Boston College

An evolving student art exhibition opened January 27 on the first floor of O’Neill Library in a large alcove newly designated the Level One Gallery. Called The Living Wall: A Public Sketchbook, the show offers wall space to any form of student expression—from penciled cartoon to poetry to oil on canvas—that can be contained on the expansive cork panels lining the area. The ever-changing display, which runs through February 24, was conceived by, and is moderated by, the undergraduate Boston College Art Club. Margaret Mansfield ’11, club president, seen above at the Living Wall opening with Matthew Swaim ’12, says members envisioned the exhibition as a three-dimensional blog, with art coming from across the student body and pieces premiering throughout the month of the show. According to University librarian Thomas Wall, the new gallery space reflects an effort to make the library the “center of academic life today. . . .a place of collaboration, exploration, of being seen and seeing.” A more formal student gallery housed at the Bapst Art Library will present a new show on March 18.

Beckman scholars from five New England colleges and universities—Boston College, Boston University, Smith College, Wellesley College, and Yale University—assembled in the Merkert Chemistry Center on January 23 to discuss their research projects in the fields of biochemistry, chemistry, and the biological and medical sciences. The scholarship program, which is funded by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, supports research by undergraduates—71 from 40 institutions at present—who work with a faculty mentor full-time during two summers and part-time during the intervening academic year.

The 15 students meeting at Boston College, including the University’s four current Beckman scholars, discussed topics ranging from the “Role of myosin II in cytokinetic contractile ring formation in fission yeast” to “Identifying mechanisms for polymeric degradation by endophytic fungi.” Above, reviewing a poster presentation in the Merkert foyer are, from left, Courtney McKee ’11 (“Studies on the nuclear localization of E7 protein of low risk papillomavirus type ll”), Julie Olson of Smith College (“Development of a tandem Diels-Alder/Pauson-Khand strategy for the synthesis of tetracycles”), and Stephen Bohlman ’11 (“The development of an asymmetric Kharasch addition reaction”).

The idea for the regional meeting came from professor of chemistry David McFadden and was sponsored by the biology and chemistry departments.

Journalist Bill Forry ’95 has covered the Boston area’s sizeable Haitian community since graduating from college—initially for the Dorchester Reporter, which his parents founded, then, beginning in 2001, for the offshoot Boston Haitian Reporter, of which he is managing editor. His wife, state legislator Linda Dorcena Forry ’96, is the daughter of Haitian immigrants and still has family on the island.

On January 15, @BC spoke with Mr. Forry about his experiences in the three days since a 7.0 magnitude earthquake leveled the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince. The interview took place at Forry’s newspaper offices in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood and also two floors up in the same building, at the temporary quarters of the Haitian Crisis Referral and Support Center opened January 14 by city officials with private assistance.

At the January 19 meeting of the Council of Undergraduate Journal Editors, staff members from three of the University’s undergraduate, peer-reviewed journals—Al-Noor, a publication focused on the Middle East and Islam; Elements, a forum for student research across disciplines; and The Laughing Medusa, a women’s literary and arts magazine—conferred on topics of common concern (budgets, IT systems, distribution methods, the need for an editorial style manual). Also discussed were areas of possible collaboration, including joint sponsorship of a conference later this year of New England undergraduate journal editors. The council, which was formed in 2008, meets monthly and also includes editors from Dialogue, a journal of student essays, and the bioethics publication Ethos. Clockwise from bottom left: Erin Eighan ’10, Alex Guittard ’11, Michael Weston-Murphy ’10, Amy Keresztes ’10, Madeline McSherry ’11, Donald Hafner, vice-provost for undergraduate academic affairs, Brian Varian ’11, Brian Tracz ’12, and Christopher Sheridan ’12.

On January 8, the Boston College men’s hockey team played rival Boston University at Fenway Park, home of the Red Sox, in front of 38,472 fans (who were serenaded before the game by the Boston College Band, which played the familiar 8th-inning tune, “Sweet Caroline”). It was the teams’ second meeting of the season—in December the Eagles defeated the defending national champion Terriers 4–1 at BU’s Agganis Arena—and their 248th contest overall. With snow falling and the temperature at 21 degrees Fahrenheit, the Eagles, national champions in 2008, fell behind 3–0 before mounting a comeback and pulling within a goal. Boston College had 13 shots in the third period, but the Eagles ultimately lost by a score of 3–2. Above, sporting special gold sweaters with a Fenway-green stripe and a baseball diamond above the numbers on the back, are, from left, team captain Matt Price ’10, assistant captain Matt Lombardi ’10, Malcolm Lyles ’12, and Paul Carey ’12.

With more than $1.5 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the University (in the form of a matching grant), the chemistry department’s Center for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) recently installed four state-of-the-art NMR spectrometers and allied computing equipment for use in biomolecular and organic chemistry. The spectrometers analyze reflected electromagnetic energy to create images of chemical compounds, allowing researchers to identify and study molecules’ composition, structure, and dynamics. The six- to eight-foot tall devices, designed by Varian, are composed of an interior thermos-like container holding superconducting magnetic coils submerged in liquid helium (-452 degrees Fahrenheit) surrounded by a second thermos filled with liquid nitrogen (-320 degrees Fahrenheit). The frigid environment is necessary to produce superconductivity in the magnets. In the Merkert Chemistry Center facility on January 4 were, from left, the NMR center’s director, John Boylan, and Ph.D. chemistry students Jamie O’Brien, Laura Brozek, and David Moebius ’04.

In 1963, William Richardson, SJ, wrote Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, a book that turned a radically new light on one of the foremost philosophers of the 20th century. Until then, Martin Heidegger was invariably understood as an existentialist, someone concerned strictly with such matters of human existence as authenticity and anxiety. Afterward, Heidegger became known as a philosopher of being as a whole. Since 1981, Richardson has taught at Boston College. Now, several of his former doctoral students—Edward McGushin, Ph.D. ’02, Paul Bruno ’89, Ph.D. ’99, and Scott Campbell, Ph.D. ’99, all of whom teach philosophy at the college level—are turning lights on him: producing a documentary about the Jesuit and his remarkable philosophical life.

On October 8, a camera crew came to St. Mary’s Hall to film a dinner conversation among Richardson and three eminent philosopher-friends: Boston College’s Richard Kearney and Jeffrey Bloechl, and Stanford University’s Thomas Sheehan. The philosophers spoke of many things, including a crisis of faith that Richardson experienced late one night in Freiburg, Germany; his chancy, four-hour meeting with Heidegger at the thinker’s home in that city, 50 years ago; and the Jesuit’s return, with Kearney, to his ancestral home in a Protestant stronghold of Northern Ireland in 1972. @BC offers video clips from that dinner:

John McCormack, Tenor: Celebrating 125 years,” an exhibition at the Burns Library from September 8 to December 11, marked the birth of the Irish-born U.S. tenor whose record sales on occasion eclipsed Caruso’s. McCormack’s repertoire ranged from Mozart to Tin Pan Alley. He first performed in America at the “Irish Village” exhibition of the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. In 2006, the Library of Congress placed his recording of “Il Mio Tesoro” from Don Giovanni in the National Recording Registry. McCormack recorded until 1942. He died in 1945, as the “full-voiced” method of singing he epitomized was giving way to a style modulated for the microphone.

Slideshow:

Memorabilia from the Library’s Frederick M. Manning and Michael Meagher collections. Click to view

Video:

Irish musician Mick Moloney and Klezmer musician Hankus Netsky discuss America’s early 20th-century popular music scene at a symposium held in conjunction with the McCormack exhibition (1:38:33) Click to view

Audio:

Signature performances, from YouTube

Thirty-four members of the University community and the St. Ignatius of Loyola parish, singing and reading in six languages, recounted the Christmas story in Gaudete in Carminibus (”Rejoice in Songs”), December 12 in St. Ignatius Church. In a talk beforehand, conductor Daniel Gostin ’09 spoke about the origins of the celebration’s format, a “Festal Service” for Christmas Eve consisting of nine lessons and nine carols, conceived by Anglican bishop Edward White Benson and first celebrated in 1880. The program began with lessons from Genesis, read in Latin, and finished with the opening passage of the Gospel of John, in Italian. Following the ninth reading and accompanying carol, the audience joined the chorus and the 13-member musical consort for “Silent Night,” singing each verse in a different language. Over the course of the evening, English, French, Italian, Latin, Portuguese, and Spanish were represented.

Gostin and Romance languages and literatures Ph.D. student Ana Conboy (who sang soprano in the choir) codirected the event, which was organized by the student language groups La Maison Française and La Casa Hispánica, with support from the department of Romance languages and literatures, the office of residential life, and the St. Ignatius music ministry.

Paul Sally ’54, MS ’56 (seated), a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago who studies representation theory, spoke in McGuinn 334 on December 3 to an audience of state and local educators, textbook developers, and Boston College faculty and students. His subject was eighth-grade algebra. In 2002, Sally launched the Algebra Initiative, a one-year course of study for middle school mathematics teachers offered at three Chicago universities. His aim was to enable algebra instruction at a high standard for promising eighth graders in Chicago’s public schools, and his strategy centered on “turning math teachers into mathematicians,” said Sally, who challenged his McGuinn audience with several sample problems. John Boller (at blackboard), a senior lecturer in mathematics at the University of Chicago, assisted in the presentation.

The lecture was part of the Mathematics Education Seminar series, a joint undertaking of Boston College’s mathematics department and the Lynch School of Education. The program brings distinguished math educators to campus—six in this, the seminar’s first year, according to Solomon Friedberg, the mathematics chair—to provide a forum for discussions of math, education, and math pedagogy.

Boston College Minute: Christmas tree lighting, O’Neill Plaza and undisclosed location, December 1, 2009

Members of the University community and their families joined President William P. Leahy, SJ, for the annual ceremonial lighting of some 1,800 bulbs on the Middle Campus’s 80-foot live Blue Spruce.

Each day, Boston College Dining Services serves more than 23,000 meals, from 6:30 a.m. until midnight (2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday). The arsenal of equipment employed by the three major University kitchens (Corcoran Commons, McElroy Commons, and Stuart Hall) includes these steam-jacket cookers located in the “back-end” kitchen of Corcoran. The cookers function as double boilers in which steam enters through the hoses at the base; each holds up to 40 gallons. From here the food moves out front for finishing and serving. On December 2, students were invited to take kitchen tours, organized by Dining Services and the dining services committee of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC), which meets once a month with members of the Dining Services staff to share ideas. One outcome is “Feed Your Mind,” a series of cooking demonstrations by the Dining Services department aimed at educating students about meal planning and diet. Says Michael Kann, associate director of food and beverage, “We hope students come to Boston College with one palette of tastes and leave with a larger one.” Above, from left, are Kann; Nicole Borruso ’11, of the UGBC dining services committee; Poonam Misra ’10; Ian Fitzmorris ’12; Shefali Bhardwaj ’12, also of the committee; Megan O’Neill, dining services’ associate director for restaurant operations; and Sharyl Thompson, assistant general manager of Corcoran Commons.

For the fifth time in seven years, a Carroll School of Management team placed among the top 10 in the undergraduate division of the annual Tax Case Study Competition, sponsored by the Deloitte Foundation. On October 16 and 17, teams around the country were sequestered in Deloitte LLP offices and presented with a case involving complex tax issues and a tangle of facts and figures, some significant, others extraneous. With access to only the Internal Revenue Service Tax Code and U.S. Treasury regulations, the teams had five hours to produce written responses to a series of questions. “The case would take one person 20 hours to tackle,” says Janet Butchko, Deloitte’s foundation and university relations manager. “The students have to divide up the labor and work cohesively.”

Of eight competitors from the northeast, Boston College was the only school named among the winners. (First place went to Brigham Young University.) Team members were awarded $200 apiece, and the Carroll School received $2,000, according to accounting department chair Billy Soo. On November 11, David Lemoine, a partner in Deloitte LLP, presented the awards in Fulton Hall’s Lynch Center. Above (from left), are Soo, Alyssa Martin ’10, accounting lecturer Edward Taylor, Lemoine, Tim Faria ’10, and Ryan Flaherty ’10. Elizabeth Ferriss ’10 was also on the team.

The fourth and final production of the Robsham Theater’s fall season is William Shakespeare’s romantic comedy Twelfth Night or What You Will. Fourteen undergraduates comprise the show’s cast, and the production makes no attempt to mimic Elizabethan dress or staging. The set consists of a long swag of patched parachute cloth, and the costumes are “a colorful hodge-podge of styles inspired in part by the Japanese youth fashion trend of harajuku and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes,” says director Scott T. Cummings, associate professor of theater. Given the musical underpinnings of the play, which begins with the line, “If music be the food of love, play on,” Cummings asked Boston composer Chris Renna to create a score, which he performs live on electric guitar. In this scene from the November 17 dress rehearsal are from left, Sir Toby Belch (Steven Conroy ’10), Maria (Maggie McNeil ’11), Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Shaun Slusarski ’12), and Fabian (Libby McKnight ’11), as they contemplate their next comic scheme.