Vanderslice professor Lawrence Scott was named a fellow of the American Chemical Society, and 110 St. Thomas More Road—more familiarly known as St. Ignatius Gate or “the Gate”—was named Stayer Hall for parents and donors Ralph and Shelly Stayer. The National Science Foundation awarded Lynch School of Education associate professor Michael Barnett $250,000 to teach science to Boston children through the development of a hydroponic garden in the Dorchester neighborhood. The MBTA announced that it is examining the possibility of relocating the Boston College T stop to a broadened median strip on Commonwealth Avenue just east of Lake Street. The Heights saluted the University’s newly appointed athletic director, Brad Bates, five times in its October 11 edition. Sample headlines read: “On the first day as athletic director, Bates fits right in” and “Bates is just what BC needed.” The newspaper’s “Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down” columnist called Bates’s hair “awesome . . . like the hair of an ’80s video music dancer and the hair of Albert Einstein had a baby.” Assistant professor Oguzhan Karakas, of the Carroll School’s finance department, was one of a trio of scholars—two American and one Norwegian—to share this year’s Moskowitz Prize for studies of socially responsible corporate investments. The centennial of the birth of Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill, Jr., ’36, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987, is being commemorated with a special exhibition in the O’Neill Library (named in his honor in 1984), a public lecture, and a course taught by political scientist and O’Neill Professor Shep Melnick titled “Tip O’Neill and the Evolution of American Politics.” John Bell, a scholar and advancer of the European tradition of political puppet theater—and whom Digest also knows to be a skilled stilt dancer, choral director, and baggy-pants comedian—will serve as Monan Professor in the theater department this year. Dining Services is hosting a “TV Chef Series” in the faculty dinning room in McElroy Commons on Thursday evenings during the fall semester. The series began with a dinner featuring the cuisine of dimple-chinned Jamie Oliver, of the Food Network. And responding to what they say is student demand, Dining Services has opened convenience stores in Corcoran Commons, Stuart Hall, and McElroy Commons. With 53 alumni from the Class of 2012 joining Teach for America, Boston College was the fourth-ranked contributor in the nation among “medium-sized schools,” after Northwestern, Harvard, and Georgetown. Results from the important fall ranking season include: The University retained its number 31 position on the annual U.S. News list, which publication also cited the Carroll School’s undergraduate business program as 24th best in the nation. Meanwhile, Forbes‘s list of “America’s Top Colleges” placed Boston College at number 26. And working to offer “a complete collegiate experience,” the Her Campus website declared that Boston College enrolled the fifth most attractive group of male students in the nation. (Wake Forest, UVA, Wisconsin, James Madison, in case readers wonder.) Australian Nick Gozik, late of Duke’s international studies program, was appointed to head the Office of International Programs and the McGillycuddy-Logue Center for Undergraduate Global Studies. In geographically perturbing news, Notre Dame, which is solidly in Indiana, joined Boston College in the Atlantic Coast Conference (though not for the purposes of football). Kristie Mewis ’13 became the University’s all-time leading scorer in women’s soccer. “Tour of the Heights,” a GPS-guided mobile tour of the University, was launched as part of the Sesquicentennial celebration. The late Lou Montgomery ’41, an African-American halfback who was benched when the Eagles played segregated teams from the South—and who did not accompany the team to bowl games played in New Orleans and Dallas—was memorialized with the retirement of his number (21) at a halftime ceremony in Alumni Stadium. Elliptic Tales: Curves, Counting, and Number Theory; Multiple Dirichlet Series, L-Functions and Automorphic Forms; and Intersections of Hirzebruch-Zagier divisors and CM cycles were among books recently published by faculty in the mathematics department. Two of four recent Norris-Richards research scholarships allotted to New England universities by the American Chemical Society went to Casey Brodsky ’14 and Benjamin Reiner ’13. Brooke Loughrin ’14 was named by the United Nations as the first-ever U.S. Youth Observer. She will participate in UN activities in New York City through June. Loughrin was selected based on a paper she submitted on water security in the Third World. Paul Davey ’15 and Grace Rosario ’16, were selected from among several hundred Boston College entrants and awarded eight-day sojourns in Switzerland in appreciation of tweets and photographs they produced on the theme why-I-want-to-go-to-Switzerland. The event was sponsored by the Swiss national airline and tourist bureau in conjunction with the Paul Klee exhibition at the McMullen Museum.

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