CAS case statement

imagina tion action

ADVANCING ARTS & SCIENCES

Arts

& Sciences stands,

and

serves, at the very heart of Boston University.

We draw on the full range of arts and sciences perspectives to understand humanity’s present and past; to discover, create, and innovate; to educate our students to be informed, adaptable, lifelong learners and leaders; and to be a connected, empowered, and inclusive community.

We ask and seek to answer the tough questions. We account for the human dimension. We think ethically and critically.

We imagine, and we act. And we invite you to join us.

Imagination + action

In Arts & Sciences, we tackle an extraordinary range of real-world challenges. Some are rooted in the enduring questions that link us with the distant past, while others grow out of today’s most pressing global issues. Many inspire us to discover and create new pathways to future knowledge and opportunity.

We use our imagination to revisit and explore persistent problems in creative new ways.

• We prepare our students to be thoughtful leaders, thinkers, and doers—not just envisioning a better future, but making it happen.

• We seek to build a more just, equitable, and sustainable world.

• We document and advance the infinite faces of creativity—today, and across the immense span of history.

• We explore the frontiers of science, covering fields as diverse as the brain, memory, AI, machine learning, privacy protection, the molecular basis of antiviral drugs, and many more.

And we move our ideas into action

• We work with colleagues across Boston University, and farther afield, to tackle problems that demand multiple perspectives, then develop targeted tools and apps—some of them already adopted by the private sector to make the world better.

• We disseminate our findings across a broad range of channels, both traditional and contemporary, and influence subject-matter experts, politicians and regulators, media figures, and the public.

• We search out ways to help shape the central debates of our society and translate our ideas into public policy.

In all of this, our alumni, parents, and friends are critical partners. We are proud to have had their strong support for generations. Today, as we envision the next decade and beyond, we ask our supporters past, present, and future to imagine how they want to make a difference in the world, and act in partnership with Arts & Sciences.

Kate Saenko

Creating new, smarter ways of machine learning

A common thread in my research is representations of visual data, and how they can be learned and used by machines. The big challenge right now is that we have algorithms that can learn to make good predictions from simple data, but they don’t work well with very complex data. A video stream contains at least a million pixel values that are coming in at 30 times per second, so that’s 30 million pixel values per second. And if you’re a self-driving car, how do you make a prediction based on that?

So the big challenge in machine learning and AI is how to not just learn to make a prediction, but extract a useful representation of that kind of data. Again, if you’re that car: “Is there a person in the road? If so, should I stop, or try to avoid that person?” The data are very high-dimensional, and also can be very noisy, so making decisions based on them is very hard for machine-learning methods.

What’s the solution? One thing that’s been happening is we’ve been feeding more and more data into these models, and their accuracy keeps inching up every year. But to increase that accuracy even by a few percentage points, you need to double or triple the data. So I’m trying to come up with a solution that relies less on the availability of data to train the models, and can generalize better. Basically, we need new and smarter ways of learning, so that we don’t have to keep increasing orders of magnitude of more data, and needing ever more computing power.

associate professor , department of computer science director , computer vision and learning group co-director , ai research initiative

James Uden

Understanding ancient cultures on their terms

One challenge I am facing is trying to think outside the discipline in which you’ve been trained. We’ve been trained to look at things in a particular way, but innovation is going to come from bringing a new interdisciplinary perspective to bear.

So now I’m teaching a course on ancient medicine, and my students are constantly asking me about the patient experience. But most of the medical writings we have from the ancient world are written by the doctors themselves. What did it really feel like to be treated by an ancient doctor? The truth is, there’s a lot of guesswork involved.

One approach that I’m more than a little allergic to is “What lessons can we learn from the past?” Because, first, that’s so oversimplifying. And, second, it makes it all about us. I really want to try to understand other cultures on their terms. I want my students to focus on the transportative potential of the ancient materials.

I’m hoping that by reading a 2,300-year-old treatise on the heart—as we did last week—it’s not simply about “Wow, they were really advanced” or “They were really primitive.” Instead, it’s “Why did they think the things they did?” And that puts you on the path to understanding, rather than just judgment.

associate professor and department chair , classical studies recipient , 2016 gerald and deanne gitner family prize in undergraduate teaching

Malika Jeffries-EL

Scaling organic, carbon-based materials to drive technology

professor

, department of chemistry and the division of materials science associate dean , graduate school of arts & sciences

My research focuses on the development of organic semiconductors and their use in optical and electronic devices. This field is worth exploring because technology has become ubiquitous in our lives, and the need for semiconductors continues to grow exponentially.

When people think of semiconductors, they normally think of silicon, which is the second most abundant element on the planet. But carbon is the most abundant element. And some of the metallic compounds that are also used in semiconducting applications today are in short supply. But again, we have infinite amounts of carbon. So, if we could figure out how to make organic, carbon-based materials to drive these technologies, we could make our devices more affordable. At the same time, we can manipulate the materials to get properties that we can’t get from the naturally occurring materials.

Scalability’s the biggest challenge. Can you come up with something that works, and then can you make enough of it that it’s actually useful? A lot of industry people are skeptical about academic lab work. “That’s cool,” they say, “but can you make me a metric ton of it?” And at some point, you have to be able to say yes.

My other role, as associate dean, is serving as an advocate for diversity and inclusion. It’s an uphill battle. You’re fighting a war on many fronts. You’re having to change attitudes, and change culture, across a large number of departments. It’s a historical problem, and you’re not going to change it overnight. My goal is to just move the needle one tick at a time. I count every admission as a small victory, and every graduate as a bigger one.

Building on our strengths: our strategic plan

What is our strategic vision? The future of Arts & Sciences is defined by our cutting-edge research and teaching, which anticipates and addresses the world’s challenges. To realize that future, we have defined five strategic priorities, which we outline at right.

In addition, Arts & Sciences plays a pivotal role in many of the initiatives outlined in the University-wide 2030 Strategic Plan. For example, major University initiatives—such as the Center for Antiracist Research, the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences, the Initiative on Cities, and the Institute for Global Sustainability—are led by Arts & Sciences faculty.

Our five strategic priorities

Enhance disciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborations and connections in research and education within Arts & Sciences and across BU

2

Cultivate and advance a diverse and inclusive community capable of recognizing, analyzing, and responding to exclusion and injustice with equitable solutions

Foster, harness, and apply the power of innovation, creativity, and imagination across our research and teaching endeavors

Leverage the power of arts and sciences undergraduate and graduate education by taking knowledge, ideas, and experience into action

Build bridges with Boston and the world outside the academy through communication, public scholarship, alumni networks, collaboration, and outreach

Today: what sets BU Arts & Sciences apart?

We have extraordinary scale and scope

We are Boston University’s largest academic unit, with 23 departments and more than 30 interdisciplinary programs.

We embody and honor the highest academic standards. Our faculty are recognized as leaders in their fields; they include 15 members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 42 Guggenheim fellows, to name just a few accolades.

Our excellent disciplinary strengths serve as the essential foundation for collaboration. The humanities and social sciences provide essential lenses and proud traditions that guide and enhance our work. Our collective open-mindedness enriches our efforts to explore, gather, and analyze evidence and to draw upon mathematical, computational, and scientific methods.

Our nimble organizational structure catalyzes interconnection. We know that breakthroughs happen across departmental boundaries, and so we leverage the BU advantage: its vast ecosystem of outstanding researchers working in fields as varied as business, fine arts, law, public health, and social work.

We collaborate with partners outside of BU in mutually beneficial ways We advance the discussion of new knowledge and understanding of facts through structures and programs that translate our research, ideas, expertise, and student-power through public engagement and partnerships.

We are a truly diverse community of students, faculty, staff, and alumni—thriving, equitable, and inclusive. Here, people can do their best work and feel that they belong. Beyond fostering individual success, this diversity of ideas, experiences, and perspectives is essential to newly understanding important questions and devising novel arguments and solutions.

We are a major global player in higher education and research. Our students and faculty are on site around the world, collaborating and learning at the intersections of economies, climates, and cultures. At the same time, we find grounding and inspiration in Boston. Many of today’s great challenges—and great opportunities—begin at our doorstep.

Graduates are prepared to create and adapt, to be thoughtful leaders able to envision a better future and poised to make it happen. They start and lead businesses worldwide. They govern and advocate. They create art and teach. And they support our college through philanthropy, mentorship, participation in events, and much more.

Our alumni are changing the world!

Why is the Arts & Sciences community qualified to take on complex challenges of global importance? Many attributes, taken together, distinguish us.

Steve Ramirez

Focusing on the brain, but putting the human first

In the lab, our goal is to chart out what memory looks like in the brain— the physical basis of a memory. If we could get there, and we could turn the cells in question on and off, we could also turn those memories on and off. Why do that? Well, suppose we could help people use memory to ward off depression, or anxiety, or PTSD. That’s a challenge worth taking up!

It’s not easy. The brain is incredibly complex and dynamic. Imagine a chess game in which all the pieces can move at once, and all those moves affect the adjacent pieces in real time—and meanwhile, our memories are dynamic and modifiable. We’re constantly updating them. And so many disciplines have to work together to make progress in this field—again, not easy. But well worth it!

In the classroom, one challenge is to remember that every student is a human being first, and a student second. And as teachers, we have to talk to them that way. We have to create what I call a blanket of empathy. And you have to be willing to be vulnerable in the classroom. I may talk about getting a C when I was in college, or how I handle bouts of anxiety. If you can make that human connection with students, they trust you more. That’s the point when I can let them know that they can do this—that they can actually dedicate their lives to trying to deconstruct something as complicated as consciousness, and memory in the brain.

There’s one more kind of challenge that I think about every single day. And that was the challenge faced by my parents, who came here illegally from El Salvador years ago to escape the violence there and make a better life for us. It took them more than a decade and a half to earn their citizenship. My father worked 100-hour weeks for many of those years. Well, I’m determined to make sure that the sacrifices that they made weren’t in vain—for example, by helping the next generation of young Hispanic students succeed in science.

assistant professor , psychological & brain sciences recipient , 2021 metcalf cup and prize in teaching

Alexis Peri

Speaking for the unheard

The challenge I take on is to look for stories that haven’t been told.

For the Cold War and the Second World War, we tend to think of statedominated narratives: big armies on the move. My challenge is to give a more granular view, to bring out individual experiences and the texture of everyday life.

For one project, I collected diaries of civilians who were trapped inside Leningrad under siege during World War II—one of the longest sieges since biblical times, and probably the worst mass starvation in modern history. The story has been told a lot from the perspective of how the city organized resources and how people managed to hold on and not surrender—that is, from the perspective of military victory.

What hasn’t been told is the psychological struggles people endured, the way they had to reevaluate who they were and reorganize their lives. That story was essentially covered up in order to make the siege seem heroic. And it was! But the idea of personal struggle was often hidden, for the sake of emphasizing the more positive story. I wanted to shine a light on people who not only endured horrific things but took the time to write them down, and wanted their stories to be shared.

I think there’s condescension in the way we look today at decisions made and actions taken in history. We ask what was wrong with people, instead of really trying to understand in that moment what human experience was like. As a teacher and as a writer, I try to reconstruct people’s lives in as vivid a way as I can in order to foster this kind of deep understanding and empathy.

associate professor , history recipient , 2019 gerald and deanne gitner family prize in undergraduate teaching

Anthony Petro

Reconciling religion and the modern world

associate professor , department of religion and the women’s, gender & sexuality studies program director , health humanities project neh distinguished teaching professor

The core thread of my work is a seemingly simple question: what forms does religion take in the modern world? Until recently, laypeople and scholars of religion were buying into the secularization narrative—this idea that as we become modern, religion goes away. But, of course, religion keeps not going away. So my work is really just asking, “What shape does religion take in the modern world?” One answer is unchanging: Religion separates the sacred from the profane.

I’m also directing the Health Humanities Project, which brings together all the threads of work at BU at the intersection of society, culture, and medicine. There are a lot of people here who share my conviction that health and medicine are not only biomedical entities, but are also inextricably linked to culture, to political values, to religion, and to existential, life-and-death questions. We recently launched our Summer Research Fellows initiative, which sponsored eight undergraduates conducting research projects of their own design, ranging from an analysis of the politics of language and translation in medical publications to the relationship between poetry and healing. It was a very successful experiment, and we need to do more of it.

One other challenge that I take very seriously: helping first-gen college students learn to navigate this place. I was in their shoes, years ago, and now I’m a faculty advisor for our first-generation and low-income student group on campus. In a lot of cases, my work simply involves helping these great young people realize that they’re not alone, and that they shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help when they need it. Most of the time, we can find a way to make it work.

Join us: your giving matters

Our strategic priorities are clear. Now, to succeed, we need your philanthropic partnership.

New challenges create new giving opportunities. We present high-priority new initiatives here—but again, welcome your own ideas for investments.

ARTS & SCIENCES IN ACTION

What do our students crave? Challenges and experiences that enable them to take imagination into action, and help prepare them for a lifetime of adaptation, insight, risk taking, community building, and discovery. With Arts & Sciences in Action, we will invent and implement these all-important experiential opportunities.

Your gift to Arts & Sciences in Action will support the identification of internships; the development of co-taught interdisciplinary classes; enhanced inclusivity in lower-level classes, especially in STEM disciplines; and more direct professional development programs for our students. Your gift will make more opportunities available to more students, in part by providing stipends for otherwise unpaid internships and fieldwork. Experiential work is critically important to the Arts & Sciences educational process, and we need to support it actively.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Provide program support for co-curricular learning and experiential learning opportunities

• Provide students with stipends for summer- and semester-long experiential learning opportunities, internships, and fieldwork

• Create a travel or fieldwork fund

THE CENTER FOR INNOVATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCE

This vibrant center, founded in 2021, is working to advance, accelerate, and amplify the social sciences at BU and our contributions to addressing pressing global issues by bringing together our impressive range of strengths in the social sciences in a shared community enhanced by research incubation, support, and promotion.

Gifts will support programs, new research (including access to data sets), internships, professional development for faculty, and more.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow a research fund to help us tackle issues of global scope and impact

• Create an internship fund to help our students immerse themselves in game-changing explorations of the world around them

• Support faculty professional development with an endowed fund

AN EXPANDED BU CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

The Boston University Center for the Humanities (BUCH) is already a nationally recognized leader in fostering the humanities and supporting humanistic inquiry. With your help, we can do more. We can create an even more vibrant and dynamic home for the humanities on campus—and we can build new focused partnerships through local and national initiatives.

Specifically, we seek support for programming in humanities leadership and digital humanities, as well as funds for conferences and research collaboration.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow a graduate fellowship

• Support summer internships and experiential learning for students

• Create an endowed programming fund

• Establish a digital humanities fund

• Fund outreach programs to communities in Greater Boston

REINVIGORATED GRADUATE EDUCATION

Our graduate students are a fantastic resource for Boston University. They bring smarts, skills, and energy to our campus—and go on to do great things in the world. To enhance the stature of the Graduate School’s programs and ensure that we prepare our graduates for success and leadership beyond BU, we will use philanthropic gifts to build out an integrated support system—one that extends beyond research and scholarly training to provide stronger services for student wellness, health, and financial well-being, as well as access to career-focused skill building and experiences.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow a fund for health and well-being services

• Create an endowment for professional development

• Endow dissertation fellowships for graduate students

• Provide support for fieldwork and travel

THE SOCIETY OF POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

We must and we will do our part to address long-standing gaps in the faculty pipeline. To truly lead among our peers, we will launch and build this society: an interdisciplinary community of distinguished junior scholars. Your support will help us recruit first-rank scholars from diverse backgrounds and help to advance their research and teaching. Ultimately, this society will raise our profile as a home for inclusivity and scholarly development—and enhance our reputation as a wellspring of fresh ideas in our teaching and research.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Support scholars of the society with an endowed gift

• Provide support for fieldwork and enhance research with a current-use gift

Some gifts will always be critically important:

SCHOLARSHIPS

Financial aid is a perpetual priority, but it is even more so now, as greater numbers of our students and their families have experienced financial hardship. At both the undergraduate and graduate levels, we must make an excellent Arts & Sciences education more affordable, especially for students from underrepresented groups, including students of color, first-generation students, and those from nontraditional backgrounds. Those who endow undergraduate scholarships can leverage BU’s Century Challenge, a philanthropic program through which the University will match, dollar for dollar, the annual spendable income from new scholarship funds of $100,000 or more for 100 years.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow an undergraduate scholarship

• Provide support for PhD scholarships

• Support postdocs coming to BU to study alongside faculty and teach undergraduates, to help us build a pipeline of outstanding scholars

• Support dissertation fellowships to assist our graduate students as they research and write their dissertations

RESEARCH SUPPORT

To crack the problems that have stymied others, we must give our faculty new resources to pursue new discoveries, develop new data sets, hire research assistants, develop new courses, travel abroad for site work, catalyze new multidisciplinary collaborations, and acquire tools and materials. The road to a breakthrough is paved with donor support for all of this and more.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow a fund to support innovative interdisciplinary research

• Provide seed funding to support pivotal new projects at the frontiers of research

• Support faculty and student travel to local sites and farther afield

• Support specific research areas and departments across Arts & Sciences

ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS

Endowed professorships help us in critical ways. They help bring stars to our campus, and help keep them here. Those faculty stars, in turn, help attract outstanding junior faculty and students to BU. Career development professorships help us retain our highest-potential early-career professors, many of whom have already begun to work at the intersection of imagination and action. Recruiting and retaining leading thinkers, at all levels, is a direct investment in the future—of our students, our world, our planet.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Endow a new professorship

• Transform an existing professorship into an endowed chair

• Endow a career development professorship, with three-year terms for junior faculty

OUR PLACES AND SPACES

We are proud of our historic home in Boston and committed to maintaining and upgrading it. We will make physical improvements to ensure that our faculty, students, and staff have the classrooms, labs, specialized spaces, library support, and computational resources needed to achieve our top priorities.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

• Support laboratory upgrades and infrastructure

• Endow a fund for acquiring data sets, equipment, or other teaching tools to ensure a vibrant classroom experience

• Contact us for information on other investments that reflect your own interests

There are many ways to support Arts & Sciences. We look forward to working with you, our current and future donors, to explore how your passions align with ours.

To shape the future, together

In all of our work, we take risks. This is the welcome consequence of moving from the known to the unknown. It’s something that we know we have to do—to step forward based on an assessment of data that are always incomplete—and it’s something that we want to do. Imagining and taking action are in our bones.

So many of our alumni, parents, and friends share what drives us. You, too, embrace challenges. You, too, know the thrill of imagination and the satisfaction of action.

Imagine, then, what we can do together. And stand alongside us, as we act.

Imagination + Action + You

For more information, please contact:

Boston University Development & Alumni Relations 595 Commonwealth Avenue, Suite 700 West Entrance Boston, MA 02215 casalum@bu.edu 617-358-6376