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Map of Boston showing locations where Arts & Sciences students and faculty are collaborating on projects

Building a Better Boston

Faculty and students are partnering with city and nonprofit leaders to improve the place where they work, study, and live

Compiled by Marc Chalufour and Roni Lakin (CAS’25)

BU’s campuses aren’t the only place where the Arts & Sciences community learns—Greater Boston itself is a classroom, laboratory, and workplace. Governmental agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private sector companies are partners, and their challenges—from education to the environment—provide opportunities to contribute to solving real-world problems.

Entire programs have been created to facilitate work in and around Boston. The BU Graduate Program in Urban Biogeoscience & Environmental Health (BU URBAN) places PhD candidates with partner organizations to conduct research. Initiative on Cities (IoC) scholars work in agencies throughout Boston City Hall. Creative writing students teach high school classes, student advocates assist vulnerable communities, and faculty research helps Boston adapt to the changing climate. And faculty are engaged in research focused on making cities more livable and equitable (read more in “Building Better Cities“).

Here are some of those partnerships from the 2022–23 school year.

  1. Boston City Hall

    • Career: City of Boston Communications and Public Awareness
      Janessa Dennis (GRS’25) is pursuing a master’s degree in historic preservation and urban planning while also working as director of communications and public awareness for the city of Boston.
    • Internship: Boston Planning Advisory Council
      Dhruv Kapadia (CAS’24) interned with the newly created City Hall office responsible for coordinating Boston planning initiatives and keeping them focused on priorities of resiliency, affordability, and equity.
    • Research: Understanding the Heat Impacts of Urban Development
      Ian Smith (CAS’17, GRS’23) worked with the Boston Planning and Development Agency to create a tool to measure how proposed developments might impact urban temperatures.
    • Fellowship: IoC Summer Fellowship with the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity
      Maggie Kormann (CAS’23) worked closely with Resilient Cities, an organization that facilitated weekly workshops for policymakers from around the country to discuss their racial equity and climate resiliency work.
    • Fellowship: IoC Summer Fellowship with the City of Boston Environment Department
      Zakaria Elkawa (CAS’23, Pardee’23) worked for the city’s Climate Ready Boston initiative, which is responsible for developing plans for addressing the impacts of extreme heat.
    • Internship: IoC Summer Internship with the City of Boston Equity and Inclusion Cabinet
      Destiny Perkins (CAS’25, Pardee’25) interned for the city’s senior advisor on racial justice, Lori Nelson, who is responsible for advancing social, economic, and health equity.
    • Fellowship: Policy Fellow at the City of Boston’s Environment Department
      Claudia Diezmartínez (GRS’27,’27) worked with the city’s Carbon Neutrality team to implement the Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance to help Boston work toward carbon neutrality by 2050.
    • Project: Integrating Climate Justice and Climate Action
      BU URBAN student Claudia Diezmartínez (GRS’27,’27) worked with Boston’s Green Ribbon Commission to integrate climate justice into the city’s Climate Action Plan.

  2. Greater Boston

    • Research: Air Quality in Boston Public Schools
      Lucy Hutyra, a professor of Earth and environment, and Patricia Fabian, an associate professor of environmental health at the School of Public Health, have partnered with Boston Public Schools to monitor air quality from 5,000 sensors in classrooms and school buildings. They hope to better understand how air quality, thermal comfort, energy use, and COVID-related engineering controls interact. This project received an Initiative on Cities Early Stage Urban Research Award.
    • Class: MetroBridge Local Policy Analysis Lab and the Boston Planning & Development Agency
      Students in this experiential learning course conduct research for local governments. A group of spring 2023 students studied bus stop equity across Boston and provided recommendations for improvements on routes serving lower-income and minority residents.
    • Research: Evaluating Boston’s Compost Cycles
      Through the BU URBAN program, Samantha Hall (SPH’21,’28) partnered with the Trustees of Reservations, a Massachusetts nonprofit, to evaluate efforts by the city of Boston, contractors, and community partners to create and distribute safe, healthy compost.

  3. Research: The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2022

    Katherine Levine Einstein and Maxwell Palmer, both associate professors of political science, studied equity in subsidized housing in the Boston area for the Boston Foundation’s annual housing report card.

  4. Community Service: Charles River Clean-up Day

    Students for the United Nations, a community service organization, and the BU Student Government hosted this fifth annual event on the Charles River Esplanade. Volunteers filled seven 13-gallon trash bags with litter collected along a two-mile stretch of the river.

  5. Research: Microplastics in Belle Isle Marsh

    Shalom Entner (GRS’28,’28) is studying microplastics in East Boston’s Belle Isle Marsh, one of the last remaining salt water marshes in Greater Boston.

  6. Community Service: BU Student Government and Chinatown Main Street

    Members of the Student Government’s department of city affairs partnered with Chinatown Main Street, a local nonprofit, and recruited volunteers to staff the organization’s monthly food distribution program and annual Chinese New Year Cultural Village.

  7. Class: MetroBridge Urban Climate and the Charles River Watershed Association

    Students in this 500-level Earth and environment course studied the best practices for urban heat island measurements for vulnerable communities.

  8. Project: Advisory Council for the Advancement of Representation in Education

    Kevin Lang, the Lawrence A. Bloom Professor of Economics, was appointed by Governor Maura Healey to a newly formed advisory council tasked with promoting representation in higher education.

  9. Internship: Boston Athanaeum

    Caryne Nicholas (CAS’21, GRS’23) was an education intern at the Boston Athenaeum, one of the oldest private libraries in the country.

  10. Boston Harbor Islands

    • Research: Climate Change Vulnerability of the Boston Harbor Islands
      For the past five years, students and faculty from the BU Coastal Lab have worked with the National Park Service to study the climate change vulnerability of the Boston Harbor Islands.
    • Project: Boston Harbor Islands Archaeological Climate Action Plan
      Zoe Hughes, a research assistant professor of Earth and environment, and Catherine West, a research associate professor of archaeology and anthropology, are working with Joe Bagley (CAS’06), director of archaeology for the city of Boston, to prioritize and protect archaeological sites on the Boston Harbor Islands.

  11. Research: Charles River Historic Water Quality

    BU URBAN student Lydia Jefferson (GRS’29) worked with the Charles River Watershed Association to make historical water quality data more available to researchers, government officials, and the public.

  12. Boston University Charles River Campus

    • Community Service: Assisting Refugees Through Initiative, Service, and Education (ARISE)
      A student organization, ARISE advocates for forcibly displaced, shelterless, and at-risk communities in Boston. The group has volunteered at local food distribution centers and organized lectures focused on humanitarian efforts and climate refugees.
    • Teaching: Upward Bound
      Isaiah Crayton (CAS’23) worked as an instructor in BU’s Upward Bound summer program, teaching science to low-income and first-gen high school students.

  13. Teaching: Boston Arts Academy

    For approximately 25 years, BU’s Creative Writing Program has placed MFA students at Boston Arts Academy—the city’s only public high school devoted to visual and performing arts—to teach writing.

  14. Research: Boston’s Energy and Climate Justice Dashboard

    Through its Visualizing Energy project, the BU Institute for Global Sustainability publishes interactive data stories to communicate the relationships between energy and equity across the city.

  15. Fellowship: Office of City Councilor Kendra Lara

    Sean Waddington (CAS’25) was the policy fellow for City Councilor Kendra Lara, who represents the Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, and West Roxbury neighborhoods in Boston’s sixth district.

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