Pushing Boundaries

“I went to Wheelock and got a tour from a student and met some other students who all seemed really excited. They have a ton of great resources and faculty there so I think it will be cool to see how SED evolves.”

For Boston University students, Allston is a part of our campus. It is a unique location that provides a space that BU students can call our own.

However, Allston will soon no longer be home to just the Terriers. The merger between Wheelock and BU, as well as Harvard’s impending expansion, will bring new students to Allston.

The Wheelock College and Boston University School of Education merger will be in full swing by June of this year, meaning Wheelock students will be joining us on campus in the fall. The merger combines the Wheelock School of Education, Child Life and Family Studios with BU’s School of Education to produce a new, larger school: the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development (WCEHD). After June 2018, WCEHD will incorporate former Wheelock College students and BU SED students into a singular school.

Diane Levin, the senior-most professor of Early Childhood Education at Wheelock said that Wheelock was looking to merge with another school for quite some time. So when BU offered to purchase Wheelock, they quickly accepted the offer. According to Levin, however, the transition process will be filled with its own issues.

“We’re happy that it’s going to be ‘the college of...’ and that it’s keeping the name and there’s an effort to have a new entity at BU to incorporate all we had at Wheelock,” said Levin. “But there’s also anxiety. Wheelock students in many ways are different from BU students.”

BU’s SED program offers admission to students with no experience in early childhood education and then teaches them with their own curriculum. On the other hand, Wheelock tends to admit students who already have some early childhood experience. Whether those students were camp counselors or took a course in high school, Wheelock’s seemingly more exclusive enrollment has led it to be known as one of the best education programs in Massachusetts.

BU and Wheelock students share a sense of anxiety and nervousness about the merger. “I think the transition will be a struggle at first but will ultimately be a positive change for the school,” said Rebecca Rodriguez (SED ’19).

Levin hopes BU’s extensive resources and Wheelock’s specialties in other educational fields will create a rejuvenated program and hopefully establish the school as a leader in the educational field. Wheelock’s dedication to studies such as early childhood education and family life, which are popular fields of study among incoming students as of late, will hopefully attract prospective students who know of Wheelock’s reputation of having a quality education program.

Most of the Wheelock faculty, some of whom will be transferring to Boston University, others simply retiring from their positions and moving on, go on educational trips with their students. The professional faculty is not just connected to the academic world as many other professors are, but also to the professional and practical world. When asked about her opinion of the merger, Levin remained optimistic.

“I’m waiting to see. They’re trying really hard to make it work in a way that maintains a lot of the key aspects of Wheelock. It’s not as if formula were being applied,” said Levin. “They’ve been learning from us and we’ve been learning from them.”

There have been some concerns about maintaining the student-to-teacher ratio that BU treasures, but plans are in place to integrate Wheelock-tenured professors into the faculty. This aspect of the merger will have the biggest impact on the students, affecting how the school will run in the future given both students and faculty blend smoothly.

“I went to Wheelock and got a tour from a student and met some other students who all seemed really excited. They have a ton of great resources and faculty there so I think it will be cool to see how SED evolves,” said Erin Quinn (SED ’19). “The only thing I am kind of bummed about is the name change.”

While BU is expanding faster than ever before, our longtime friend across the river is as well. Harvard University, in the summer of 2020, will introduce a new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences in Lower Allston near the Harvard Business School and athletics facilities. This will be a much-needed expansion of Harvard’s science programs which have grown exponentially over the past few years, (the number of applicants has doubled since 2008) reflecting a growing interest in the field that will keep rising.

The expansion will be an extension of the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) building in Cambridge and will be equipped with state of the art learning and research facilities. SEAS only recently separated from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) a little over 10 years ago, so this project is an exciting leap for the school.

Harry Lewis, the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard University, said that Harvard’s expansion plan will not just stop with SEAS.They are planning on taking over much of the area by Western Avenue in Allston. The new SEAS building will be merely one third of the overall project going through development currently. Over the course of the next decade, Harvard will be constructing nearly 2 million square feet of space in Allston, including more housing for Harvard students, administrative offices and even more athletics buildings.

The expansion also calls for an increase in faculty to preserve the relationships between students and faculty that Harvard considers so important. The school even adjusted their famous “Harvard Time” schedule, which had a strict seven-minute passing time between classes. The class times have now been extended to 75 minutes and passing time has been lengthened to 15 minutes to accommodate students travelling between the Allston and Cambridge campuses.

In the cases of both the BU and Harvard expansions, the intentions are to create an environment that fosters the best conditions for all students in the long run. Not all students may be welcoming of the expansions immediately, but it will take time to truly see the impact that the Wheelock merger and Harvard expansion will have on BU and the greater Boston community.

by Caroline Cubbage & Marianne Farrell photo by Amanda Willis design by Deanna Klima-Rajchel