Encyclopedia
name =
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| motto = ??e? a??ste?e??
Ever to Excel| established = 1827, Chartered 1863
| type = Private
| president = William P. Leahy, SJ
| city =
Chestnut Hill| state =
Massachusetts| country =
USA| campus = Suburban; 381 acres
| endowment =
US$1.4 billion
| faculty = 650
| undergrad = 8,805
| postgrad = 4,755 Its charter was among the first documents to stipulate that the institution "from its inception shall be open to youths of any faith," a policy since expanded to include those "of no religious faith at all."
Boston College is called The Heights, a reference to both its lofty aspirations — the college motto is "
Ever to Excel" — and its elevated location on Chestnut Hill, or "University Heights" as the area was initially designated. The name has lent itself to a number of campus organizations — including the principal student newspaper, — and to those affiliated with the university: BC students were universally called "Heightsmen" until 1925 when Mary C. Mellyn became the first "Heightswoman" to receive a BC degree. Today,
the university's legacy includes over 147,000 alumni in over 120 countries around the world.
Admission to Boston College is among the most selective in the United States. For the class of 2010, BC experienced a 12% jump in applications, receiving a record 26,500 applications from prospective undergraduates . BC admitted 29% of them, for an incoming freshman class of 2250 students. BC ranks fourth among private American universities in the number of applications it receives annually, though it is less than half the size of the three schools that rank above it. A study by Carnegie Communications in 2004 ranked BC 17th among national universities. The same study cited BC as the 8th "most popular" choice among US high school seniors. BC ranked 34th among national universities in
US News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges 2007" rankings. Boston College was also named to the elite "New Ivies" list, introduced for the first time in 2006 by Kaplan/Newsweek, which includes "colleges whose first-rate academic programs, combined with a population boom in top students, have fueled their rise in stature and favor among the nation's top students, administrators and faculty -- edging them to a competitive status rivaling the Ivy League."
AHANA is a term coined by BC students in 1979 to refer to students of
African-American,
Hispanic,
Asian, or
Native American descent. In 2005-06, AHANA students comprised 23.7% of BC undergraduates. International students make up an additional 5.3% of the student population.
Boston College students have enjoyed tremendous success in winning prestigious post-graduate fellowships and awards, including recent
Rhodes,
Marshall, Mellon, Fulbright, Truman,
Churchill, and
Goldwater scholarships, among others. In 2004, 2 BC students won
Rhodes scholarships, and 13 won Fulbright Awards. In 2005, the number of Fulbrights rose to 16. BC's yield rate for Fulbright awardees is the highest in the country.
At $1.4 billion, BC's endowment is among the largest in American higher education and the largest of any Jesuit university in the world. Its annual operating budget is approximately $667 million.
In September of 2006, the administration of Boston College unveiled the long-awaited campus overhaul project. The project was documented in the newspaper,
The Heights. According to the paper, "BC's strategic vision will bring unprecedented structural development to campus."
The paper also noted that the 800 beds in Edmond's Hall will be replaced with 400-person residence halls on Shea Field and near More Hall, overlooking Commonwealth Avenue. BC hopes to relocate the McMullen Museum of Art from Devlin Hall to a newly constructed building on the north side of Commonwealth Avenue, which will include a 1,000- to 1,200-person auditorium attached to it, said University President William Leahy. Taking advantage of BC's location on Commonwealth Avenue, the designs will shift the T station to the median in the center of the street, said Leahy. The University also hopes to build a modern sky bridge linking the new residence hall and museum, creating an impressive entrance to the University. Brighton Campus will become home to new baseball fields, parking structures, tennis courts, an indoor track, and a conference center, according to the plan.
"We have the potential to be one of the great universities of the world," said Academic Vice President Bert Garza.
History
Early history
The history of Boston College is traced to the founding of the
Society of Jesus in 1534 and the early activity of Jesuits in New England in the 17th and 18th centuries. Jesuit founder,
St. Ignatius of Loyola, imagined a distinct mission that sought to engage intellectual inquiry, faith, and cultural contributions "in conversation with the city." His Society established colleges and universities in almost every part of the known world, and its members were among the great explorers of the
Age of Discovery. In 1825, Benedict Joseph Fenwick, SJ, a Jesuit from Maryland, became the second Bishop of Boston. He was the first to articulate a vision for a "College in the City of Boston" that would raise a new generation of leaders to serve both the civic and spiritual needs of his fledgling diocese.
A College in the City
In 1827, Bishop Fenwick opened a school in the basement of his cathedral and took to the personal instruction of the city's youth. His efforts to attract other Jesuits to the faculty were hampered both by Boston's distance from the center of Jesuit activity in Maryland and by suspicion on the part of the city's
Protestant elite. Relations with Boston's civic leaders worsened such that, when a Jesuit faculty was finally secured in 1843, Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the
College of the Holy Cross 45 miles west of the city in central
Massachusetts where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy. Meanwhile, the vision for a college in Boston was sustained by John McElroy, SJ, who saw an even greater need for such an institution in light of Boston's growing immigrant population. With the approval of his Jesuit superiors, McElroy went about raising funds and in 1857 purchased land for "The Boston College" on Harrison Street in Boston's South End. With little fanfare, the college's two buildings — a schoolhouse and a church — welcomed their first class of scholastics in 1859. Two years later, with as little fanfare, BC closed again. Its short-lived second incarnation was plagued by the outbreak of
Civil War and disagreement within the Society over the college's governance and finances. BC's inability to obtain a charter from the anti-Catholic Massachusetts legislature only compounded its troubles.
On March 31, 1863, more than three decades after its initial inception, Boston College's charter was formally approved by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In it, BC was granted the right to confer all university degrees, with the exception of the M.D. . Johannes Bapst, SJ, a Swiss Jesuit from French-speaking
Fribourg, was selected as BC's first president and immediately reopened the original college buildings on Harrison Avenue. For most of the 19th century, BC offered a singular 7-year program corresponding to both high school and college. Its entering class in the fall of 1864 included 22 students, ranging in age from 11 to 16 years. The curriculum was based on the Jesuit
Ratio Studiorum often designates the document that formally established the globally influential...
, emphasizing
Latin, Greek,
philosophy and
theology. Revolutionary for its time, BC's charter emphasized that "the profession of religion will not be a condition for admission to the College."
The move to Chestnut Hill
Boston College's enrollment reached nearly 500 by the turn of the 20th century. Expansion of the South End buildings onto James Street enabled increased separation between the high school and college divisions, though
Boston College High School remained a constituent part of Boston College until 1927 when it was separately incorporated. In 1907, newly-installed President Thomas I. Gasson, SJ, determined that BC's cramped, urban quarters in Boston's South End were inadequate and unsuited for significant expansion. Inspired by
John Winthrop's early vision of Boston as a "city upon a hill," he re-imagined Boston College as world-renowned university and a beacon of
Jesuit scholarship. Less than a year after taking office, he purchased Amos Adams Lawrence's farm on
Chestnut Hill, six miles west of the city. He organized an international competition for the design of a
campus master plan and set about raising funds for the construction of the "new" university. Proposals were solicited from distinguished architects, and Charles Donagh Maginnis' ambitious proposal for twenty buildings in English Collegiate Gothic style, called "Oxford in America," was selected.
By 1913, construction costs had surpassed available funds, and as a result
Gasson Hall, "New BC's" main building, stood alone on Chestnut Hill for its first three years. Buildings of the former Lawrence farm, including a barn and gatehouse, were temporarily adapted for college use while a massive fundraising effort was underway. While Maginnis' ambitious plans were never fully realized, BC's first "capital campaign" — which included a large replica of Gasson Hall's clock tower set up on Boston Common to measure the fundraising progress — ensured that President Gasson's vision survived. By the 1920s BC began to fill out the dimensions of its university charter, establishing the Boston College Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, the
Boston College Law School and the Woods College of Advancing Studies, followed successively by the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, the
Carroll School of Management, the
Connell School of Nursing and the Lynch School of Education. In 1926, Boston College conferred its first degrees on women . With the rising prominence of its graduates, this was also the period in which Boston College and its powerful Alumni Association began to establish themselves among the city's leading institutions. At the city, state and federal levels, BC graduates would come to dominate Massachusetts politics for much of the 20th century.
Cultural changes in American society and in the church following the Second Vatican Council forced BC to question its purpose and mission. Meanwhile, poor financial management lead to deteriorating facilities and resources and rising tuition costs. Student outrage, combined with growing protests over
Vietnam and the bombings in
Cambodia, culminated in student strikes, including demonstrations at
Gasson Hall in April 1970.
The Monan era
By the time J. Donald Monan, SJ assumed the presidency on September 5, 1972, BC was approximately $30 million in debt, its endowment totaled just under $6 million, and faculty and staff salaries had been frozen during the previous year. Rumors about the university's future were rampant, including speculation that BC would be acquired by Harvard University. Monan's first order of business was to reconfigure the Boston College Board of Trustees. By separating it from the
Society of Jesus, Monan was able to bring in the talents of lay alumni and business leaders who helped turn around the university's fortunes. This same restructuring had been accomplished first at the
University of Notre Dame in 1967 by Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, CSC with many other Catholic colleges following suit in the ensuing years. In 1974, Boston College acquired Newton College of the Sacred Heart, a 40 acre campus 1.5 miles away that enabled it to expand the law school and provide more housing for a student population that was increasingly residential and geographically diverse. No less than the university's rescue is credited to Monan who set into motion the university's upward trajectory in finances, reputation and global scope. In 1996, Monan's 24 year presidency, the longest in the university's history, came to an end when he was named University Chancellor and succeeded by President William P. Leahy, SJ.
Recent history
Since assuming the Boston College presidency, Leahy's tenure has been marked with an acceleration of the growth and development initiated by his predecessor. BC's endowment has grown to $1.4 billion, In 2004, he announced plans to merge with the Weston Jesuit School of Theology and advance BC as the world's foremost Jesuit university. The announcement was followed by an article in
The New York Times is a newspaper [i] published in New York City [i] by Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. [i] ...
claiming "such a merger would further Boston College's quest to become the nation's Catholic intellectual powerhouse" and that, once approved by the Vatican and Jesuit authorities in
Rome, BC "would become
the center for the study of Roman Catholic theology in the United States." On February 16, 2006, the merger was authorized by the Jesuit Conference.
The Campus
Landscape & architecture
Set on a hilltop overlooking the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and the distant Boston skyline , Boston College's 175 acre Chestnut Hill campus includes over 120 buildings in addition to athletic fields, rolling hills, wooded areas, three formal gardens, an orchard, and over 100 species of trees. The campus creates an almost rural setting, only 6 miles west of downtown Boston. A
"Boston College" "T"-station, located at St. Ignatius Gate, is the western terminus of the
MBTA Green Line's B-branch and provides transit to the
city center. Travel time is approximately 30 to 45 minutes. Travel time to Boston can be reduced by taking a shuttle bus to the "Reservoir" station and riding the faster D line into the city.
Due largely to its location and architecture, the Boston College campus is known affectionately as the "Heights," the "Crowned Hilltop" and "Oxford in America." This last moniker was the title of the original campus master plan and was confirmed by a visiting British journalist in 1915 who famously wrote, "Even in embryo, it is
Oxford and
Cambridge without their grime."
The Crowned Hilltop
Designed by Charles Donagh Maginnis and his firm, Maginnis & Walsh, in 1908, the Boston College campus is a seminal example of
Collegiate Gothic architecture. Publication of its design in 1909 — and praise from influential American Gothicist
Ralph Adams Cram — helped establish Collegiate Gothic as the prevailing architectural style on American university campuses for much of the 20th Century.
Gasson Hall, BC's signature building, is credited for the typology of dominant Gothic towers in subsequent campus designs, including those at
Princeton University's Graduate College , at
Yale University , and at
Duke University . Combining
Gothic Revival architecture with principles of
Beaux-Arts planning, Maginnis proposed a vast complex of academic buildings set in a cruciform plan. The design suggested an enormous outdoor
cathedral, with a long entry drive at the "
nave," the main
quadrangle at the "
apse" and secondary quadrangles at the "
transepts." At the "crossing," Maginnis placed the university's main building, which he called "Recitation Hall." Using stone quarried on the site, the building was constructed at the highest point on Chestnut Hill, commanding a view of the surrounding landscape and the city to the east. Dominated by a soaring 200-foot bell tower, Recitation Hall was known simply as the "Tower Building" when it finally opened in 1913. Maginnis' design broke from the traditional Oxbridge models that had inspired it — and that had till then characterized Gothic architecture on American campuses. In its unprecedented scale,
Gasson Tower was conceived not as the belfry of a singular building, but as the crowning
campanile of Maginnis' new "city upon a hill."
Expansion & eclecticism
Though Maginnis' ambitious Gothic project never saw full completion, its central portion was built according to plan and forms the core of what is now BC's iconic middle campus. Among these, the Bapst Library has been called the "finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America" and Devlin Hall won the Harleston Parker Medal for "most beautiful building in Boston." Subsequent campus expansions exceeded even President Gasson's vision and brought with them a new set of architectural vocabulary:
Georgian,
Neoclassical,
Richardsonian Romanesque, and others. The 1895 Liggett Estate was developed into a
Tudor style upper campus, while an architecturally eclectic lower campus took shape on land acquired by filling in part of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir. Around this time, a Seattle newspaper ranked Boston College #2 in a list of "America's Most Beautiful Campuses" . Notions of "beauty" meanwhile were challenged by the advent of
modernism. The 1940 design for St. Ignatius Church is an important hybrid of this period and is an example of what has been called "Modern Gothic." Modernism had an enormous impact on development after the 1940s, though most modernist buildings at BC maintained decidedly un-modern rough stone facades in keeping with Maginnis' original designs. By the 1960s, BC's severe space demands and poor financial health began to leave their mark, as evidenced by the construction of prefabricated modular apartments on the lower campus. Originally intended as temporary housing, the "Mods" have survived in large part because of their popularity among upperclassmen. Other legacies of this era include the
hyperbolic-roofed Flynn Recreation Complex, constructed using laminated wood beams, and the later International Style O'Neill Library, designed by The Architects Collaborative. More recent campus development signals a return to Maginnis & Walsh's Collegiate Gothic designs, as reflected in the renovations of
Fulton Hall and Higgins Hall , and in the construction of Campanella Hall and the St. Ignatius Gate Residence Hall .
In June 2004, Boston College acquired 43 acres of land from the
Archdiocese of Boston. The new grounds, adjacent to the main campus , include the historic mansion that served as the Cardinal's residence until 2002. The new grounds are referred to as Brighton Campus, after
Brighton, the area in Boston where it is located.
Boston College also recently built the office building of 21 Campenella Way located in Lower Campus. This building houses a small bookstore, Hillside Cafe, UGBC, Theology, History, Philosophy, Economics departments. The building is connected via a causeweay to Middle Campus through the O'Neil Library entrance. During the academic year, the offices close at 5 PM and otherwise you need an appointment to gain admittance. Hillside Cafe operates a food-service Starbucks .
Other properties
In addition to the main campus at Chestnut Hill, BC's 40 acre Newton Campus is located 1 mile to the west and houses the law school and residential housing for roughly half of the freshman class. Other BC properties include a 20 acre seismology research observatory and field station in
Weston, Massachusetts, an 80 acre retreat center in
Dover, Massachusetts, and the on
St. Stephen's Green in
Dublin,
Ireland.
Libraries & museums
Boston College's eight research libraries contain over twelve million printed volumes, manuscripts, journals, government documents and microform items, ranging from ancient papyrus scrolls to digital databases. Together with the university's museums, they include original manuscripts and prints by
Galileo,
Ignatius of Loyola and
Francis Xavier as well as world renowned collections in
Jesuitana,
Irish literature, sixteenth century
Flemish tapestries, ancient
Greek pottery,
Caribbean folk art and literature,
Japanese prints,
US government documents, Congressional Archives, and paintings that span the history of art from
Europe,
Asia and
the Americas.
O'Neill Library
BC's central research library, the
Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr. Library is named for the legendary former
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, a member of the Boston College Class of 1936. Opened in 1984, it houses approximately two million volumes in the
humanities, the natural sciences and the social sciences. It also contains US government documents, administrative offices of the Boston College Libraries, and a museum dedicated to "Tip" O'Neill on the second floor, whose papers are housed in the
Burns Library. A glass-enclosed atrium on the library's fourth and fifth floors offers sweeping views of the Boston skyline. The CTRC, Computer Technology Research Center , the largest computer lab on campus, and the Connors Family Learning Center , the student tutoring area, are located on the second floor.
Bapst Library
Opened in 1928, Bapst Library was named for the first president of Boston College and it was one of the few structures built according to Charles Donagh Maginnis' original "Oxford in America" master plan. Bapst served as the university's main library until 1984. It has been widely praised as the "finest example of Collegiate Gothic architecture in America." In 1987, it reopened after a two-year, multimillion dollar restoration and now houses the university's fine arts collection. Designed as a "
cathedral to learning," it is the most elaborate of the original Collegiate Gothic buildings on campus with extensive stained glass windows, vaulted ceilings and carved wood paneling. Gargan Hall, the soaring reading room on the library's upper floor, has been named the most beautiful room in Boston. Also on the upper floor are the Chancellor's office and the Lonergan Institute. The reading room on the ground floor features a gold-leaf and wood-beamed ceiling that was carefully restored with funds from the Kresge Foundation. A guide to the building's famous stained glass windows is available online.
Burns Library
The Burns Library of Rare Books and Special Collections is home to more than 150,000 volumes, some 15 million manuscripts and other important works, including a world-renowned collection of Irish literature. A rare facsimile of the
Book of Kells is on public display in the library's Irish Room, and each day one page of the
illuminated manuscript is turned. Other significant holdings include original works by
Samuel Beckett,
T.S. Eliot,
Graham Greene,
Seamus Heaney,
Gerard Manley Hopkins,
James Joyce, Francis Thompson,
George Bernard Shaw, and
William Butler Yeats, among others. It also houses the papers of prominent Boston College
alumni, including House Speaker
Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr.; legal scholar and former
US Congressman Robert F. Drinan, SJ;
US Representative Edward P. Boland; and
Margaret Heckler, Congresswoman,
United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, and US Ambassador to
Ireland. The library is named after the Honorable John. J. Burns , Massachusetts Superior Court Justice and a member of the Boston College Class of 1921. The library's lofty Ford Memorial Tower is considerably more elaborate than
Gasson Tower, though not as tall. Inside, the Thompson Room features a magnificent
oriel window depicting epic poetry, while the Trustee Room includes stained glass depictions of 54 Jesuit
armorial crests. Exhibits are held frequently on the library's main level and guided tours are available on request.
Law Library
In a new building opened in 1996, the Law Library is located on the
Boston College Law School campus in
Newton, Massachusetts and contains approximately 500,000 volumes covering all major areas of American law and primary legal materials from the federal government,
Canada, the
United Kingdom, the
United Nations, and the
European Union. The library also features a substantial treatise and periodical collection and a growing collection of international and comparative law material. The library's Coquillette Rare Book Room houses works from the fifteenth through nineteenth centuries, including works by and about
Saint Thomas More.
McMullen Museum of Art
Located in Devlin Hall, the McMullen Museum of Art houses a prominent permanent collection and organizes exhibits from all periods and cultures of art history. Recent exhibits and acquisitions, including works by
Edvard Munch,
Amedeo Modigliani, Frank Stella, Françoise Gilot, and
John LaFarge, have widened both the scope of the collection and its audience.
Saints and Sinners, a 1999 exhibition on the work of
Caravaggio, attracted the largest audience of any university museum up to that time. Related museum activities include musical and theatrical performances, films, gallery talks, symposia, lectures, readings, and receptions that draw students, faculty, alumni and visitors from around the world. Admission to the Museum is free and open to the general public.
Newton Resource Center
The Newton Resource Center is an undergraduate resource library situated in the center of Boston College’s satellite Newton Campus accessible through Trinity Chapel. A converted theater, it is nicknamed "the morgue" both because of its absolute silence and its location in the former
crypt beneath the chapel. As of the fall of 2006, the NRC is closed to student access, though the NRC continues to house a large portion of O’Neill’s overflow books, journals, and periodicals. The volumes on hold in the resource center may be requested through the O’Neill library. Unfortunately, due to a persistent water and mold problem, the NRC has been deemed no longer suitable to house books. The library has begun the process of redistributing its collection between the Kenny-Cottle and O’Neil libraries and long-term storage.
Kenny-Cottle Library
The Kenny-Cottle Library is located on south side of the Newton Campus. At present, the building is being refitted to be used as office space, but the core of the building remains a closed-to-the-public overflow archive for the O’Neill library, housing more than 200,000 volumes available for request through the main library system.
Other libraries & museums
Other BC libraries include dedicated facilities for the schools social work and education, and a geophysics library at the Weston Observatory. Additional exhibition spaces include a student art gallery on the Bapst Library's mezzanine level as well as exhibition space in the Robsham Theater and Campanella Hall. Items related to BC history and athletics are on display at the Hall of Fame in
Conte Forum and the BC Football Museum in the Yawkey Athletics Center.
Academics
Boston College is comprised of eight schools and colleges:
- In December 2004, Boston College announced plans to create a Divinity School by merging its Institute for Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry and the Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The new school would be located on the BC campus on land recently acquired from the Boston archdiocese. The merge is tentatively set to occur in the fall of 2008.
Jesuit-Catholic tradition
BC's Jesuit-Catholic identity is rooted in the distinct vision of
Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the
Jesuit order, who believed in "finding God in all things." Jesuits are characterized by a dedication to both "the life of the mind and the encounter with the world," a mission distinguished by their intellectual and humanitarian activities — notably in the fields of higher education, human rights, and social justice. As explorers, scientists, artists, diplomats, and writers, Jesuits have historically been at the forefront of scientific discovery and cultural expression. As a result, they have had a sometimes tumultuous relationship with the Catholic Church — and were officially suppressed by the
Vatican from 1773 to 1814 — though their work has always been dedicated
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam, or "to the greater glory of God." The 112 Jesuits living on the Boston College campus make up one of the largest Jesuit communities in the world and include members of the faculty and administration, graduate students and visiting international scholars.
The synthesis between faith and reason, coupled with BC's inclusive founding mission, attracts students and faculty from diverse religious traditions and a broad range of convictions. Campus spiritual activities are open to all, though entirely optional and include Catholic liturgies as well as religious services in various Protestant, Orthodox,
Jewish,
Muslim,
Buddhist and other traditions. The Jesuit call to justice is evident in work across religious boundaries in community service, reflection retreats, and immersion programs both on campus and abroad. Alumni/ae also reflect this commitment to humanitarian work: BC ranks 11th among
Peace Corps volunteer-producing colleges.
Athletics
Boston College athletic teams are called the
Eagles. They compete in
NCAA Division I-A as members of the
Atlantic Coast Conference in all sports offered by the ACC. The men's and women's ice hockey teams compete in
Hockey East. Boston College is one of only 13 universities in the country offering NCAA division I-A football, division I men's and women's basketball, and division I hockey.
The BC mascot is an American bald eagle named Baldwin, derived from the bald head of the eagle and the word 'win'. The school colors are maroon and
gold. The fight song,
For Boston, was composed by T.J. Hurley, class of 1885.
Principal athletic facilities include
Alumni Stadium ,
Conte Forum ,
Kelley Rink , Shea Field, the Newton Soccer Complex and the Flynn Recreation Complex. The Yawkey Athletics Center opened in the spring of 2005. BC students compete in 31 varsity sports
Although a founding member of the
Big East Conference, the Eagles left the Big East and joined the
Atlantic Coast Conference in 2005.
Boston College athletes are among the most academically successful in the nation, according to the NCAA's Academic Progress Rate . In 2006 Boston College received Public Recognition Awards with 14 of its sports in the top 10 percent of the nation academically. The Eagles tied
Notre Dame 
