By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
If the Senate confirms Ernest Moniz, BC ’66, as the next U.S. Secretary of Energy, two of the 15 members of President Barack Obama’s Cabinet will be Boston College alumni. Secretary of State John Kerry, BC Law ’76, assumed office on Feb. 1 this year-the date of Moniz’s confirmation hearing is as of yet undecided. He is poised to inherit the position from current Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who served during Obama’s first term.
By: David Cote
With the election of Pope Francis yesterday, the College of Cardinals has taken a step forward in the direction of a more global Catholic Church, Boston College theologians have said.
Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the first Jesuit to become pope, as well as the first pope from South America. Although he was reportedly runner up to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the last papal election, he was not initially considered a serious candidate for the papacy during this conclave, mostly due to his age-he is 76 years old. His election occurred on only the second day of the papal conclave, much faster than many theologians were expecting given the unique nature of Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation.
By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
The relationship between Chobani and Boston College goes deeper than undergraduates’ infatuation with the yogurt.
By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
The Boston College Board of Trustees has set the tuition at $44,870 for the 2013-14 academic year, approving the new figure as part of an overall 3.6 percent increase in tuition, fees, and room and board. Tuition alone is 4.01 percent higher than the figure for 2012-13, which stood at $43,140.
The University will raise financial by 7.9 percent, to a total of $97 million. Almost 70 percent of BC students receive financial aid, and the projected package for need-based financial aid is expected to exceed $35,000.
After almost a year of exhaustive research, Boston College’s core renewal committee has begun outlining plans for a more engaging and interdisciplinary core curriculum.
By: Julie Orenstein
This spring, Boston College students will have the ability to assess their academic advisors through an online evaluation system as part of the University’s efforts to renew its focus on academic advising.
By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
In its inaugural year as a separate department within the Cabinet of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC), BC to Boston has aimed to offer a wide variety of events to BC students. For its first two years of existence, BC to Boston was housed within the Student Life department, and those who worked on the team were not officially considered members of UGBC. Currently, the department consists of director Sarah Slater, A&S ’13, deputy director Tim Koch, A&S ’14, Senate liaison Sean McBride, A&S ’15, 11 coordinators, and five freshman mentees. “This year, we have more manpower, and are also involved in the greater UGBC as an organization,” said Sarah Slater, director of BC to Boston and A&S ’13.
By: Mary Rose Fissinger
At a faculty forum in April 2012, amidst a slew of data presented by Vice President of Planning and Assessment Kelli Armstrong to the hundreds of faculty members who had gathered that day, one statistic stood out to the crowd: female students leave Boston College with lower self-confidence than they had as freshmen. In contrast, men generally gain self-confidence during their four years here, despite having, on average, lower GPAs than their female classmates.
By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
“I had come to Jamaica for a quick adventure, a fun interlude between college and law school,” reads an excerpt from Raising Gentle Men, a memoir by Jay Sullivan, BC ’84. “I hadn’t planned to stay a second year. Now, only a month into living at Alpha, my life didn’t make practical sense. At times I had considered becoming a priest-but I never anticipated I would live in a convent. I had come from a loving and stable home-and now lived among orphans. I had grown up in a community where the one black family in town had almost celebrity status-and now I was the minority. And the ironies were only beginning.”
By: Eleanor Hildebrandt
Medical Humanities, Health, and Culture (MHHC) may soon be joining the list of interdisciplinary minors at Boston College.
Professor Amy Boesky of the English department said that an array of faculty members, while conversing about their respective courses, realized that in some cases there was significant overlap in subject matter. The group realized that courses on topics such as the representation of the body and the history of illness in narrative could potentially fit into an interdisciplinary program in the medical humanities.
