A canary-yellow shipping container at the top of the Higgins Stairs hosted some two dozen conversations between groups of students and faculty from Boston College and Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian refugees in camps in Berlin, Iraq, and Jordan. Communicating via wall-size video screens, participants in the Refugee Project cosponsored by the Boisi Center talked about education, migration, religion, music, literature, and soccer. At the 2017 Globies, the Boston Globe‘s annual sports awards ceremony, Kenzie Kent ’18, who plays lacrosse and ice hockey, was named the year’s best college athlete and also best female athlete. The University’s Learning to Learn office was awarded a five-year, $1.15 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education in support of its Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, which prepares first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students to pursue postgraduate degrees. Theology professor Pheme Perkins, a New Testament scholar, was named the inaugural Joseph Professor of Catholic Spirituality; fellow theology professor M. Shawn Copeland received the Marianist Award from the University of Dayton in recognition of her contributions to the Catholic intellectual tradition. Bucking a decline at many U.S. colleges and universities, the international enrollment—undergraduate and graduate—for 2017–18 grew 9 percent (to 1,751) over the previous year. Noteworthy factors included large numbers from Asia, particularly China (793). Archbishop of Military Services USA Timothy P. Broglio ’73 was the keynote speaker at the University’s 17th annual Veterans Remembrance Ceremony. In the NCAA rankings of athlete graduation rates, Boston College placed sixth among the 129 Football Bowl Subdivision schools. The top five were Notre Dame, Stanford, Northwestern, Duke, and Vanderbilt. City Connects, a Lynch School program that provides comprehensive support for at-need elementary students, was recognized by the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for High-Impact Philanthropy for its cost-effective results. Kenneth Hackett ’68, H’06, former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See and president of Catholic Relief Services, delivered the keynote at the University’s annual Advancing Research and Scholarship Day, which focused on “research and the common good.” Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences dean Gregory Kalscheur, SJ, announced that the Class of 2021 will include the last cohort of the college’s Honors Program, which currently enrolls 380 undergraduates and was founded in 1958 as part of an effort—no longer required, Kalscheur said—to attract superior students. In a similar move, Andy Boynton, dean of the Carroll School of Management, announced that its honors program would also end with the Class of 2021. The University’s Supported Employment Program, which provides jobs to adults with developmental disabilities, marked its 30th anniversary. SEP employs 23 individuals in offices including the Libraries, RexPlex, and Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment. Connell School professor Ann Burgess is the inspiration for the character of “Dr. Wendy Carr” in the Netflix drama Mindhunter. Burgess pioneered advances in forensic nursing and has worked with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit on methodologies for profiling violent criminals. Five players from the women’s ice hockey team—Cayla Barnes ’21, Kali Flanagan ’19, Megan Keller ’19, Emily Pfalzer ’15, and Haley Skarupa ’16—were selected to join Team USA at the winter Olympics in South Korea. Brian Gionta ’01 will captain the men’s team. Vice Provost for Research and DeLuca Professor of Biology Thomas Chiles and School of Social Work dean Gautam Yadama were part of an international commission, backed by British medical journal Lancet and Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine, that found pollution is linked to one in six deaths worldwide. Rafael Luna has been named associate dean and director of the University’s Pre-Health Programs, which advise some 2,000 students aiming for graduate programs in medicine, dentistry, and other health professions. Luna joins Boston College after 11 years as a teacher, researcher, and administrator at Harvard Medical School. Assistant professor of physics Fazel Tafti led a team of scientists from Boston College and Harvard that created an oxide of copper and iridium with a structure that disrupts its own magnetic properties, producing what is called quantum spin liquid. This state of matter appears essential for developing powerful quantum computers. Their work was reported in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. In Kiplinger’s 2018 list of “Best College Values,” Boston College ranked 18th among private universities and 43rd among all U.S. colleges and universities, up from 20th and 47th last year. Allison Curseen, a Woodrow Wilson fellow at Princeton, and Jonathan Howard, who holds a Ph.D. in English from Duke, have received appointments as assistant professors in the English department and the African and African Diaspora Studies Program (which involves 21 faculty from eight departments). Curseen’s focus is 19th-century American literature. Howard studies the role of nature in African diaspora literature. Cadet Mark Kindschuh ’19 was awarded the Army’s Medal of Heroism, the highest honor presented to members of ROTC, for his life-saving efforts during the June 3, 2017, terrorist attack in London, England, where Kindschuh was studying.

—Thomas Cooper

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