This coming Friday, the College of Arts & Sciences will host the first of four Open Houses, which are designed to persuade our outstanding admitted students to enroll in Boston University for the fall and to begin what we hope will be a lifelong connection to our university. This is an exhilarating time for these students, as they imagine themselves on our campus launching their lives into adulthood. I always look forward to meeting them and their families and to speaking with them about the incredible opportunities that our college has to offer: a transformative liberal education that will challenge their intellect and inspire their soul, a deep engagement with at least one of our disciplines or interdisciplinary majors that will take them to the leading edge of academic research, and co-curricular, experiential activities that will help them decide on their path to impact the world.
This year’s recruits are special because they will be the first class to navigate the BU Hub, the unifying intellectual experience that will be shared by all BU undergraduates. We have been preparing to welcome these students into this stimulating new program in multiple ways. The first phase of a student-facing Hub website is set to go live in time for the first open house for admitted students. It will contain information for students and advisors, as well as information about why BU is launching its first university-wide General Education program. (The next phase of the website, scheduled to launch in June, will feature a redesigned faculty section and additional resources for advising.)
Faculty have done an impressive job building the curriculum for incoming students. In just one year, faculty have proposed over 650 courses, and more than 350 have been approved by our college and university committees to meet one or more areas of the new curriculum. However, we need to continue to create and innovate. With many of the standard first-year classes revised for Hub use, we can turn our attention to proposing revised upper level courses for majors and to developing new courses that will draw students to the College. Departments and programs are considering how their majors will navigate the Hub and what new major-level courses would facilitate that. Associate Deans Joe Bizup and Steve Jarvi have been hosting luncheons on this topic and are ready to consult and advise. The Hub offers exciting opportunities to build constituencies for courses, majors, and the arts and sciences generally by developing new courses and new ways of teaching, such as through interdisciplinary and team-taught courses. A critical need expressed by the College of Engineering and other colleges and schools, as well as our own natural science departments, is for Hub courses that combine two of the non-science/non-quantitative areas: Philosophical Interpretation and Life’s Meanings, Aesthetic Exploration, Historical Consciousness, Social Inquiry I or II, The Individual in Community, Global Citizenship and Intercultural Literacy, and Ethical Reasoning. To investigate the combinations of courses that currently exist in the Hub, chairs, directors, and undergraduate directors can access a database tool, PowerBI, that allows interactive searching of Hub courses and area combinations. Assistant Dean Daryl Healea plans to meet with departments and faculty to discuss how this tool can be used for program planning.
We are also offering advising training for faculty. CAS Advising, in conjunction with the university’s BU Hub office, is offering a series of workshops this spring designed to prepare faculty and professional advisors for advising on the BU Hub. These workshops will be especially helpful for faculty who will be advising this summer, but I encourage all advisors in CAS to consider attending one of these workshops. Each workshop will include an overview of BU Hub requirements, potential pathways through the Hub for specific majors, and resources at both the College and University level that have been created to assist advisors. To reserve a space in a workshop, go to https://www.bu.edu/cas/cas-faculty-hub-trainings/ Helping everyone get up to speed on the BU Hub will be an ongoing process, so there will be more workshops offered throughout the summer and during the next academic year.
The Cross-College Challenge (XCC) is perhaps the most innovative and exciting aspect of the BU Hub. This summer, sustainability@BU is partnering with the Cross-College Challenge to pilot a first wave of projects designed to help BU achieve the carbon reduction goals laid out in the University’s Climate Action Plan. The pilot projects tackle student access to recycling and composting systems on campus, estimating the carbon impact of various elements of student life, and modeling the carbon footprint of international student travel, all of which relate to the University’s sustainability goals.
Finally, I want to revisit an idea I floated in a fall Dean’s note on our intellectual themes: building integrated pathways through the Hub with CAS courses. The Core Curriculum has completed work to create a sequence of courses that taken together, and in combination with the Cross College Challenge, would achieve all of the Hub learning outcomes through its integrated great books curriculum. I proposed that we build pathways, loosely modeled on the Core, to guide our students through integrated curricula focused on each of the other four identified intellectual themes: the digital revolution, environmental sustainability, mind and brain, and inequality and social change. This approach would provide students with a suite of choices, each creating a cohort of fellow students and focusing on the depth and breadth of offerings in CAS. Of course, many of our students would continue to choose from an a la carte menu of courses. But for those students who seek more guidance and coherence for their pathway through general education, these themes could fill an important need. I invite faculty who are interested in building a pathway related to one of these themes to contact me as we form committees to move this idea forward.
As our admitted students arrive for their first introduction to Boston University this month, I am excited for them and for all of us. Our Dean’s Hosts and CAS Advising are ready to speak enthusiastically to these students about the innovative courses and experiences that lie in store for them. I am proud of the work we all have accomplished together and eager to invite these recruits to take the Hub for a spin.