon Midcareer fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University. Her areas of teaching and research interest include democratic theory, feminist theory, history of political thought, law and politics, truth and politics, queer theory, human rights, and liberal theory. She is the author of Public Trials: Burke, Zola, Arendt and the Politics of Lost Causes, published in 2014 by Oxford University Press. A forthcoming book is titled Insurgent Truth, and she is at work on another manuscript, tentatively titled Political Intimacies: The Politics of Love at Midcentury.

Psychological & Brain Sciences

  • Chandramouli Chandrasekaran, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences and Assistant Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology (Starts 1/1/19)

    Chandramouli (Chand) Chandrasekaran is a leading young systems neuroscientist who utilizes multichannel electrophysiological recordings to investigate decision-making mechanisms in the primate brain. He earned his PhD from Princeton University in 2011 and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University. Using high-density electrodes, he examines the specific role of each layer of the cerebral cortex in decision-making. His research has also shed light on the neural mechanisms of multi-sensory integration. He has won numerous awards and lectured widely on his research. He brings an NIH K99/R00 grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.

    Chand’s research has appeared in top journals, including Nature Neuroscience, Nature Communications, Neuron, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and Journal of Neuroscience. He is a joint hire between psychological and brain sciences and the BU School of Medicine department of anatomy and neurobiology, as part of President Brown’s initiative on the basic life sciences. Chand’s primary laboratory will be at the medical school, but he will also have an office within CAS/PBS.
  • Mark Howe, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences

    Mark Howe is developing new experimental techniques to examine fundamental questions about the dopamine system in the mammalian brain. He earned his PhD from MIT in 2013 and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University. His work focuses on the striatum in the basal ganglia and its dopaminergic inputs from the midbrain. Mark has published in a number of journals, including two first-author publications in the journal Nature. He discovered a novel dopamine signal in the striatum that encodes the predicted value and proximity of distant rewards during navigation. These signals may explain how animals continuously modify their actions or movement vigor based on their environment. He also determined how networks in the striatum become reorganized during learning-to-support habit formation.

    Mark has developed an approach that allowed him to conduct the first subcellular resolution functional imaging experiments in the striatum of behaving mice. He observed that single axons, originating from separate midbrain regions, transmit largely distinct signals to either rapid changes in movement or to unpredicted rewards. This work has challenged prevailing dogma in the field and provided a new model that reconciles the dual roles of dopamine signaling in reinforcement learning and movement control. In ongoing work, he is investigating the dynamics of dopamine axons and other neurons of the striatum during learning and navigation tasks in virtual reality. His work has important implications for the basic scientific understanding of both reward systems and movement systems in the brain. Moreover, his research may have lead to insights for new therapeutic approaches to Parkinson’s disease.
  • Benjamin Scott, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences

    Benjamin Scott's research combines cutting-edge neurophysiological measurements with exciting new behavioral paradigms to investigate the mechanisms of decision-making in the mammalian brain. He earned his PhD in neuroscience from MIT in 2009 and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University in the laboratories of David Tank and Carlos Brody. His published work includes first-author publications in Neuron, eLife, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    Benjamin employs two-photon microscopy to study neural circuits in great detail in behaving animals. In order to reveal circuitry details in detailed structures across the cerebral cortex, he has also been in the vanguard of developing three-photon microscopy. His laboratory protocols permit him to examine more complex cognitive behaviors than can be done in more standard model systems. His application of these new tools to the study of more complex behaviors puts him in a superb position for major advances in our understanding of how the brain gives rise to cognition. His basic science investigation of cognitive circuitry may also have significant clinical implications for human populations with cognitive disorders.
  • Nicholas Wagner, Assistant Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences

    Nicholas Wagner examines the processes through which early risk and experience influence social, emotional, and behavioral development. He particularly focuses on the emergence of psychopathology in children. He earned his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016 and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher and an assistant research professor at the University of Maryland. The goals of his research program are to elucidate the processes through which early experience, family processes, and psychobiological factors influence adaptive and maladaptive child social, emotional, and behavioral development. His research emphasizes the role of parenting and children’s psycho-physiological and self-regulatory processes in early life. One primary line of Nicholas' research examines early developmental processes that foretell later behavioral and emotional problems, with a specific focus on early conduct problems. A second line of research investigates social anxiety, behavioral inhibition, and withdrawal, as well as the influence of the social environment on the emergence of both externalizing and internalizing problems.

    Nicholas has published 14 peer-reviewed articles, seven as first author, in journals such as Child Development, Developmental Psychology, Development and Psychopathology, Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, and Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. He has nine additional papers under review. Before pursuing his graduate education, he was an elementary and middle school teacher at a low-income school in Phoenix, Ariz., as part of Teach For America.

Religion

  • Margarita Guillory, Associate Professor of Religion

    Margarita Guillory, who comes to us after seven years as an assistant professor of religion at the University of Rochester, is a scholar of religions of the African diaspora, specializing in the diverse religious cultures of the American South and New Orleans. Her interests, informed by social theory, revolve around esoteric and spiritualist movements outside the “mainstream” Black Church, a topic that comes alive in her new book, Social and Spiritual Transformation in African American Spiritual Churches (Routledge, 2018). Margarita received a master of theological studies from the University of St. Thomas and her PhD in religious studies from Rice University. Her BA from Emory University was in chemistry, and she taught Earth science and astronomy for seven years in a Houston Public Schools magnet program. At the University of Rochester, she taught courses like Religion in the Digital Age and Religion and Hip-Hop Culture, as well as courses on the history and range of African diasporic religions.

Romance Studies

  • Jennifer Cazenave, Assistant Professor of Romance Studies

    Jennifer Cazenave completed a dual PhD in comparative literature/French and film at Northwestern University and the Université Paris 7-Diderot in 2011 with the highest distinction. She was awarded several postdoctoral fellowships: at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris, a two-year teaching fellowship at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and, most recently, a 2017–18 fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies. She comes to BU from the University of South Florida, where she has been assistant professor of French since 2016.

    Jennifer teaches courses in 20th- and 21st-century French cinema, literature, and theory. Her first book, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s “Shoah” (forthcoming from SUNY Press, 2019), undertakes a comprehensive examination of the 220 hours of filmic material Claude Lanzmann excluded from his 1985 Holocaust opus. She is currently at work on a second book project that examines the centrality of the Earth as a medium for the writing of the Cambodian genocide in the cinema of Rithy Panh. Her article, titled “Earth as Archive: Reframing Memory and Mourning in The Missing Picture,” which examines Panh’s autobiographical representation of the catastrophe, recently appeared in Cinema Journal.
  • Boris Corredor, Lecturer

    Boris Corredor completed both his MA and PhD at Boston University. He received his PhD in Hispanic language and literatures in 2007. He has taught as a visiting assistant professor at Regis College and as a lecturer at Tufts University and Dartmouth College. At Boston University, he has been teaching all levels of Spanish language classes, especially intermediate and advanced, part time since 2010.

    Boris' research interests include literature, film, and language, with articles in Spanish, including “Entre viejas, tras del fuego, hilando sus ruecas: Escritura y oralidad en ‘Retrato de la Lozana andaluza’” (2018), and in French, including “Le cinéma: un rêve failli de l’imaginaire national colombien, le cas du film Le drame du 15 octobre (1915)” in Imaginaires cinématographiques des turbulences politiques dans les Amériques latines, (2012). He has published two grammar textbooks, the most recent one being Spanish Grammar E-Z (2009).
  • Lionel Mathieu, Lecturer

    Lionel Mathieu, a native of Strasbourg, France, pursued all of his postsecondary education in the United States, where he earned a BA from St. Cloud State University (Minnesota) in English, French, and the teaching of English as a second language. He then completed his master’s and PhD at the University of Arizona in linguistics, with a concentration in phonology and second-language acquisition and teaching.

    Prior to joining BU, Lionel taught all levels of French as a second language at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Va. His research interests include phonetics and phonology (with a focus on the orthography interface), second-language acquisition and teaching (with a focus on the pedagogy of multiliteracies), psycholinguistics (with a focus on bilingual visual word recognition), contact linguistics (with a focus on loanword phonology), and French linguistics.
  • Amina Shabani, Lecturer

    Besides an MS in international economics from Suffolk University, Amina Shabani completed an MA and a PhD in Hispanic literatures at Indiana University Bloomington. Prior to joining Boston University, she worked at Butler University, where she taught Spanish and occasionally French. Her teaching and research interests include foreign language pedagogy, service learning, creative writing, and Afro-Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino literatures. Born in Belgium and raised in several African countries, Amina has a clear passion for foreign languages and cultures; her residence in multiple cultural contexts and speaking eight languages may have something to do with that.
  • Lillie Webb, Lecturer and Director of Global House

    Lillie Webb has been hired as the inaugural director of Global House. Through this new living-learning community, launched in the renovated Myles Standish Hall in fall 2018, she will foster immersive foreign language learning and intercultural exchange among students from across BU. She will also serve as a lecturer in French for the romance studies department. Webb holds a BA in French and English literature from Bennington College. She earned both her MA and PhD in French language and literature from Boston University. As a graduate student, she was awarded a Certificate for Excellence in Teaching. She also initiated the Boston University Romance Studies Graduate Conference, now in its third year. Her research interests include depictions of women, power, and sexuality in 19th-century French literature and art; mechanisms of identity construction; and navigating intercultural frameworks.

Sociology

  • Max Greenberg, Lecturer

    Max Greenberg received his PhD from the University of Southern California in 2015. His research and teaching are in the areas of gender, social inequalities, youth and families, sociology of sport, social movements, and social policy. He is the coauthor of Some Men: Feminist Allies and the Movement to End Violence Against Women (2015), which received the Pacific Sociological Association distinguished scholarship award. His forthcoming book, Twelve Weeks to Change a Life: At-Risk Youth in a Fractured State, is under contract with the University of California Press.
  • Sarah Miller, Lecturer

    Sarah Miller received her PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2018. Her research and teaching are in the areas of gender, sexualities, youth, and education, and her dissertation explores the tension between the rise of the anti-bullying movement and the persistent marginalization of LGBTQ youth through bullying practices in US schools. Her 2016 paper, published in Gender & Society, received the American Sociological Association Sexualities Section Graduate Student Paper Award. Sarah is the recipient of a National Academy of Education Spencer Dissertation Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant.
  • Heather Schoenfeld, Associate Professor of Sociology

    Heather Schoenfeld earned her BA from Columbia University and her PhD in sociology from Northwestern University in 2009. Her research interests include law and society, sociology of law, race and inequality, punishment and social control, politics of public policy, and comparative historical methods. An award-winning scholar of mass incarceration, Heather is the author of over a dozen articles and essays on historical and contemporary systems of criminal punishment in the United States. Her book, Building the Prison State: Race and the Politics of Mass Incarceration (University of Chicago Press, 2018), provides a new perspective on the rise of mass incarceration through an examination of crime control politics in Florida. She currently serves on the editorial boards of Punishment & Society and Criminology & Public Policy and is a contributor for In Justice Today, a national criminal justice news outlet. Prior to joining BU, she held an appointment as an assistant professor in the Center for Legal Studies and the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University.

Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies

  • Sandra McEvoy, Clinical Associate Professor of Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies and Political Science

    Sandra McEvoy comes to us from Wheelock College, where she was director of political science and global studies. She has served as associate director of the Consortium on Gender, Security and Human Rights at the University of Massachusetts Boston and held a research fellowship at the Five Colleges Women’s Studies Research Center in South Hadley, Mass. She has taught courses on global social movements, gender and political violence, gender and politics, seeking justice after war, and LGBT politics in film.

    Sandra examines women’s participation in political violence and advocates for gender-focused strategies that incorporate perpetrators of political violence into long-term conflict resolution strategies. She is preparing a book manuscript that documents Loyalist women’s participation in paramilitary organizations in Northern Ireland during the 30-year conflict in the country. Her research interests also include LGBT+ identities and global politics with a focus on displaced and stateless LGBT people in conflict and post-conflict settings, and she is currently co-editing the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Global LGBT Politics. She has also served as chair of the Women’s Caucus and founding chair of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Allies Caucus in the International Studies Association.

World Languages & Literatures

  • Shutan Dong, Lecturer

    Shutan Dong joins the Chinese program in world languages and literatures as a full-time lecturer. She received a MEd in second-language acquisition from Beijing Language and Culture University (2013) with highest honors. She has taught previously at Harvard and most recently at Princeton University (since fall 2013). During her years at Princeton, Shutan taught Chinese at all levels, including first-to fourth-year Chinese, Chinese for heritage speakers, and content-based advanced Chinese courses on contemporary Chinese literature. She is also experienced in curriculum design and development, hiring and training part-time instructors, community- and program-building, advising, preparing students for summer internships, and promoting Chinese on campus. She presents regularly at academic conferences and has excelled in service to her field.
  • Heeju Lee, Lecturer

    Heeju Lee joins the Korean program in world languages and literatures as a full-time lecturer. She graduated from Sogang University in 2003, specializing in English language and literature, and earned her MA from the same university. She earned an additional MA in linguistics from UCLA, where she is now completing her PhD, with her dissertation titled, “Acquisition of Second Language Prosody and the Role of Prosody in Discourse: A Study of English Speakers’ Korean and Korean Speakers’ English.”

    While completing her PhD, Heeju received a certificate in TESOL and became certified in oral proficiency interview techniques by the American Council on Teaching of Foreign Languages. She also completed Yonsei University’s Korean Language Instructor Program. She has taught all levels of Korean, including a heritage course, intensive Korean, and a course on Korean linguistics. She has presented her research at numerous academic venues and has published two papers, one in Chinese Language and Discourse and the other in The Korean Language in America, which were selected as outstanding graduate student papers at the American Association of Teachers of Korean twice, in 2014 and 2015, respectively.
  • Mihoko Yagi, Lecturer

    Mihoko Yagi joins the Japanese program in world languages and literatures on a one-year appointment as a full-time lecturer. She has been teaching at BU as an Alliance for Language Learning and Educational Exchange (“ALLEX”) fellow for two years and received her MA in TESOL in May 2018. Mihoko shows impressive dedication to improving her teaching: last year, she went to observe classes taught by other instructors almost every day, while taking graduate courses related to language teaching. She is also developing ideas to improve students’ speaking practice and volunteers regularly to help out with extracurricular activities. The Japanese faculty is thrilled to have her stay for an additional year.

CAS Writing Program

  • Noor Hashem, Lecturer

    Noor Hashem holds an MFA in fiction and PhD in English literature from Cornell University. She was a Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the humanities at Johns Hopkins University from 2014 to 2016. Her research examines the intersection of Muslim literature, North American ethnic literature, and world literature through the lenses of critical theory, cultural studies, and gender studies. She is completing a book manuscript, Creative Ritual: Embodied Faith and Secular Reason in Contemporary Muslim Fiction, which studies the portrayal of Muslim characters that assert dissident social agency through their practice of cultivated, embodied rituals in secular spaces.

    Noor has published fiction and nonfiction in New Letters, Mizna, and Consequence Magazine. She is a 2018 recipient of the Mass Cultural Council Art Fellowship for her novel-in-progress about a Muslim community in Southern California. Her teaching experience includes courses on Muslim literature, Muslim science fiction, art from the Arab Spring, world literature, and creative writing. She has given talks at the Huntington Theatre in Boston and also taught creative writing and pedagogy to Syrian refugees and educators in the south of Turkey.
  • Aleksandra Kasztalska, Lecturer

    Aleksandra Kasztalska graduated with a BA in psychology and French from Centenary College of Louisiana and received an MA and PhD in linguistics from Purdue University. While employed at Purdue and later at Southern Arkansas University, she taught composition courses, as well as a variety of classes in linguistics and TESOL. Her research interests include world Englishes, second-language writing, and English teaching in Poland.
  • Michele Martinez, Lecturer

    Michele Martinez holds degrees in English from Stanford (BA) and Yale (PhD). Her publications and research focus on the multimedia aspirations and effects of Victorian poetry, painting, and photography. She wrote a book on researching and teaching Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh, published by Edinburgh University Press. Her most recent article, “Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Salutation of Beatrice Pictures as Victorian Comics,” appears in Modern Language Studies, and her current project investigates Julia Margaret Cameron’s pictorialism and its legacy in modern family photography. Michele’s past teaching includes courses on Victorian novels and visual culture, autobiographical narrative, and the gothic. In the CAS WR courses Brave New Worlds and Family Snaps and Stories, she is delighted to share her keen interest in word-image narratives and visual literacy.
  • Darren Penn, Lecturer

    Darren Penn holds a PhD in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BA in English and creative writing from Brandeis University. His scholarly interests focus on poetry and poetics, modernist poetry, lyric theory, philosophy and poetry, and jazz music and poetry. He is currently at work on a book about metacognition in modernist poetry. He has taught classes on existentialism in American literature, aesthetics in 20th-century literature, Modernism and the Western literary tradition, resistance and rebellion rhetoric, and modernist poetry and cognition.
  • Brian Walsh, Senior Lecturer

    Brian Walsh received his PhD in English literature at Rutgers University and has taught at the University of Illinois and Yale. He has taught a variety of courses on world literature and college writing but specializes in Shakespearean drama, film adaptations of Shakespeare, and modern and contemporary drama. He has published two monographs—Shakespeare, the Queen’s Men, and the Elizabethan Performance of History and Unsettled Toleration: Religious Difference on the Shakespearean Stage—and edited a collection of essays on The Revenger’s Tragedy, as well as recently publishing an article on Indian film versions of Shakespearean tragedy.

 

Campaign for CAS

Status Report

Thanks to the generosity of our many alumni, parents, and friends, the Campaign for CAS is making tremendous progress. As of June 30, 2018, we were well ahead of our target for the fiscal year.

FY18 Goal Vs. FY18 Total
FY18 Cash Goal $15,750,000
FY18 Cash Total $10,154,724
FY19 Pledge Goal $3,000,000
FY18 Pledge Total $13,307,338
CAS Campaign Status
Campaign Goal $100,000,000
Campaign total as of June 30, 2018 $136,229,705
Percentage toward campaign goal 136%
Campaign Goals for FY2019
Cash Goal $10,431,205
Pledge Goal $3,339,090
Annual Fund Goal $1,000,000


Stewarding Our Resources

CAS/GRS Budget

In order to achieve all of our many goals, we must remain careful stewards of our resources. The college achieved a balanced, unrestricted expense budget of $154,969,502** at the close of the 2017/2018 fiscal year, compared with $122,851,560 the previous year.

This budget covered faculty salaries ($85,269,810), staff salaries ($15,862,233), student salaries ($14,078,356 for fellowships, internships, etc.), operating expenses ($12,403,028), and Fringe Benefits ($27,356,075).

**Beginning in FY18, fringe benefits are budgeted and charged directly to the college.

Annual Report 2017/2018

  • From the Dean From the Dean
    Leading a dynamic college and graduate school of arts and sciences within a major research university is by definition a team effort. Interim Dean of Arts & Sciences Stan Sclaroff is determined to build on the accomplishments of former Dean Ann Cudd. The dean search that gets underway this fall is also an exciting opportunity for the school’s leadership, staff, and faculty to continue to imagine what is possible for our college.
  • A Year of Building A Year of Building
    During the 2017/18 academic year, the college and graduate school continued their forward momentum from recent years, strengthening and growing existing programs and initiatives. We helped lead the creation and launch of BU’s new general education curriculum, the BU Hub; launched a new living-learning program, Global House; and continued a pattern of growth in the number of master’s students while maintaining and enhancing the strength and excellence of our PhD programs.
  • Strengthening Undergraduate Education Strengthening Undergraduate Education
    At CAS, we provide students with an education for the 21st century—one that is flexible, forward-looking, grounded, and rigorous. In 2017/18, we matriculated one of our most talented ever classes of first-year students. And we worked hard to expand the experiential learning opportunities available to them, most notably with the launch of Global House. We also took the lead in developing a new BU-wide general education curriculum, the BU Hub.
  • Enhancing Graduate Education Enhancing Graduate Education
    A year ago, the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences (GRS) welcomed a new associate dean: sociologist Emily Barman. Since taking the helm, Barman has focused on expanding support services for students, enhancing diversity and inclusion efforts for our graduate programs, and continuing a pattern of growth in the number of master’s students while maintaining and enhancing the strength and excellence of our PhD programs.
  • Maintaining a World-Class Faculty Maintaining a World-Class Faculty
    In order for CAS to provide its students with a world-class undergraduate and graduate education and maintain its reputation as a leading research institution, the college must continually renew and enhance its faculty. In 2017/18, CAS hired an excellent and diverse group of new lecturers and junior and senior faculty members.
  • Conducting Pathbreaking Research Conducting Pathbreaking Research
    In 2017/18, our faculty continued pushing the boundaries of research in a vast array of fields. Discoveries both major and incremental will have a real, positive impact on people’s lives. One of the biggest leaps forward came with the opening in fall 2017 of the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering.
  • Building Our Future Together Building Our Future Together
    In 2017/18, the eighth year of the Campaign for Boston University, numerous alumni, friends, and parents have helped to raise $136.2 million for CAS—far exceeding our ambitious goal of $100 million.
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