The Boston College
USPS MAILING ADDRESS
Chronicle Published by the Boston College Office of News & Public Affairs
INSIDE:
to BC 3 ‘Thanks’ snow crews
4
Boynton’s The Idea Hunter
9
Swords drafted, Dyroff honored APRIL 28, 2011 VOL. 19 NO. 16
BC Scientist Says Fossil Discovery Suggests Life on Land Evolved Earlier
Gary Wayne Gilbert
“There is a great deal of autonomy within Catholic schools: fewer forms to fill out, less bureaucracy, and a strong local authority of teachers and principals. This is a great advantage in meeting students’ needs.” —Patricia Weitzel-O’Neill, Roche Center for Catholic Education
Singing the Praises of Catholic Schools Finishing up her first year as head of BC’s Roche Center for Catholic Education, Patricia Weitzel-O’Neill is determined to help Catholic schools survive and thrive. And she thinks BC can play a key role in the struggle BY SEAN SMITH CHRONICLE EDITOR
Patricia Weitzel-O’Neill didn’t exactly leave childhood with a glow of fondness for her Catholic high school experience. “I would get into trouble and had to work hard for good deportment grades, and I often disagreed with the sisters,” she laughs, “and I was certain at age 18 that I’d never allow my kids to go to a Catholic school.” Yet here she is, a former superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, former vice president of academic affairs for Trinity University, and now the executive director for Boston College’s Barbara and Patrick Roche Center for Catholic Education — one of the nation’s preeminent resources in training, preparation and problem-solving for Catholic educators on all levels. And for the record, both of Weitzel-O’Neill’s children are graduates of Catholic grade school and high schools. So what happened to all that youthful angst about Catholic
education? “Looking back, I began to appreciate the discipline and rigor that underpinned my Catholic schooling,” says Weitzel-O’Neill, who grew up in Detroit and Pittsburgh. “There was a real openness in the faculty to promote critical thinking, to push you to question what you read and what you heard. “Of course, my memory was of arguing with the sisters because they took to heart that task of pushing us to help us think on our own,” she adds. “Well, weren’t they clever?”
to help Catholic education address a myriad of financial and social challenges. She lauds the personalities and programs at BC with whom she collaborates on numerous center-related initiatives, including the Urban Catholic Teachers Corps, the St. Columbkille Partnership School in Brighton, the Institute for Administrators of Catholic Higher Education, the journal Catholic Education, and new programming to support pre-K through grade 12 Catholic schools. Boston College, she says, has been all she hoped for, and more. Weitzel-O’Neill says she grew to ap“There is such a commitpreciate the discipline and rigor of her ment to the Jesuit-Ignatian culture of education here. Catholic schooling: “There was a real You see it in practice, in openness in the faculty to promote crit- management styles, in the respect for other’s opinions ical thinking, to push you to question and comments, day in and what you read and what you heard.” day out — it’s not just basic pedagogy. People have chosen to be here because of this A year after her appointment culture, and that dedication is to the Roche Center — she for- reflected across the University.” mally began her duties in July Weitzel-O’Neill brings to the — Weitzel-O’Neill is happy to center both a broad overview have found many new allies and a day-in, week-out perspecfor the battle she wages now: Continued on page 6
organisms, but do include some rare multicellular structures with organic walls that measure up to one milIn the sandstone cliffs of the limeter long. The team reports that Scottish Highlands, Earth and En- these simple eukaryotes lived in anvironmental Science Department cient lakes that periodically dried part-time faculty member Paul out, exposing life directly to the Strother and colleagues discovered atmosphere. This discovery places fossils that show early life forms eukaryotes in freshwater settings apmight have emerged 500 million proximately 500 million years earlier years earlier than previously estab- than previously thought. lished. Life probably originated in the The fossils reveal that eukary- sea more than three billion years otes that evolved ago; however, on land may have the first signs emerged from the of life on land sea sooner than are less wellscientists had defined. The thought, Strother identification and his colleagues of eukaryotes reported this in non-mamonth in the onrine settings line edition of the described by journal Nature. Strother’s “We tend to team indicates think of evoluthat eukarytion as originatotic evolution ing out of the sea, on land may but it could have have comcome from land,” menced much said Strother. earlier than “We can take previously more seriously thought. the idea that life “We tend to think of evolution as In adhad occupied terdition to restrial habitats originating out of the sea, but it Strother, othmuch earlier than er researchers could have come from land.” we thought preinvolved in —Paul Strother the project viously and that it was much more include Leila a cradle of evoBattison and lutionary novelty Martin Brasithan the oceans were.” er of the University of Oxford, and Strother, a researcher in paleo- Charles H. Wellman, of the Unibotany at BC’s Weston Observa- versity of Sheffield. Funding from tory, and the rest of the team de- NASA’s Exobiology Program supscribe complex microfossils found ported the team’s research. in billion-year-old rocks from the The article co-authored by StrothTorridonian sequence in northwest er is available online at http://bit.ly/ Scotland. eblO56. These diverse microfossils inContact Ed Hayward at clude mostly simple single-celled ed.hayward@bc.edu BY ED HAYWARD STAFF WRITER
Arts Festival Kicks Off at Noon The Boston College community’s abundant artistic talents and resources will be in the spotlight beginning today at noon, with the start of the University’s 13th annual Arts Festival. The three-day festival, which is open to the public, features more than 80 events on campus. Among the many highlights will be a tribute to Prince of Thieves author Chuck Hogan ’89 and a staging of the hit musical “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” at Robsham Theater. For more information, see www.bc.edu/ artsfestival or call ext.2-ARTS (2787).