The Heights May 20, 2019

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HEIGHTS For a Greater Boston College - Independent since 1970

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CENTENNIAL

Monday, May 20, 2019

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www.bcheights.com

COMMENCEMENT ISSUE

Listen First, Act Second: Joy Moore Drives the Student Body Forward Interim VP of student affairs brings students to the conversation.

By Abby Hunt Assoc. News Editor

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PHOTO COURTESY OF M. SHAWN COPELAND

Copeland's Winding Path to BC Ends This Spring

BC prof. since 2003, M. Shawn Copeland retires after years of teaching and reflection. She shares her accomplishments, and what's left to be done.

By Jack Miller News Editor

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ot every professor gets a two-day conference in celebration of their retirement. Then again, not every professor is M. Shawn Copeland.

A professor of systematic theology and African and African Diaspora studies at Boston College since 2013, her resume alone could fill a book. She has taught at six universities and received honorary degrees from six more. She was the first black woman to be president of Catholic Theological Society of America, served as the associate director of the Institute for Black Catholic Studies, and once convened the Black Catholic Theological Symposium.

She has learned from and worked alongside some of the most influential theologians of the last four decades.

Copeland’s journey to BC was neither speedy nor direct. She first studied at Madonna College (now University), joining the Felician Sisters who conduct the school. After graduating with a B.A. in English in 1969, she stayed in her hometown of Detroit for two years, initially as a high school teacher.

Theologians, like the rest of the United States, were in a tumultuous state at the time. The late ’60s brought a myriad of issues to the forefront of society—most prominently the Civil Rights and Black Power

Movements, but also the Vietnam War and second-wave feminism, which focused on the workplace, reproductive rights, and sexuality. Theology absorbed it all and inspired approaches to meet those needs.

Black theology particularly was growing and changing. Copeland picked up James Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power, which helped define the distinctiveness of black faith at the time.

“There was a lot going on,” Copeland said. “So you have all these ideas and you’re thinking about all this, and time goes on and black theology becomes something that we all know about.”

But, as black theology emerged and grew, the Catholic Church failed to engage, devoting its attention largely to liberation theology. Despite that movement’s concern for the poor and focus on liberation for oppressed peoples, there was no connection made to segregation and racism in the United States. The subsequent focus on Latin America created a “discontinuity,” according to Copeland.

“In a lot of ways, that’s understandable, Copeland said. “But in making that option, we left really a ton of people unintended to and unlistened to.”

Copeland charges that this choice represented a failure to understand the social

See Copeland, A6

or Joy Moore, leading the Division of Student Affairs is like driving a car: Sometimes it’s her job to help the student body accelerate—other times, it’s to ease off the pedal. The most important thing is that it keeps moving.

Since taking the reins as the interim vice president of Student Affairs last fall, Moore, BC ’81, has taken extra care to assess when to speed up and when to slow down. She’s always considering students’ feelings and attitudes, along with keeping tabs on the campus climate as a whole.

“You can’t accelerate all the time, because you’re just going to crash,” she said.

To keep from crashing, Moore’s strategy is simple. She gets to know students as individuals.

“One of the best feelings each day is when I’m out and about, walking through

the quad, or through the halls of Maloney and a student shouts out my name, and I can shout back theirs,” she said.

While Moore holds office hours—called “What’s Up With Joy Moore”—every Wednesday, students see her whenever they get a chance. She knows that her hours aren’t going to work for everyone, so students have learned that they can email her, and she’ll find a time to meet with them—in her office, at Lower, or anywhere else that’s convenient for them.

“She’s really tried to be visible and present … and has really tried to get a good pulse on the student body,” said Michael Osaghae, president of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College and MCAS ’20.

“That was really interesting to see her be so hands on, which I thought was very necessary, especially given the difficulties that our campus has had to endure the past few years with different incidents. Just making sure she was visible from the start was very welcoming.”

Moore said that a big part of her job is listening first, and acting second. Simply meeting with students has had a tremendous impact on how she understands her

role, she said—it has allowed her to focus on what’s going on with students and what’s important to them.

“I could do that possibly by observing, but there’s nothing like sitting down with a student or a group of students and having a conversation about what’s on their mind, what questions I might have, advice that I am looking for,” she said.

Moore has been meeting with an advisory group of students throughout the year, with whom she frequently has discussions and exchanges perspectives. The group has helped her learn a lot about the ebbs and flows of students’ daily lives, she said.

“As administrators, we’re sort of here in our offices, and I know I have to do some of that,” she said. “But for me, getting out and being part of what’s going on with the students ... has been important. And I want to make sure I am able to do the same or more of that in the year to come.”

Moore helped gauge student opinion in a much more formal way last fall: the Student Experience Survey. While the survey had already been designed when Moore

See Moore, A2

BC’s Women’s Center Continues to Strive for Gender Equality and Student Safety 46 years strong, the BCWC remains safe and inclusive for all.

By Izzy Cavazzoni Copy Editor

And Scott Baker Copy Editor

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CELROY 122, 1973—The female-led grassroots movement to build a women’s center at Boston College finally came to fruition with a grand opening in the women’s bathroom on the landing outside what is now Eagle’s Nest. While today it’s again just a bathroom, it once served as the beginnings of the Women’s Center, bathroom stalls, mirrors, sinks, and all.

After a two-year uphill battle to lay down a foundation of equality at BC, the Women’s

Action Committee (WAC) opened the Women’s Center on March 8, 1973, the same day as International Women’s Day. The students attached a room number to the door and printed out brochures and pamphlets before they invited their first guest: then-University President Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J. He took the hint—and found a permanent place for the center elsewhere in McElroy Commons, where it stayed until 2015.

Now, the Women’s Center has a cozy office space in the corner of Maloney Hall—photos of the student staff members and feminist iconography plaster the walls of this empowering space on campus for female-identifying students.

“We’re a safe space on this campus,” said Maithri Harve, BC ’19. “I think it’s important because there’s still issues of gender inequality on this campus of all marginalized genders, not just women, and I think that

for us being able to address all of that in an institutionalized way is super important.”

In its time, the Women’s Center has seen drastic changes on campus and accomplished much on the road to gender equality at BC. The Women’s Center was founded just three years after all undergraduate programs at the University finally became coeducational—prior to 1970, women were only allowed to enroll in the School of Education and the School of Nursing.

Despite the apparent progress, female students still faced significant challenges while attending BC, from a lack of quality living space to a shortage of women’s bathrooms.

“The business building at the time did not have a women’s bathroom in it,” Julianne Malveaux, BC ’74 and M.A. ’76, previously told The Heights. “So if you were in class and

See Women’s Center, A2

ANDY BACKSTROM / HEIGHTS EDITOR

No. 1 Eagles Defeat No. 7 Princeton, Advance to Third Consecutive Final Four

Sam Apuzzo recorded three goals in the span of two minutes and 15 seconds to give BC a one-score halftime lead, and the Eagles never looked back, rolling to a 17-12 win and punching their ticket to the NCAA Semifinals.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

FEATURES: John Christianson

SPORTS: Postseason Baseball

Christianson played an integral role in the creation of the new neuroscience major...A3

Birdball clinched a spot in the ACC Tournament The Heights is celebrating its centennial and with a pair of wins over Notre Dame...................A7 alumni on October 18th...................................... A8

CENTENNIAL: ‘Heights’ Turns 100 69

INDEX

Vol. C, No. 12 © 2019, The Heights, Inc. www.bchelghts.com

The Heights

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Monday, May 20, 2019

Women’s Center Empowers Students and Preserves Activism Women’s Center, from A1 you had to relieve yourself, you had to leave the building. Rain, sleet or snow.”

In 1967, female students scheduled an open-house afternoon in their dorms, allowing women to host guests in their rooms to showcase the unbearable conditions of their housing accomodations.

Gerry Mercendante, then-president of the Women’s Dorm Council, described the conditions as “barely tolerable,” according to a Heights article published at the time of the event.

“Practically none of the administrators who are responsible for recruiting and admitting girls into BC have ever seen the dorms,” Mercendante said to The Heights at the time. “How can they talk about letting girls enroll here if they don’t know anything about the dorms?”

Without proper dormitory accommodations or usable women’s bathrooms, the ’60s brought about a student-led movement. The decade featured promising steps forward for women’s issues—such as the hiring of Ann Flynn as Assistant Dean of Students in 1967—but also frustrating steps back. n March 1969, Mary Daly, the first woman hired in the theology department, was offered a one-year terminal contract by then-University President W. Seavey Joyce, S.J., essentially forcing her out of her position by the following year.

Daly was a well-liked presence on campus, known for her progressive feminist teachings. To the surprise of herself and students on campus, she was not provided any explanation for the termination of her post. When confronted by a group of students regarding his decision to terminate Daly’s post, Joyce declined to make any “specific comments,” according to Heights reporting then.

Daly told The Heights at the time of her firing that “in my own mind I had the objective qualifications for both promotion and tenure.”

Days later, 2,500 students signed a petition for Daly’s reinstatement and 1,500 marched to St. Mary’s Hall to present it

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to Joyce. The protest was successful, and, by late April, Daly had been rehired with tenure.

Two years after that, tensions again reached a fever pitch with the firing of Flynn—who served as both the director of housing and as the Dean of Women—by Vice President for Student Affairs James P. McIntyre. Flynn had been pushing the University for greater gender equality. In 1967, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed an executive order prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex for educational institutions receiving federal funds. With federal investigators scheduled to arrive at BC in the fall of 1971, Flynn informed McIntyre that BC would lose $5 million in federal funds if the University was found to discriminate against women. Title IX legislation would not be passed until the following year.

Flynn’s firing was met with significant backlash. A Heights article written at the time offered an insight and opinion on the mood around campus, saying, “Mclntyre explained that the firing was ‘purely an administrative and personal matter.’ A pure administrative and personal matter is a hard phrase to come to terms with; it probably means that Jim didn’t like Ann very much.”

The University’s tumultuous relationship with female faculty and students was the catalyst for a feminist movement that drove the establishment and advancement of the Women’s Center at BC—enter WAC. AC occupied administrative offices on the morning of March 19, 1971 to draw attention to the unmet needs of women on campus.

With Flynn’s firing also came the elimination of her position as the Dean of Women.

Four days prior, the group had presented Joyce with a petition bearing 164 signatures demanding that the post of Dean of Women be reinstated, with Flynn at the helm. The petition also presented Joyce with a request for gender equality by requesting 50 percent female enrollment by 1979, equal distribution in financial aid

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between women and men, and more female counselors. With the administration unresponsive, WAC decided to occupy two administrative offices.

Taking matters into their own hands, female students at BC began to organize the Women’s Center without administrative aid. A December 1971 advertisement in The Heights encouraged all BC women to attend “an organizational meeting” for the Women’s Center on Dec. 7.

Two years later, WAC converted a women’s bathroom in McElroy into the Women’s Center. espite the ruckus that ensued between female students and the BC administration in the late ’60s and early ’70s, the Women’s Center currently has a cooperative and strong relationship with the administration.

But for 30 years, the Women’s Center operated solely as a student-run organization. It wasn’t until 2003 that an administrator came into the picture—further driving home necessary services and support the Women’s Center provides to female-identifying students.

Katie Dalton, BC ’03 and M.A. ’07, is the current director for the Women’s Center. For her, the mission of the Women’s Center is preserved in its rich, complex history and continues on with the work that she and other Women’s Center employees do today.

“I think what we really strive to do is to preserve those entrepreneurial and activists roots of this space,” Dalton said. “[Dalton] is super great,” said Harve.

“She’s super supportive of anything. Like any ideas that we might have, she’ll sit down with us and talk it through and she’ll try to do everything in her power to make it happen. For me, she’s been more than just a boss. Like talking about my job search and things like that, it’s always something that I can go to her for assistance.”

Although the Women Center’s goal is “to empower of female-identified students,” according to Dalton, the space is welcome to those of all genders. Upon entry, there’s always a smiling face of a student employee there to offer tea, candy, or a comfy couch

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to relax—a respite from the stresses of college life.

Beyond providing a space for students to chat or hang out, a majority of Women’s Center programming is dedicated to sexual assault prevention and response. Bystander Intervention with Stand Up BC is a key player in the Women’s Center sexual assault prevention programming. Approximately 10 years ago, the Women’s Center began to pilot Bystander Intervention. Today, Bystander Intervention training is administered in the fall to all first-year students by members of the Bystander Intervention student staff.

On the response end, the Women’s Center developed the BC Sexual Assault Network (SANet)—trained staff, faculty, and graduate students to connect those affected by sexual assault or sexual violence to their next resources. Dubbed the CARE Team, survivors can access the 24-hour SANet hotline or walk into the Women’s Center office during all hours of operation.

Still, sexual assault response and prevention are just two of the many issues that the Women’s Center strives to address.

“On the flip side of that, we also want it to be known that we’re not medicalizing women’s issues to like this narrow, kind of slice of an individual’s experience,” Dalton said. “So we do a lot around intersectional feminism.”

Portraying intersectional feminism comes in a number forms, according to Dalton. From tracing back the traditional beauty standards to colonial roots to exploring the crossroads between Catholicism and feminism, the Women’s Center aims to be inclusive. Most recently, the Women’s Center hosted an event to discuss Surviving R. Kelly, the striking documentary in which women accused American singer-songwriter R. Kelly of sexual assault. ne of the most important aspects of the Women’s Center is its staff, namely its 10 student members—the true essence of the organization that grounds the Women’s Center in its grassroots origins.

“It’s really the students that are, I like to say, the lifeblood of this space,” Dalton

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said. “And they’re … the ones who are constantly, I don’t want to say pushing, but understanding what their needs are since they are students and pushing us to be attentive to those needs and proactive and addressing them.”

One such staff member is Julia Barrett, BC ’19. In Barrett’s eyes, the administrative side of the Women’s Center—including director Dalton—really focuses on making sure all of the Women’s Center initiatives are led by students. With the help of student volunteers outside the Women’s Center, the student staff members follow through with their initiatives.

“So pretty much everything that gets created and executed is the vision and the creativity of the undergraduate staff members, which is so cool to get to do as a staff member,” Barrett said.

In just one recent initiative, Amirah Orozco, BC ’19, partnered with other students to supply all female and gender neutral bathrooms with free menstruation supplies. For students struggling to afford pads and tampons, Orozco and her partners make sure the supplies they need are freely available.

As a senior, Barrett has seen more and more younger students coming into the Women’s Center with impressive knowledge on women’s issues—giving her hope for the future of the Women’s Center even after she graduates. As someone who helps run Bystander Intervention, Barrett is especially impressed with the freshmen and sophomores who have interviewed to be a part of the program—she says that something about them is just “awesome,” making her excited for future generations of feminists to take over the Women’s Center.

“So I’m really excited about just, like, younger and younger generations coming in and taking charge,” Barrett said.

“Someone that has interviewed with us … [was] talking about the different waves of feminism … And I think the Women’s Center, similarly, is going to have to morph, just like how different waves of feminism have morphed, into what it will actually need to be.” n

Moore Uses Student Opinion to Foster a Welcoming Environment Moore, from A1 moved out of her role as the associate director of alumni relations into her current position, she was instrumental in launching it and marketing it to students. Now, she’s helping to spread the survey’s findings throughout the BC community.

“As the survey was getting compiled and we saw many elements of the results, we wanted to make sure that we represented the students’ voices as accurately as possible,” said Kelli Armstrong, outgoing vice president of institutional research, planning, and assessment. “And [Moore] was just incredibly insightful in terms of what needed to be shared. I found her an indispensable partner on that project.”

The most pressing issue revealed by the survey’s results, Moore said, is the large number of students who said that they don’t feel welcome on campus. AHANA+, high financial-need, and LGBTQ+ students, in particular, indicated that they felt less welcome at BC than white, low financial-need, and non-LGBTQ+ students, respectively.

“I don’t know how someone is able to thrive and do their best when they’re in an environment where they may feel unwelcome,” she said. “That’s all of our responsibility to make everyone feel welcome.”

Moore has already started taking on this responsibility. For her, it’s a priority to help students find similarities among all their differences—which she said means bringing a variety of groups together as often as possible.

At this summer’s orientation sessions, she will be talking to parents and incoming students about how, at BC, students are expected to create an environment that is welcoming of everybody. oore has recently worked to help foster this kind of environment for Muslim students. In the past, these students have not been able to get a proper breakfast to start their day during Ramadan. Muslims do not to eat or drink during daylight hours throughout the holy month, which this year, overlapped with finals week.

Moore gathered UGBC, the Muslim Student Association, and BC Dining together to develop a system for Muslim students to get breakfast in Lower at 3 a.m. and have a space where they could eat together before going on to prayer.

“That was really empowering to see her go to that length to ensure that every student was not only able to really follow their faith as they wish but was able to have an equal

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chance to succeed on finals,” Osaghae said.

Moore also had an instrumental part in launching DiversityEdu, an hour-long online course designed to teach skills for understanding the impact of unconscious bias, language, and behavior, this fall. Once the deadline for completing the module had passed, she slowed down and absorbed feedback from students, searching for ways to improve the initiative.

Changes based on students’ recommendations have already been made to DiversityEdu, Moore said. The module—which, in the future, will be taken by incoming freshmen and first-year graduate students— now features BC students, administrators, and faculty members, and scenes from BC’s campus.

As requested by the students on its review committee, there will also be an assessment at the end of the module—students will have to answer a certain number of questions correctly in order to get credit for completing the program.

“Vice President Moore … worked her hardest to ensure that there was a student voice at the table in these conversations [about] DiversityEdu and that it wasn’t something that was just solely driven by administrators,” Osaghae said. “If it weren’t for [her], a lot of the time we wouldn’t have a chance to voice our opinions.” hen she first joined Student Affairs, Moore said it was likely that, in a community the size of BC, another race-related incident that was similar to the racist Snapchat and the defacing of a Black Lives Matter sign that occurred in October 2017 would happen again. Moore said that she didn’t fear the fallout from such an incident—her goal was simply to not let it grind the University to a halt.

Moore was right. In December, Michael Sorkin, CSOM ’21, was arrested after committing racist vandalism in Welch Hall.

Even though the incident occurred just days before final exams, Moore said that students did anything but hit a red light.

“I didn’t have to worry about putting the foot on the pedal there—it was already on,” she said.

In fact, Moore said that it was her job to help students ease up. She looked to provide a space for them to express their feelings, then bring everyone back to a place where they could get to work and figure out specifically what issues they could address or act upon.

Moore met with students and other administrators the night of the racist incident

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to figure out how to provide this space. She, members of UGBC, Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley, and Vice President of Mission and Ministry Rev. Jack Butler, S.J. worked together to organize a large town hall, which they agreed would be the best way to let the entire community express their feelings on the issues surrounding the incident.

“People’s feelings were so deep and passionate on that, and I just wanted to be sure that we were providing a space for people to get their feelings out,” Moore said.

Moore said she often hears from students that there will be a lot of attention directed toward an incident immediately after it occurs, but passionate activism tends to die down in due time. Moore set out to make sure that, this time, the conversation kept moving.

She was instrumental in developing the student-administrator forums, smaller gatherings of up to 50 students and various administrators that take place in Maloney Hall—five of which took place this past semester. All of the forums have focused on different themes—including diversity and inclusion, faculty hiring, mental health, financial aid, and the Student Experience Survey. Each topic was proposed by students.

Moore said that not only are these forums going to continue on a monthly basis next year, but a “Courageous Conversations” series—similar to the student-administrators forums, except with faculty—will be starting up as well.

One of Student Affairs’ goals, Moore noted, is to address the fact that a large proportion of BC students indicated that they don’t think BC welcomes open discussions on issues of difference as reported in the Student Experience Survey. One of her goals is ensure that students know about the number of organized conversations about diversity and inclusion that are happening on campus.

With the student-administrator forums, Moore has given students the opportunity to talk to different administrators and faculty directly, Osaghae noted, which is something students have been fighting for for a long time.

“She has the ability to bring in people from all parts of campus and make it work at the end of the day, which I think is really necessary and vital,” Osaghae said. “And she doesn’t do it just because she’s an administrator. She’s a human being first. She’s a person in this community, who went to BC, who is deeply personally tied to the

JONATHAN YE / HEIGHTS EDITOR

This year, Joy Moore helped launch the Student Experience Survey and DiversityEdu. place and institution, as well as the students.” oore received a degree in special education from the Lynch School of Education in 1981 and an honorary doctorate from BC in 2010. She said that thinking back on her time as a student helps her put her feet right in her students’ shoes.

Moore said that she never felt like she was marginalized during her time at BC— she had a strong conviction that she deserved to be there just as much as everybody else. She said that it’s possible that things were going on around her that people today would deem racist, but she didn’t pick up on them because she was focused on being an integral member of the BC community and seizing every opportunity available to her.

During her time as a student, Moore was a member of the track and field team, worked at an off-campus supermarket, was involved with Black Student Forum, and did volunteer work with students with special needs.

“Was it easy for me all the time as a student of color? No. And no one promised that it was going to be either,” she said. “I just figured, all right, well, I better get in there and do as much as I can, and show that I’m going to be part of this community, just like everybody else is.”

As a former student, Moore now strives to be a voice for all students on a larger stage. Of course, she said, she couldn’t do this alone. She stressed how vital her colleagues in Student Affairs and the students she works with have been throughout the year, as well as the importance of her division’s partnership with UGBC, Academic Affairs, and Mission & Ministry. She also emphasized that much of the work she does is championed by members of the Board of Trustees.

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“[Moore] is a wonderful balance … of understanding where BC is headed as an institution and always also understanding what students need to be successful,” said Armstrong. “She will often, as we’re talking as a senior administrative team, represent the student voice and say what is on students’ minds.”

Armstrong described how amazed she is by Moore’s ability to juggle so many jobs. Not only does she attend to the many activities and duties that the role of interim vice president of Student Affairs demands, but she is also managing Commencement.

“Those are usually two separate jobs, but she’s doing them both with grace and excellence,” Armstrong said. hen Moore first assumed her new role, Akosua Achampong, former president of UGBC and BC ’18, said that one of the most important lessons Moore had taught her was that doing the right thing will bring people to your cause.

Moore said that she still stands by this advice, but would like to add something to it: Don’t give up.

Issues of diversity in particular can have a lot of emotions surrounding them, according to Moore, and this leads to people wanting change as quickly as possible. She said that racism is unfortunately going to outlive her, as well as every BC student—but that doesn’t mean that people should stop trying to make things better.

“You have to continue to persevere, or strive, for things even when it gets tough and you feel like you’re pushing and it’s not going anywhere—it eventually does,” she said.

“When things get tough, when you feel like you’ve been trying and trying and feel like no one’s listening, don’t let that deter you.

“We still have to move forward.” n

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The Heights

Monday, May 20, 2019

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Christianson Rolls Out Neuroscience Major Amid New Research

By Brooke Kaiserman Magazine Editor

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n the wall of assistant professor John Christianson’s office hangs a picture of a divi tree from the coast of Aruba. Taken by Christianson himself, the black and white image shows the divi tree’s thin, windswept branches, tangled together as they dart in different directions.

Photography is Christianson’s favorite and most expensive hobby, other than music. When he’s not working at Boston College teaching psychology courses, conducting research projects, or launching the new neuroscience major, he can be found capturing the beautiful scenes of nature, squinting behind the lens of a camera.

“Trees have a lot in common with neurons,” Christianson said. “Neurons have a base called the soma, and projections called neurites that extend out into the space and interact with other cells. … So I find that getting out into nature, and trying to see things from another lens—literally, with a camera—is an interesting way to keep my mind open and flexible to what’s possible in the brain.”

Christianson grew up in Connecticut and earned an undergraduate degree in psychology from Susquehanna University, located in the idyllic Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. While taking the introductory courses for his major, such as Introduction to Psychology and Research Methods in Psychology, one of Christianson’s professors, James Misanin, recommended he get involved in scientific research.

At a small, liberal arts university like Susquehanna, Christianson remembers being unsure of what “research” actually meant. He was primarily interested in the clinical aspect of psychology—at the time, Christianson thought he would work as a counselor after graduation.

Misanin had been conducting his research on the psychological phenomenon known as conditioned taste aversion, which describes how an animal connects specific food tastes to symptoms resulting from consuming a rancid substance. This taste aversion usually occurs when the subject consumes food and experiences nausea or vomiting afterward.

“If you were to say, go to Mac—it’s taken me six years to get over there—if you go to Mac, and you order something, it’s maybe an unusual item on the menu and then later you get sick, you’re like, ‘Oh, it must have been the cajun catfish at the buffet, I won’t have that again,’” Christianson said. “Well, it could have actually been that the milk or something was bad, but you’ve had lots of

milk, so you don’t associate it.”

Christianson quickly developed a knack for the research, which didn’t go unnoticed

by Misanin. He recommended that Christianson attend graduate school to get his Ph.D. in an area of psychology that piqued his interest. What fascinated Christianson the most was how human emotion relates to aspects of physiology—so, he spontaneously applied to several graduate programs that included this subject matter and awaited their responses. When Christianson received rejection letters from each of these programs, he wasn’t too fazed.

“I didn’t think through most of it,” Christianson said. “In the meantime, I kind of thought, well—I was a musician,” Christianson said. “I’m gonna go, maybe try the music thing out.”

Shortly after, however, there was a lastminute opening at the University of New Hampshire. So during his senior week at Susquehanna, Christianson visited UNH and made the decision to attend. Five years later—in 2006—he received his degree in physiological psychology—the field now known as behavioral neuroscience.

Christianson’s next stop was the University of Colorado, where he served as a research associate and postdoctoral fellow for seven years. The lab he worked in was primarily concerned with understanding the neurobiology of stress vulnerability and resilience. Similar to animals who have coping mechanisms in response to various stressors, such as predators, scarcity of food, and changing environments, humans undergo behavioral changes as a result of stress—and have very different ways of responding to it.

“We were particularly interested in tackling this question from both ends,” he said. “So, when an animal—or person—is exposed to stress, what [are] the alarm signals? What organizes our response? How do we rise to the challenge?” n 2013, Christianson brought this research to Chestnut Hill when he was hired as an assistant professor of psychology—in 2016, he was named the Gianinno Family Sesquicentennial Associate Professor of Psychology, the position he currently holds. Because of the importance of psychology research in developing new drug treatments, many projects within the field are funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Christianson was able to continue the research he had been conducting at the University of Colorado, due to a large grant he had received from the NIH while working there.

“I was kind of growing up and getting ready to be a professor,” Christianson said. “I never actually dreamed of being a professor

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or anything, it [was] just kind of, that was the trail I was on and things kind of kept going well—so I use the analogy of just adjusting my sails to the wind that’s blowing.”

Located in Higgins 540, The Christianson Lab conducts multiple lines of research, headed by Christianson and supported by a staff of undergraduate research assistants, graduate students, and postdocs. The first relates to stress resilience in rodents—the lab studies how rats tell the difference between what’s safe and what’s dangerous, as well as the brain mechanisms that underlie these predictions.

“You think about an animal that’s going into an environment, where, you’ve got a rat, and a hawk comes by—or, I should say eagle at BC—it survives, and it goes ‘I’m not going back there again, and if I ever have to, I’m going to be extra careful,’” Christianson said.

The other line of research studies how rodents use social information to understand the location of danger and safety in the environment. The lab conducts these experiments by putting three rats into a cage.

Two of the rats will make the determination that their new environment is safe since they were just moved there from their home cage. The third rat, however, will have just undergone a scary experience—such as an electric shock—prior to going into the new cage with the other two.

“We put them into a little box, they’re not really in a jail cell—it’s this little arena that the subject of the experiment can then go, ‘Who are you?’” Christianson said. “‘Who should I affiliate with?’—and you’re not even going to believe me when I tell you what they do—they’re just like people.”

Christianson makes this comparison because if the subjects are adolescent rats, they will be more receptive to the third rat’s stress.

But if they’re all adults, the first adults will ignore the third adult rat after determining that it’s stressed. Similarly, humans are much more likely to help a child in distress than an agitated adult they don’t know.

In the spring of 2014, Christianson began to dig deeper into this phenomenon alongside then-doctoral student and National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellow Morgan Rogers-Carter and then-undergraduate student Anne Pierce by studying the role oxytocin plays in the mediation of social behaviors by the insular cortex, or insula. The insular cortex is a region of the brain which helps process emotions and senses, and aids the regulation of homeostasis. Rogers-Carter, who was integral to the research’s success, explained their findings.

“Specifically, we found that the insula contains a really dense distribution of recep-

MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

In 2019, John Christianson earned tenure and helped design the neuroscience major. tors for a molecule called oxytocin, which is really interesting because oxytocin is a social peptide, and mediates social behaviors across species,” Rogers-Carter said.

“By seeing this, [we] thought that perhaps the insula mediated something social and for our work we unveiled that it’s necessary for these social behaviors in response to emotional states.”

Due to the fact that this area of study was both unexplored and relatively different than the projects Christianson was used to working on, it was much more difficult for him to receive funding. hen, Christianson was awarded an R01.

R01s are multi-million dollar grants that are some of the most prestigious and selective offered in all of scientific research.

Christianson’s is a $2 to $3 million dollar grant, funding a particular project in the his area of expertise, likely for three to fiveyears. Christianson and his lab had depended on several other funding sources to keep their research afloat, mostly concerning stressor controllability and resilience—an area Christianson had devoted much of his career to and had more credibility in. After publishing his, Rogers-Carter’s, and Pierce’s findings on social behavior and the insula in the academic journal Nature Neuroscience last February, Christianson applied for the grant in June, and the money from the NIH arrived in April of this year.

“When we first discovered this insulaoxytocin social connection, I felt like we had a phenomenon that was interesting enough and had an application to human research that would make it appealing for funding from the National Institute of Health,” Christianson said. “The insular cortex was ripe for discovery, really uncharted territory.”

Around the same time that Christianson received the grant money, he became a BC tenured professor after a long process that

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involved applying for a promotion and putting together a portfolio of his work, as well as numerous letters of recommendation from colleagues across the country.

“The protection that comes with tenure means that BC’s stuck with me now, for better or for worse,” he laughed. “But the flip side of that means that, you know, I’ve worked hard to demonstrate that my instincts toward science are going to be ones that lead to research projects that are important.”

Christianson also noted his dedication to the University’s educational mission, which he believes was another significant factor in him earning tenure. This year, he was able to turn the momentum for the new neuroscience major into a reality by leading the committee that created it. For the first time at BC, students in the Class of 2020 and later will be able to declare the major.

The major has been in the works for years and began with professors who have long since retired from BC. In the years to come, Christianson hopes to use the Schiller Institute’s new teaching laboratories to create either an integrated neuroscience lab or a neuroscience lab course required for all majors.

One of the reasons Christianson cites the creation of the neuroscience major as his most gratifying accomplishment, rather than prestigious grants or groundbreaking research, is because of the new and exciting opportunities it affords those he cares about most—BC students.

“The pride of my career is to see where these students end up on their own and how they affect other people,” Christianson said. “I can’t wait until next fall when we’re really launching this, and students can be in classes as neuroscience majors and taking on projects as aspiring neuroscientists, and [to] kind of let the cat out of the bag is going to be very exciting.” n

Makayla Dickens: First an Albany Recruit, Now a Budding ACC Star

By Luke Pichini Asst. Sports Editor

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n April 2018, Makayla Dickens wasn’t even committed to play basketball at Boston College. Instead, she was slated to join Albany under then-head coach Joanna Bernabei-McNamee. But things quickly changed.

When BC women’s basketball head coach Erik Johnson resigned after a 7-23 season, Director of Athletics Martin Jarmond hired Bernabei-McNamee to fill the void and kickstart a turnaround for the program. Bernabei-McNamee inherited most of Johnson’s recruits, but she did bring one player with her—and that was Dickens.

Once she was presented with the opportunity to play for BC, Dickens immediately seized it.

“Who’s going to say, ‘no,’ to playing in the ACC, the best conference in the country for women’s basketball? That was the best option for me. Plus, the education here is unreal, so you get the best of both worlds.”

Dickens burst onto the scene, earning The Heights’ Breakout Female Athlete of the Year Award in the process. As a freshman, she started 18 games and averaged 11.8 points per game, along with 5.3 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. Additionally, she

was the Eagles’ most lethal shooter from beyond the arc, connecting on 35.8 percent of her 3-point attempts. rowing up, Dickens started playing basketball at the age of 5. The sport came naturally to her, and she enjoyed the game, citing how it allowed her to destress from general anxieties. But she also played softball as well and even competed on a travel team. In 10th grade, she made the decision to quit the sport and fully devote her time and effort to basketball.

That same year, Dickens made another important choice. Having played her first two years at Lakeland High School, she excelled, averaging 22 points per game. But Dickens realized that she wouldn’t reach her full potential at Lakeland and develop into a DI-caliber player. To reach that goal, Dickens transferred to Princess Anne High School, located in Virginia Beach, Va., a powerhouse program that had won three straight state championships.

After transferring, Dickens helped the team continue its dynastic success. She led the program to two more state titles. Dickens’ senior season stood out in particular, as she anchored a team that finished with a 26-1 record and ended the year riding a 21-game winning streak. At Princess Anne, Dickens averaged 15 points, four rebounds,

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MAGGIE DIPATRI / HEIGHTS EDITOR

Makayla Dickens (middle) was swarmed after hitting the game-winner to beat Duke.

and three assists per game. Despite the fact that her numbers dipped, the quality of her opponents and her level of play now attracted the interest of several schools. Ultimately, she committed to Albany in December 2017.

But as soon as Bernabei-McNamee accepted the job at BC, Dickens had a conversation with her. Even though Dickens was still bound by the national letter of intent she had signed to play for Albany, she and Bernabei-McNamee came to an informal agreement that Dickens would become an Eagle. Come June, Dickens made her official commitment on Twitter, and a few months later, she found herself in Chestnut Hill. In her early games, she made an immediate impact—in fact, she scored 10 or more points in five of her first six contests. Eventually, she cooled off, only breaking the 10-point barrier in one of the next six games.

It was during the beginning of conference play that Dickens truly came into form. Building off impressive performances against Campbell and Dartmouth, she came into league play with strong efforts against Georgia Tech, North Carolina State, and Wake Forest.

Dickens especially shined in the clutch.

The Eagles’ first road ACC game of the year—against the Demon Deacons in Winston-Salem, N.C.—was close throughout, but BC held a slim edge in the closing minute. With the Eagles up by one, junior Taylor Ortlepp launched a shot with a couple of seconds remaining. The ball bounced out, but Dickens secured the offensive board, her 16th rebound and the most important one of the night as it gave the Eagles their first conference win of the season.

Perhaps her best performance of the season came on Jan. 31 against Duke. The Eagles were locked into a back-and-forth affair with the Blue Devils. Duke held the lead in the waning moments of regulation, but Dickens sunk a shot to force overtime.

She didn’t just play hero once. When the game entered a second overtime, she helped BC take a slim advantage. With the contest

tied up and only a few seconds remaining, Dickens received an inbound and heaved a running jumper.

“I just saw an opening. I looked at the time, and I was like, ‘Maybe I can get a shot off.’”

She did. The shot went in as time expired, sealing a thrilling win for BC. “I aged about 10 years and have about 30 more gray hairs—Makayla [Dickens] gives them to me, but then she plays the type of game that she just played,” Bernabei-McNamee said after the game. “Like I told her, I don’t know how many freshmen I could yell at as much as I yelled at her and then still have the poise to hit such big shots.”

Dickens nearly replicated her 25-point effort against Duke—a season-high—in the next three games, but the Eagles ended up on the wrong side of the box score each time. s the season wore on, fatigue began to set in, and Dickens— along with the rest of the team—struggled, ending the year with an nine-game losing streak. Dickens only averaged 6.5 points per game during the final six contests, which marked a stark contrast from her scoring level earlier in the season. While Dickens struggled to pick up points, BC simply could not stop opposing offenses during the skid, giving up 90-plus points on five different occasions.

The Eagles faltered on defense against some of the most explosive offenses in the nation and paid a big price in the loss column, one that Dickens hasn’t forgotten.

In order to improve her game, she will be staying at school over the summer along with several teammates to participate in offseason workouts that are led by Bernabei-McNamee.

“She definitely challenges me to be the best player that I can be,” Dickens said of her head coach. “Without her, I wouldn’t even be here. For her to give me this opportunity is a blessing.”

While Dickens knows that she needs to improve on the defensive end, she also

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knows her greatest strength—her court vision. Bernabei-McNamee also mentioned this as a core part of her game. Dickens’ passing skills, coupled with her ability to connect from deep, make her a dangerous player. The value that she has brought forth as a player has made Bernabei-McNamee’s transition much easier.

In fact, the head coach took comfort in the fact that at least one of her players was joining her this past summer.

“For us, it felt like we had one of the bricks of the foundation because we knew each other and knew what we were about,” she said.

Seeing Dickens’ success gives Bernabei-McNamee confidence moving forward in her recruiting.

“A lot of times, big-name recruits don’t want to come to us initially—we have to find kids that want to work hard and become that big-time name. That’s something that Makayla did this year. She wasn’t the McDonald’s All-American coming out of high school, and now she is making the all-rookie team in the ACC.” For her accomplishments on and off the court, Dickens was named to the All-ACC Freshman team and All-ACC Academic Team, respectively.

“I think she’s one of those players that made our upperclassmen realize, ‘Wow we need to put more time into the game on our own,’” Bernabei-McNamee said of Dickens’ work ethic. “She puts the man hours in on her own, the nonmandatory stuff, that makes players great. Makayla does that. She has brought that to our team.”

With Dickens leading the way at the point and Bernabei-McNamee serving as a guiding force, the future is quite bright for BC women’s basketball. The two are rebuilding and redefining the program together.

As Bernabei-McNamee stated, “I love that I am able to coach her pretty hard. For an 18-year old, that’s exciting, because her best basketball is still ahead of her.” n

Thursday, April 7, 2016 A2

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Monday, May 20, 2019 B5

Make Your Mark On The Future.

Prepare for your career with the WSJ Grad Pack. graduation.wsj.com

Thursday, April 7, 2016 A2

TheTH heeights Heights

Monday, May 20, 2019 B5

Make Your Mark On The Future.

Prepare for your career with the WSJ Grad Pack. graduation.wsj.com

The Heights

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Monday, May 20, 2019

In Teaching, Copeland Focuses on Real-World Impact of Theology Copeland, from A1 impact of how people see God in the world—an absence of political theology at a time when the country was in desperate need of one. “[Political theology] is asking the big questions about the political meanings and the cultural meanings,” Copeland said.

Instead of bracketing things into separate subfields, political theology, according to Copeland, looks at all of them together, creating a comprehensive whole out of the parts.

Such thinking significantly informed her work at the time. She began to protest the Archdiocese of Detroit’s attempts to close schools in African-American communities, which caused some discomfort within her own religious order. She then transferred to the Adrian Dominican Sisters in 1971, where she remained for the next 23 years.

That same year, Copeland moved to Pittsburgh, becoming the Special Projects Director—and later Executive Director— for the National Black Sisters’ Conference.

Tasked with developing programs for the group, Copeland took the opportunity to read and think about theology more and more. t was around this time that Bernard Lonergan, S.J.—a Canadian Jesuit and famed theologian-philosopher—piqued her academic interest. After first hearing about him at the 1975 Eucharistic Congress, she later found his book Method in Theology.

In it, Lonergan outlines eight tasks for theology, all of which describe the concrete impact the field can have on the past and the future. Copeland found that his “functional specializations” spoke to her desire to apply theology to real lives.

In 1976, she began her work for Theology in the Americas (TIA), a coalition of Catholic and Protestant groups seeking to apply the teachings of liberation theology to the United States. A staff member on TIA’s Black Theology Project, she worked with Baptist Minister Muhammad Kenyatta to organize the first-ever national consultation on black theology.

“We were meeting people around the country, holding meetings,” she said. “And it became clear to me that while, yes, I knew some things, I didn’t know my tradition in a theologically responsible way.

“What I wanted to know is, what does my tradition have to say about all these things?”

Copeland resolved to continue her education, hoping to orient herself toward the real-world impact that theology could have by focusing on battling oppression and discrimination.

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“When I got ready to go to school, I wanted to know Catholic theology,” Copeland said. “I knew other theology. I knew liberation theology, I knew black theology, I knew feminist theology. What I didn’t have at a graduate level was Catholic theology.”

Lonergan had just begun to teach at BC as a distinguished visiting professor, drawing her eye up north and away from Catholic University.

Copeland, following her insatiable interest, finally reached BC in 1977.

“If I say [the University] was more modest, I would only be saying that it was growing up, beginning to make a turn to the kind of research university it has become,” Copeland said. “There really was plenty of room here to appropriate your tradition in a serious way.”

She recalled how incredibly accessible BC’s faculty was when she first arrived. For her, the open-door policy of her professors helped create a close-knit community, which, in turn, pushed the conversation about theology forward.

“They had some disagreements about what was or was not important, or what could be an interpretation of some particular text or movement,” Copeland said. “But one of the things that was very clear, is that even if there were opposite thinkers, they were all generous with one another and hospitable. And so they gave an example of theology as being able to have conflicting viewpoints, one in which people actually really talk to one another.”

Soon enough, Copeland became an integral part of that community.

Fred Lawrence, Copeland’s advisor, recalled during his tribute to her that she quickly became the “charter member of the Lawrence family rescue unit,” constantly offering her Volkswagon Bug or picking up his children when his own car broke down—a testament to her generosity.

Her focus at BC—systematic theology—reflected her interest in understanding the foundation of the various threads of theology she saw out in the world.

“Systematic theology tries to think about the Christian faith in terms of its doctrines, but as they are all connected,” Copeland said. uring her time in Boston, Copeland taught feminist theology at the Women’s Theological Center in the Back Bay. The organization provided feminist theology and interpretation for people in seminary who wanted to incorporate the subject into their education. She went on to teach at St. Norbert’s College in Wisconsin for three years before moving to Yale Divinity School where she lectured on Theology and Black Studies. In her five years there, she moved from lecturer to assistant professor

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to associate professor—all while finishing her BC dissertation.

Lawrence fondly remembers reading that dissertation (A Genetic Study of the Idea of the Human Good in the Thought of Bernard Lonergan), which focused on the thinker whose writing had helped get her to BC. At the conference, Lawrence recalled the first page of the tome’s 400 pages, on which Copeland declared “the deepest commitment of my heart and mind” to the forgotten men and women of history.

“This, then, is the first of many payments to honor my pledge to give a voice to those who live in their bruised bodies the struggle of life over sin and evil, of justice over injustice, of love over hatred and revenge, and freedom over suppression and death,” Copeland wrote.

After leaving Yale, Copeland returned to the Midwest, having accepted a position in Marquette University’s theology department, which was led by Patrick Carey.

Copeland and Carey, joined by Sister Jamie Phelps, OP, and John McCarthy of Loyola University Chicago, decided to create a way to facilitate the recruitment of black Catholics into graduate programs, hoping to boost the community’s size.

Although it didn’t pan out at Marquette—in large part due to funding troubles—Copeland enjoyed her time there.

But still looking to grow the black Catholic academic community, she turned to her summer work at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies, which was housed at the Xavier Institute of Louisiana. he Institute aimed at preparing black Catholic lay people academically in theology and offered either a Master’s program or a certification program.

Beyond fostering a larger community, Copeland also hoped her work would send a message to the broader Catholic community about the resources needed for the endeavor.

“You know, in a larger frame, we need more resources to help people grow their faith and to begin to think about their faith in an increasingly reasoned way, because theology is reason to intellectual inquiry,” Copeland said. “We’re trying to develop a black Catholic theology. It doesn’t exist without us, because nobody else is doing this.”

The black Catholic community is small and too often overlooked, according to Copeland. Over time, individuals found each other incidentally and slowly grouped together. Before attempts at international organization got up and running, there was very little community at all, in fact. Unable to just dip into a pool of candidates, Copeland and her peers had to create one themselves.

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She often tells the story of the black Catholics of Collerton County, South Carolina as emblematic of black Catholic faith and its relationship to the greater Church.

When white plantation owners left enslaved Africans behind during the Civil War, these abandoned black Catholics remained, undiscovered, for almost 40 years. Their church, which had been destroyed in a fire years before, was built again, sans priest.

Left behind, the community continued to keep its faith alive, alone and unwelcomed by white Catholics.

Another paradigmatic example she gives: the end of the Federated Colored Catholics, or as it was originally known, the Committee against the Extension of Race Prejudice in the Church. Thomas Wyatt Turner, the group’s founder, hoped to bring black Catholics together, lend support to black theologians, and increase the power of their voices in the Church. But several supporters—most prominently white Jesuit John LaFarge—wanted to integrate the group in both membership and leadership.

Eventually, the Federated Colored Catholics gave way to the the National Catholic Federation for the Promotion of Better Race Relations.

“And so the Federated Colored Catholics kind of disappears,” Copeland said. “I’m saying this because we had to learn all this on our own. And by we I mean the black Catholics who were organizing [in the late 20th century].”

In a 2003 interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Copeland commented on the history of black Catholics just as she became the first black woman to lead the Catholic Theological Society of America.

“You’d have to look at the number of black Catholic priests,” she said. “You’d have to look at the number of black Catholic religious women. You’d have to ask about the presence of the church in inner city areas.

“Those kinds of gestures and those kinds of proactive actions—recruiting priests, recruiting women for religious life—would reflect whether or not black Catholics were integrated into the U.S. Catholic Church.

I would have to say that historically in a certain way, that we are not as a people.”

After several years split between Marquette and the Institute, Copeland decided it was time to take on another job. In 2001, she was invited to come back to BC as the Joseph Visiting Chair of Catholic Theology

by Robert Daly, S.J., who had been the department’s chair during her time as a student, and Michael Buckley, S.J. Almost immediately, then-department chair Steve Pope became to recruit her for a full-time position, asking Copeland if she thought she could do her best work back

home on the Heights. She did, with the proximity to a city full of students—especially black Catholic students—also intriguing her. lthough the process has taken some time, Copeland has seen progress in BC’s theology department.

She pointed to black professors Andrew Prevot, who is Catholic, and Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones, who, like Copeland, teaches both theology and African Diaspora studies.

Prevot, who came a full decade after Copeland was hired at BC as a tenured professor, is the only other black Catholic to join her—and with her retirement, he will be alone in the tradition.

“Working with her has been one of the greatest blessings in my time here at BC, and I will truly grieve her absence,” Prevot said. “As a relatively young black Catholic theologian, I look up to her and owe her a debt of gratitude for all that she has done to pave the way for my own work. I count her not only as a mentor and colleague, but also as a friend.”

Copeland said that the choke point occurs at all levels: There are few Catholic schools in black communities, and even then young black men are encouraged to enter into other professions.

“Which is really important—no argument there. But I’m not sure we’re planting any seeds for theology or philosophy,” Copeland said.

Religious communities are also aging, Copeland said, so there’s fewer young, graduate school-focused people in the picture.

At BC, she found herself on the other side of the pipeline: demand, not supply. Despite the difficulties, Copeland looks at her time as BC as a personal success. In her time as a grad student, there were very few women and even fewer AHANA theology faculty.

“I hope that BC will invest significant resources into recruiting and retaining faculty who will continue her legacy of thinking theologically from the perspective of poor, despised women of color,” Prevot said. “This would be the best way to honor her and all those suffering communities whom she has served throughout her career.” n the academic front, she feels equally fulfilled and takes pride in having fostered the same openness she benefited from all those years ago.

“You want to do some good in the world, you know?” Copeland said. You want to leave wherever you are better than when you found it. And you’d like to contribute to that betterment—not that you’re solely responsible or that you can personally bring it about. It takes the work of many people, not just one person.

“I love it here. I know BC wants to be great. I want it to be good.” n

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With Commencement, Browne Puts the Seal on His Time at BC

By Abby Hunt

Assoc. News Editor

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ondon in the 1950s was dark and gray. The buildings were black with soot, and the constant rain made everything damp. The most colorful part of the city was the bright purple flowers of the Canadian fireweed, which grew on the bomb sites left over from World War II. In 1952, the Great Smog—a freak weather pattern that held a cloud of pollution over the still-Dickensian city for four days— killed thousands of people who breathed in the terrible air. This is the year Rory Browne, associate dean in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, was born in London, where he grew up on Regent’s Park Road.

Regent’s Park Road, as the name implies, is next to Regent’s Park: a large green space that contains the London Zoo. Browne’s parents would take him in his “pushchair” to go see the exhibits before he was old enough to walk.

“I loved the animals,” Browne said. “I would glue myself to the bars to the park railings surrounding the animal enclosures

and refuse to move.”

Because much of the world at that time was still “red”—that is, under the British Empire—when Browne went to the zoo outside his doorstep, he could see almost every type of animal. When he went to bed at night in his grandparents’ apartment, he could hear the lions roaring and the sea lions croaking.

Browne lived halfway between the zoo and a pet shop that, in those “unregenerate days,” sold everything from bear cubs to chimpanzees. While Browne’s grandparents wouldn’t let him own either of those animals, they did let him keep a menagerie of other sorts—Browne recalled owning turtles, tortoises, giant millipedes, fruit bats, flying foxes, lizards, axolotls, frogs, toads, steppe lemmings, hamsters, and mice at different points in his childhood.

Growing up, Browne thought he might become a farmer—like his father—or an actor—like his mother. But noticing her son’s interest in animals, Browne’s mother suggested that he study them.

“When my mother told me there was this thing called a zoologist, that’s what I

PHOTO COURTESY OF OFFICE OF BC COMMUNICATIONS

Despite initial obstacles, Rory Browne made his way back to what he loves most: zoos.

wanted to be,” Browne said. o Browne’s chagrin, students in Britain get “streamed” very early on in their academic careers. In high school, Browne was told that if wanted to be a zoologist, he’d have to take physics, chemistry, biology, and statistics.

For Browne—having already failed math—the combination seemed like a recipe for disaster: He switched to history.

Browne went on to study the subject at Oxford University, where he specialized in French history. During his time there, the principal of his college—a distinguished philosopher who liked animals as much as Browne did—suggested to Browne that he study the history of zoos in his graduate work. But Browne worried about studying something so unconventional.

“I thought to myself, ‘Well, nobody will take me seriously if I do the history of zoos, right?’” he said.

When Browne graduated from Oxford, he found that being a French historian wasn’t exactly going to help him find employment in England either. He had done some work teaching in the Oxford College system, however, which helped him land a job as the resident dean of Yale’s Branford College in 1983.

While he was at Yale, he met a woman who was doing a residency related to student mental health, to whom he would often refer his students. The two of them got to know each other well—and eventually, they got married.

Rather than going back to Britain, Browne stayed in the States. When his wife was appointed as a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, he followed her to Cambridge, getting a job as a dean of one of Harvard’s houses and teaching in the history and literature program there.

Browne has since come back to the study of the history of zoos on his own: Today, he is internationally known as an authority on the subject. He also serves

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on the board of Zoo New England, which runs the Franklin Park Zoo, Boston Zoo, and Stone Zoo. rowne made the move from Harvard to Boston College in 2006, now serving as the University’s director of Academic Advising and the associate dean of freshmen and sophomores. He’s taught classes—including a freshman topic seminar on zoos, a history class called “Dis-covering Animals,” and an Enduring Questions course called “Humans and Other Animals.”

It only takes one conversation with Browne—instantly recognizable on campus by his round glasses, bowties, and handkerchiefs that he wears tucked neatly in his jacket—to see that his mind is full of fascinating facts. Almost effortlessly, he relays stories about topics, such as the idea of the gorilla being “invented” in Boston, hornbills creating walled nests with letterbox-like slits, and pangolins becoming heavily endangered as people use their scales in traditional medicines.

“I think what is important at BC for students to do and accomplish is to become well informed—and to realize that the world is a sort of more splendid and complex place than any of us sort of appreciate or understand in our own sort of narrow ways,” he said.

Browne’s favorite part of his time at BC, he said, has been his contact with students and faculty.

“What I like about BC is the people,” Browne said. “I think that they’re the greatest asset of all—the faculty and the staff and the students.”

From behind the animal-trinket-topped desk in his office—filled with papers scattered around the floor, colorful history books with faded jackets lining the shelves, and framed pictures of pandas, dogs, and ducks hanging on the walls—Browne reflected on his time at BC. His favorite experiences, he said, have been the joyous ones that recognize stu-

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dents for their success. One of these is Commencement, where Browne and the associate deans of the other two classes, Rafael Luna and Michael Martin, take turns reading out graduates’ names.

Browne said that reading the names is “quite an ordeal.” It requires a lot of lung power, for one, but he also always has to apologize for the mispronunciations he makes on account of his accent, which he says was formed “long ago and far away.”

“But it’s actually quite nice ... particularly for me, because I’ve worked mostly with freshmen and sophomores. I see students who I remember from freshman year, and I see students whom I’ve had in my classes—and I see them going forward and upwards.”

This will be the last time Browne reads the names at Commencement—he is retiring this spring. Thinking back on how, after initial obstacles, he was able to eventually return to his dream of studying zoos, Browne relayed his advice to the last class of graduating seniors for which he will read their names at the ceremony.

“Know to be flexible and versatile in life—that sometimes you think the door closes only to open later,” he said.

Browne recalled how returning to what he is passionate about has led him to experience some of his life’s best moments—whether they involved having a baby chimpanzee sit on his lap, stroking a tiger cub, or feeding sweet potatoes to a giraffe. You can always come back to things, Browne said. Even if you don’t end up doing them as a career, you can always find other ways.

“You sort of think, ‘Oh, I’ve missed my chance, I won’t be able to do it,’” he said.

“But while there’s life, there’s hope.”

“We all have difficult moments in life.

There are times when we get disappointed and our way is blocked. But really, don’t put all your eggs in one basket—but also don’t give up hope.” n

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Thanks to Second-Half Surge, BC Cruises to Elite Eight Victory

By Peter Kim Assoc. Sports Editor Over the course of the last three seasons, the Newton Campus Lacrosse Field has featured several special Sam Apuzzo moments. From Princeton 12 a falling away goal Boston College 17 to beat the buzzer and complete an undefeated regular season against Syracuse in 2018 to a behind-theback goal that made the SportsCenter Top 10 earlier this season, the senior has no shortage of signature plays at home.

It was only fitting, then, that in the final home game of her career, the reigning Tewaaraton Award winner came up with one last clip for the highlight reel. With just over five minutes left in the first half of Boston College lacrosse’s NCAA Elite Eight matchup against No. 7 Princeton, the Eagles trailed, 6-4, and hadn’t scored in over 16 minutes. Apuzzo changed that, however, curling off a screen, receiving a pass from Kenzie Kent, and burying a close-range effort to cut the BC deficit to one.

She wasn’t finished there, though. The senior won the ensuing draw control and used some fancy footwork to tally again and knot the game, before nabbing another draw and scoring off another Kent assist. In just two minutes and 15 seconds, Apuzzo had notched a hat trick, turning a two-goal deficit into a 7-6 lead, completely swinging the momentum in the process. The Eagles never trailed from there, pulling away in the second half for a 17-12 victory to advance to the Final Four in Baltimore.

In a sign of what was to come in the circle, No. 1 BC (21-1, 7-0 Atlantic Coast) won the opening draw and raced down the field, immediately getting set up on offense. The Eagles worked the ball around before Cara Urbank cut toward the crease and ripped a shot past Tigers (16-4, 6-1 Ivy League)

goaltender Sam Fish to open the scoring.

All told, when the final whistle blew, BC had a 21-10 draw control advantage. The performance marked the second straight game where the Eagles had an impressive edge in the circle, after BC was out-drawn, 18-12, in the ACC Championship loss to North Carolina.

“It was great,” Eagles head coach Acacia Walker-Weinstein said. “The three or four girls who were rotating on the draw circle are some of the most intuitive athletes.

When you pair that with a lot of work ethic, a lot of reps, you’re gonna have improvement.”

Apuzzo won another draw, and Urbank snuck a pass to Taylor Walker, who scored again for BC. After just two minutes, the Eagles led, 2-0, and looked to be cruising.

But things began to change on the very next draw control. Princeton’s Elizabeth George nabbed the 50-50 ball and sprinted to goal, swinging a pass to Julia Haney deep in the BC offensive zone. The Tigers senior wasted no time, finding the net just 12 seconds after the restart to get Princeton on the board. Sheila Rietano dropped the ball on the ensuing draw control, and Allie Rogers ripped twine to knot the game at 2-2.

The teams combined for four goals— two a side—in the span of two minutes to leave the game tied at four with 20 minutes left in the first half, but, after that, neither team was able to find the net. In the next 12 minutes, the teams scored just one total goal, when Princeton’s Kathryn Hallett bounced a shot past Abbey Ngai, who finished with seven saves.

Hallett tacked on another goal with 7:52 to play in the period just after Urbank was given a yellow card, providing the Tigers with a 6-4 advantage. The Eagles hadn’t scored in nearly 14 minutes, and looked flustered by a strong effort from Princeton’s man defense and Tigers netminder Sam Fish, who

made five saves during BC’s drought.

“I think we were playing at the wrong tempo,” Walker-Weinstein remarked of the slow offensive start. “We were playing too fast, too rushed.”

That all changed with Apuzzo’s hat trick and some excellent goaltending from Ngai.

The sophomore denied Tess D’Orsi twice in the waning seconds of the period, helping the Eagles maintain a one-goal advantage at halftime.

BC’s slim edge expanded quickly after the break. D’Orsi finally snuck a shot past Ngai to knot the game, but over the next 10 minutes it was all Eagles. Jordan Lappin used a pair of stick fakes to open some space and slide a shot inside the near post. Dempsey Arsenault added a goal, and Apuzzo assisted Kent, before Arsenault and Kate Taylor tacked on two more scores to turn a 7-7 tie into a 12-7 BC lead.

The teams traded scores from there, as Apuzzo capped off a four-goal performance off yet another assist from Kent—who tied her single-game program record with six assists—to put the Eagles up, 14-9. Taylor, Urbank, and Jenn Medjid also got in on the act with the clock winding down, putting the finishing touches on a spectacular second-half performance.

The quarterfinal win means, remarkably, that BC has now advanced to the Final Four in three straight campaigns.

“It’s a dream come true,” Walker-Weinstein said. “These girls work so hard, they sacrifice so much, they do so much for each other and for the program.”

Now, the only thing left to see is if all that sacrifice pays off in the biggest way possible: a national championship. If the Eagles keep playing like they did in the second half Saturday, they’re certainly capable of overcoming that final hurdle, which starts with a rematch against No. 2 UNC—the only team to defeat BC this season. n

ANDY BACKSTROM / HEIGHTS EDITOR

BC opened the second half on a 10-3 run, running away from Princeton to the semis.

BASEBALL

Run-Happy Irish Avoid Sweep, Sink Eagles in Regular Season Finale

By Bradley Smart Sports Editor The last five times Notre Dame has faced Boston College baseball on its home turf, it has gone poorly. There was the 2017 series, where the Notre Dame 11 Boston College 5 Eagles took all three games, with the last two narrow one-run victories.

Then, there were the two prior meetings this weekend, a 10-1 drubbing on Thursday night followed by a 9-8 win for BC, despite the Irish taking the lead multiple times.

On Saturday afternoon, though, Notre Dame made sure to leave no doubt that it was going to send off the Eagles’ seniors with a defeat. The Irish scored in each of the first seven innings, pushing at least one run across the plate against all five of BC’s pitchers and cruising to an 11-5 victory in the teams’ regular season finale.

Notre Dame (24-28, 13-17 Atlantic Coast) piled up 15 hits, one shy of its season

high, and saw each of the first five hitters in its lineup record multi-hit days. Daniel Jung went 3-for-6 out of the cleanup spot with two doubles, a home run, and four RBIs while teammate Niko Kavadas chipped in with a home run and three RBIs. It was more than enough run support for Irish starter Cameron Brown, who allowed five runs—three earned—over six innings of work. Brown struggled at times against the BC (29-26, 12-18) lineup, but still struck out seven and spun his fourth quality start in his last five outings. His final inning of work was his shakiest, as he gave up four runs on three hits and an error.

The Eagles found themselves in a 5-0 hole before they could push across their first run in the third inning. Starter Joe Mancini walked Spencer Myers to open the game, then surrendered a two-run blast to right field from Kavadas. He gave up another run in the second, putting two runners on via walks before a groundout from Myers pushed across the third run

of the game.

Mancini needed 44 pitches to get through two innings, and nearly half of them were balls. He gave way to Matt Gill, who has largely served as the Eagles’ closer since his move from the weekend rotation.

His switch on Saturday backfired. Gill gave up an RBI double to the second batter he faced in Jung, and the Irish first baseman eventually scored on a single from Erich Gilgenbach.

Trailing by five, BC got a run back in the home half of the third—Cody Morissette doubled in Jake Alu—but Notre Dame was far from done. Myers singled with one out, stole second, and scored the first run of the fourth on a single up the middle from Kavadas. Gill got a crucial strikeout for the inning’s second out, but then allowed a two-run home run to right field from Jung that stretched the lead back to seven.

BC head coach Mike Gambino turned to Travis Lane in the fifth, hopeful to stop the bleeding, but he also ran into control

issues. Lane walked the first two batters he faced, but it seemed as if he was nearly out of trouble by inducing a double play. That hope was squandered a moment later on an RBI double from Myers, who finished the day 3-for-5 with a trio of stolen bases. Lane exited after walking the next two batters he faced, and Zach Stromberg escaped the bases-loaded jam with a full count strikeout—stranding three of the 12 runners that the Irish left throughout the day.

Stromberg’s strong start wasn’t replicated the following inning, however, as a single and a hit batsmen put a runner in scoring position for Ryan Cole—who entered hitting a team-worst .167 in 66 at bats. Despite his numbers, Cole came up with a crucial RBI, his third of the season, lacing a single to left field.

The Eagles finally had an answer in the bottom of the frame against Brown, narrowing a nine-run deficit to five. Morissette doubled in Alu for the second time of the game, Joe Suozzi had an infield single

with the bases loaded, and Chris Galland reached on an error by Irish shortstop Jared Miller to bring in two more. Still, Notre Dame got one more back against reliever Emmet Sheehan in the seventh—Jung came through with an RBI double—and the Eagles would fail to score the rest of the way against the Irish bullpen combination of Evan Tenuta and Zack Martin.

It was a disappointing way to send out the BC seniors, who hadn’t lost to their conference rivals at home. Alu, Brian Dempsey, and Gian Martellini all scored runs, but the Eagles’ four-run sixth wasn’t nearly enough with the hole they’d already dug.

Yet, unlike last year when BC lost its last two games of the year against Miami—and had the regular season finale rained out—the team still has something to play for. That’s the ACC Tournament, which begins on Tuesday, May 21. BC is the last seed in the field, and will compete in pool play against No. 9 Louisville and Clemson. n

Metzdorf Helps BC Clinch 12th and Final Spot in ACC Tournament

By Bradley Smart Sports Editor

JONATHAN YE / HEIGHTS EDITOR

KAYLA BRANDT / FOR THE HEIGHTS

Dan Metzdorf (top) turned in 7 2/3 innings of one-run baseball during Thursday’s win.

At the start of the 2019 season, after losing 32 games and seeing two-thirds of his weekend rotation and his top hitter depart, Boston Notre Dame 1 College baseBoston College 10 ball head coach Mike Gambino offered nothing short of optimism regarding his team.

“If it all comes together, this team is going to be really, really good,” Gambino said. “I think if this team is in playoff baseball, I’d be really confident of that team.”

And, on Thursday night, that faith was rewarded against rival Notre Dame.

The Eagles staked senior southpaw Dan Metzdorf to a five-run lead through two innings and that was more than enough support. Metzdorf, in his final home start in a BC uniform, pitched into the eighth inning, and the Eagles rolled to a 10-1 win, punching their ticket to next week’s ACC Tournament as the 12th and final seed.

BC (28-25, 11-17 Atlantic Coast) won its third straight game and has taken six of its last seven. Metzdorf spun his sixth quality start in as many outings, fully erasing a seven-run debacle against Clemson at the end of March with an impressive stretch. Against the Fighting Irish (23-27, 12-16), the Burlington,

Mass., native went 7 2/3 innings and allowed a lone earned run while striking out four. He kept Notre Dame off the board until the sixth inning, when BC already had a 5-0 lead and was in full control.

Two days after piling up 19 runs in a wild victory over Maine, the Eagles’ bats picked up where they left off. Jake Alu continued his torrid senior campaign by going 2-for-4 with four RBIs and four runs scored, hitting a two-run home run in the sixth and adding an RBI double in the eighth. Jack Cunningham added two RBIs while the bottom of the BC lineup was particularly potent, with the combination of Chris Galland, Peter Burns, and Dante Baldelli accumulating five hits and five runs scored.

The Irish’s trio of pitchers—Cameron Junker, Anthony Holubecki, and Zack Martin—were unable to slow a lineup that has totaled 29 runs in its last 16 innings despite the loss of leading hitter Sal Frelick to injury two weekends ago.

Junker lasted just two innings, conceding five runs as he wrestled with command issues—the junior walked four and needed 57 pitches. Holubecki was more effective, spinning three scoreless frames before Alu and Baldelli got to him in the sixth.

Finally, Martin worked a 1-2-3 seventh before Alu and a wild pitch capped the

scoring at 10.

They were no match for Metzdorf, who has been practically unhittable for several weeks now. Since the aforementioned loss to Clemson, Metzdorf has thrown 49 innings and allowed just 11 earned runs while striking out 44, good for a sparkling 2.20 ERA and a 5-0 record on the mound. His dominance has been much needed for the Eagles’ push to the postseason, as it coincided with a dip in performance from teammate Mason Pelio—a freshman who has slowed as of late with the demands of the collegiate season.

Punching its ticket against Notre Dame was likely satisfying for BC, especially as it did the same thing two years ago. In 2017, the Irish came to Chestnut Hill and lost three straight to give the Eagles a spot in the ACC Tournament.

BC would go on to lose twice and drop out of the field, which is something that seems unlikely considering its resilient tendencies this season.

Entering this series with Notre Dame, the Eagles had played nine ACC weekend series—and failed to take a single game in just one, against North Carolina. BC has shown with regularity that it can hold its own with the best, which is what it’ll need when it finds itself in pool play against the number one and number eight seeds. n

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