Boston College

The psychology department held a champagne and chocolate reception on November 9 in Connolly House to honor psychology professor Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of 12 recipients of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 2007 Pioneer Award, which recognizes “exceptionally innovative investigators” whose work holds the promise of conceptual and technological breakthroughs in science. Unlike most NIH awards, which fund specific research projects, the Pioneer Award gives research grants to “highly creative and pioneering people” to pursue their research interests. Professor Barrett, director of the University’s Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, will receive $2.5 million over five years to support her work on the psychology and neuroscience of emotion. Psychology department chairman James Russell said the award was a “fabulous achievement” for Barrett. “It reflects her many accomplishments, as well as the excellence of the lab she has established at BC.” Above, at the reception (l-r), Russell, Arts and Sciences dean Patrick Maney, and vice provost for research Kevin Bedell toast their colleague.

For Boston-area Catholics, the 64-acre parcel of Brighton land that Boston College acquired in several purchases in the last three years was the center of the Catholic Church for more than a century. Its buildings were home to the archbishop (or cardinal), the archdiocesan administration, and the seminary that trained priests for their parishes.

On October 2, and again on October 4, history professor James O’Toole ’72, Ph.D.’87 led walking tours of the Brighton Campus to familiarize University faculty and staff with the new property, its structures, and its lore. O’Toole told of the fire that razed the first seminary building and described changes to the central administration building, made when its employees had to live there because a priest raised rents at the neighborhood rectory. He pointed out the sole remaining monument to the order of Sulpician priests who once taught at the seminary but were forced to leave by Archbishop O’Connell, who apparently bore a grudge against their order for rejecting his initial efforts to become a priest.

A former archivist for the archdiocese, O’Toole was appointed this fall to the history department’s new Charles I. Clough Millennium Chair. He is the author or co-editor of nine books, most devoted to the history of Catholic Boston, including Guide to the Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston (Garland Publishing, 1982), and Militant and Triumphant: William Henry O’Connell and the Catholic Church in Boston 1859-1944 (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). @BC presents video highlights of the tour.

Does listening to Mozart make children smarter? Will training and experience in the arts improve cognition and boost academic performance? In the face of school budgets cuts, advocates for the arts have seized upon reports of a correlation between exposure to the arts and higher performance in reading and math. “Teaching the arts has a significant effect on overall success in school,” according to a 1995 report of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which goes on to suggest that students who takes arts courses in high school achieve higher SAT scores.

Psychologist Ellen Winner, who has long studied gifted children, found claims for a causal relationship between arts training and academic performance to be implausible. She explains, “I thought, ‘What would the psychological mechanism be that could explain why learning to draw, or learning to play a musical instrument, would improve your mathematical computation skills?’ As a cognitive psychologist, I couldn’t think of what a theoretical explanation would be for this.” With a group of colleagues Winner then surveyed a half century of studies aimed at determining the impact of arts learning on academic test scores. Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education (Teachers College Press, 2007) reports the group’s findings: “Our analysis showed that children who studied the arts did no better on achievement tests and earned no higher grades than those who did not study the arts.”

Although they rejected a simple causal link, Winner and her coauthors believe that art training imparts more than skill in a specific discipline. For a year they observed students and teachers in visual arts classes and concluded that the arts programs developed a set of “thinking skills”—such as making careful observations from a variety of perspectives, envisioning possible outcomes, and being persistent. “Though far more difficult to quantify on a test than reading comprehension or math computation, each [skill] has a high value as a learning tool, both in school and elsewhere in life,” she and her colleague, Lois Hetland, wrote in a recent Boston Globe article. “If our primary demand of students is that they recall established facts, the children we educate today will find themselves ill-equipped to deal with problems like global warming, terrorism, and pandemics,” they assert. “Those who have learned the lessons of the arts, however—how to see new patterns, how to learn from mistakes, and how to envision solutions—are the ones likely to come up with the novel answers needed most for the future.”

In her interview with @BC, Winner discusses her recent work and her plans to devise methods for more rigorously defining the “thinking skills” derived from arts education and their relationship to intellectual development.

In his November 2 announcement of his union’s vote to go on strike, Writers Guild of America West president Patric Verrone, JD’84, identified his group’s main tenet: “When a writer’s work generates revenues for the companies, that writer deserves to be paid.” Television writers are compensated for programs on broadcast or cable television, but their old contract did not cover distribution and rebroadcasts through the Internet, cell phones, and other digital technologies. “The studios are reluctant to make a binding deal on digital distribution,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “They say it’s too soon to determine what format will end up being the most successful.” The two sides said they would go back to the bargaining table after Thanksgiving, but some observers are bracing for a dreary January of repeat programs during prime time.

Verrone, who last September was elected to his second term as guild president, brings not only his legal training but also a successful writer’s perspective to the dispute. In the mid-1980s, heeding the call from college friends (including his future wife) with whom he co-edited the Harvard Lampoon, he left his Florida law firm and went to Hollywood, where he wrote monologues for Joan Rivers and Johnny Carson. For 20 years he wrote and produced some of television’s most popular shows—Rugrats, Muppets Tonight, Pinky and the Brain, Futurama, The Simpsons, and Class of 3000. His programs have received numerous honors and have won two Emmys. In 2002 the Writers Guild of America West recognized him with a Lifetime Achievement Award in animation writing.

The comic incongruity of writing for children’s television while heading the Writers Guild is not lost on Verrone: “I will comment on a subject of vital importance to our industry, to our democracy, and to our free speech,” he told the FCC last year at a hearing on media industry consolidation. “And then I will return to my profession writing a cartoon about a crab monster from outer space.”

• Video on Youtube of Verrone announcing the writers’ strike
• November 18, 2007, Los Angeles Times article on the strike
• Interview with Verrone and Alan Rosenberg, president of the Screen Actors Guild, in the November 16 American Prospect
• National Public Radio’s On the Media interview with Verrone in a November 18, 2005, program entitled “Sanctity of the Script”
• List of Patric Verrone credits in Variety

November 14’s multifaith celebration incorporated prayers and readings from the Baha’i, Bhuddhist, Christian, Islamic, and Jewish traditions. “The program is the only time we come together as an interfaith community, except in cases of natural disaster,” according to Rev. Howard McLendon of Campus Ministry, who organized the second annual Thanksgiving event. “We tried to make it a welcoming and affirming experience for all of our faith traditions.” Historical interpreter D. Michael Ryan began the program, portraying John Hancock’s reading of the October 3, 1789 “Proclamation of Thanksgiving and Prayer,” issued by President George Washington. Other program participants were Joseph Appleyard, SJ, vice president of University Mission and Ministry, Mansoor Ahmed ’09, Rebecca Rowley, director of the Center for Responsible Leadership, Leadership for Change, Matthew Porter ’08, James Erps, SJ, Rabbi Ruth Langer, Michael J. Cotter ’08, and Rev. Judith Stuart, Episcopal Affiliate Campus Minister. Carlisa Brown, development’s associate director for leadership gifts, and area musician Hobert Yates performed “Run ‘Til I Finish,” by Smokie Norful.

Above, seated at the gathering (left) Fuzieh Jallow ’07 and (right) Matthew T. Ryan ’07, CAS’08, presented reflections entitled “For This We Are Grateful.” Also speaking was Boston College Magazine editor Ben Birnbaum, who offered the following reflection:

The six members of Boston College Law School’s first class of LL.M. (Master of Laws) candidates, all of them practicing attorneys from either Puerto Rico or foreign nations, were introduced to the school’s Board of Overseers, an alumni advisory group to dean John Garvey, at its November 10 luncheon. Above, (l-r) incoming Overseers’ chairman David Weinstein, JD ’75, an executive vice president at Fidelity, talks with class member Albéniz Couret Fuentes. According to Gail Hupper, director of the school’s LL.M. and international programs, the Law School designed its new one-year postgraduate program to respond to the interest of foreign lawyers wanting to learn about the U.S. legal system and return to their respective countries to practice, teach, or pursue other legal careers. Other members of this year’s class are from Kyrgyzstan, Korea, Colombia, and Switzerland. Hupper said the curriculum will “train lawyers to meet the challenges presented by globalization and take advantage of the opportunities that it affords for the delivery of justice locally, nationally, and globally.”

Earlier on November 10, President William P. Leahy, SJ, told the 50-member Board of Overseers that one of the University’s strategic goals was to strengthen its graduate programs and that fundraising would be dedicated, in part, to creating new chairs and professorships at the Law School. During the two-day session, dean Garvey and provost Cutberto Garza addressed the board; and its members toured the “Pollock Matters” exhibit at the McMullen Museum before hearing from David Olsen, a new member of the Law School faculty, who discussed intellectual property aspects of the exhibit.

Football team members joined some 100 undergraduates and Campus School students and staff on the plaza between Merkert and Campion on November 2 for the annual celebration of “Spirit Day.” The event “simulates a football rally for our kids,” according to Laura Hines, assistant program director of the Campus School, which provides educational and therapeutic services to 47 children with multiple disabilities from eastern Massachusetts. Since 1996, Campus School Volunteers of Boston College, one of the University’s largest clubs, has supported the school through a “buddy” program that pairs University students with Campus School students, and by holding golf tournaments, broom hockey competitions, and other fundraising events as well as promoting “sponsorships” for University students who run the Boston Marathon. Thanks to the efforts of many University organizations and several hundred students, the Campus School Volunteers raised $132,000 during the last 12 months, which it presented to the school on November 2.