Boston College Chronicle

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PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON COLLEGE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

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Around Campus

Songs, Service

BC Global

Canine Cognition Center is up and running; men’s and women’s hockey teams honor special individuals.

Common Tones of Boston College combines a cappella performance with community outreach.

Connell School and Chilean university working together to introduce nurse practitioner role in that country.

FEBRUARY 25, 2020 VOL. 27 NO.12

PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON COLLEGE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS

Study: BC Among Most Generous to Needy Students BY SEAN SMITH CHRONICLE EDITOR

Abdi Nor Iftin enrolled in the Woods College of Advancing Studies last fall. photo by frank curran

The Story, So Far His past was full of violence, trauma, and persecution. His present includes Boston College. And he has high hopes for his future. BY SEAN SMITH CHRONICLE EDITOR

The realization hit Abdi Nor Iftin just after he’d disembarked from the Green Line train and began walking up the hill toward the Boston College campus, preparing to attend his first class at the Woods College of Advancing Studies. “This is it,” he remembers thinking. “I’m here. I made it.” Except that this internal monologue took place in his native Somali language, Iftin points out. “I don’t dream or think in English,” he says. “Not yet.” That evening last fall, Iftin joined the generations-long procession of men and women who have come to BC, from Boston or thousands of miles away, to cultivate their intellectual and spiritual selves, look-

ing inward while simultaneously reaching out to the world. Every BC student has his or her unique story, of course, but Iftin’s is a particularly compelling one—and widely shared, thanks to his improbable stint as a foreign correspondent and his 2018 memoir, Call Me American. Born and raised in war-torn Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu, Iftin endured a dangerously violent and traumatic childhood that eventually saw him flee to Kenya, where—still facing danger—he won a lottery enabling him to apply for a green card to the U.S. Barely escaping Kenya’s crackdown on Somalians and struggling with government bureaucracy, Iftin was able to make his way to the U.S. and settle in Maine. In the past few years, through media interviews and speaking engage-

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Boston College ranks among the top 30 private, nonprofit colleges and universities that are the most generous to their financially neediest students, according to a recent study published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. In its assessment of 958 four-year private, nonprofit institutions—from highprofile universities such as Duke, Stanford, Princeton, Harvard, and Yale to lesserknown institutions like Southern New Hampshire University, Central Baptist College (Ark.), and Wilberforce University (Ohio)— CHE examined the average net price of attending each school for students

from five family income groups. CHE also calculated the difference in each net price between the lowest and highest income groups, and how many times greater the average net price was for the highest versus lowest income groups. CHE determined the average net price by subtracting the average amount of federal, state, and local government aid, and institutional grant and scholarship aid, from the total cost of attendance for each institution. Using this methodology, the CHE study found BC was 26th in generosity to financially neediest students. The average net price for students from the lowest income group attending BC was $7,251

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Researchers See Link in Gun Policies, Rate of Workplace Homicides BY ED HAYWARD STAFF WRITER

States that toughened their firearms policies overall saw declines in the rate of workplace homicides, according to a new study by Boston College researchers who looked at gun law changes during a six-year period. When states tightened certain categories of firearm policies—restrictions on firearms for domestic violence offenders, concealed carrying, and background checks—work-

place homicide rates decreased significantly, the team from BC reported in an advance online publication of the American Journal of Public Health. “What this study points to is one potential lever that states can pull to help reduce the number of homicides that take place at work,” said BC School of Social Work Assistant Professor Erika Sabbath, who led the study. “Regardless of your position on gun control versus gun rights, we can all agree that nobody should be killed at work. Continued on page 4

I’ve come to love Chile. It’s a beautiful country with a warm and inviting population who are eager to see how nurse practitioners can improve the care in their country. I’m so delighted to be helping them in doing this work. – connell school of nursing assoc. dean susan kelly-weeder, page 8

ADDRESS GOES HERE


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