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Sept. 21, 2006 • Volume 15 Number 2

The Decade at a Glance

1997
-Fr. Leahy announces that the University will invest $260 million to strengthen academic personnel, programs and resources over the next five years.

-The Center for Ignatian Spirituality is established to help members of the BC community explore the relationship between faith, the Ignatian educational tradition and their lives at BC.

-The Commission on Institutions of Higher Education of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges formally reaccredits Boston College, citing in particular the University's astute management and evident commitment to its Jesuit mission.

1998
-Fr. Leahy names Rev. Joseph Appleyard, SJ, as vice president for University Mission and Ministry to promote Boston College's distinctive academic and societal mission as a Catholic and Jesuit university.

-Boston College is one of two universities nationwide chosen by the Social Security Administration to host a Center for Retirement Research. The center is directed by Alicia Munnell, a former member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers.

-Formal opening of the Boston College Club in downtown Boston.

1999
-BC's endowment tops the $1 billion mark.

-The Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life, directed by renowned author and public intellectual Alan Wolfe, becomes the first academic center in the nation created specifically to address the relationship between religion and public policy.

-The McMullen Museum of Art strengthens its place among the nation's finest university museums with the exhibition "Saints and Sinners: Caravaggio and the Baroque Image," which draws 66,000 visitors.

-The University holds its first annual campus-wide Arts Festival, open to BC students, faculty, staff, alumni and neighboring communities.

-BC's Chief Executives Club of Boston, sponsored by the Carroll School of Management, is named the top speaking forum for business executives in the United States.

2000
-Boston College is ranked fourth among private national universities in applications for the freshman class entering in 2000, the only Catholic institution in the U.S. to make the top 15.

-BC is ranked among the nation's top five major NCAA schools in student-athlete graduation rates, according to the NCAA's annual graduation survey.

-The international student and faculty population reaches an all-time high time of 952 (from 102 different countries), an increase of 22 percent over 1998 and 57 percent over a decade ago.

-The nation's leading financial regulators and high-tech executives, including Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, convenes on campus for a major summit on "The New Economy."

-Boston College and The Atlantic Monthly launches the nation's first series of public discussions of religious belief and non-belief in contemporary American life.

-The Boston College Center for Irish Programs in Dublin formally opens, solidifying BC as the leading American university in Ireland.

-Boston College Libraries is invited to join the Association of Research Libraries, which represents more than 120 of the major research libraries in North America.

2001
-Twenty-five percent of entering freshmen have SAT scores above 1380, placing them among the top three percent of college-bound seniors nationally.

-Some 1,500 student volunteers participate in service trips to Boston, Appalachia, Nicaragua,
El Salvador, Jamaica and other settings in the U.S. and abroad. In total, BC students provide approximately 80,000 hours of volunteer community service per year.

-Boston College launches "Intersections," a program designed to promote vocational discernment among students and to encourage them to integrate faith into their career choices, and the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning, which aims to promote new relationships and mutual understanding between Christians and Jews.

-BC Athletics earns significant national recognition: Shannon Smith '01, a member of BC's Women's Track team, became BC's first women's national champion when she wins the NCAA 3000-meter title; in Men's Ice Hockey, the Eagles win Boston College's first national championship in 52 years, and Men's Basketball Coach Al Skinner is named "National Coach of the Year" by ESPN, Sports Illustrated and The Sporting News.

2002
-The University draws national attention with the announcement of its two-year "Church in the 21st Century" initiative, which made Boston College the first university in the nation to commit its academic resources to a long-term response to the clergy sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. An audience of more than 4,000 attends the C21 opening forum in September.

-The Council of Women for Boston College is established to heighten women graduates' involvement with the University.

-Boston College is named one of the "12 Hottest Schools" by Kaplan/Newsweek.

-The University is cited among the nation's top 20 college sports programs by US News and World Report, in a survey based on win/loss records, number of sports offered, graduation rate of student athletes, and compliance.

-Lynch School of Education researchers co-author two major national studies, one of child care in the Welfare Reform Era and the other of minority students in special and gifted education.

-Fr. Leahy announces plans for a major strategic planning effort to set long-term institutional goals and priorities and build upon existing strengths.

2003
-Brett T. Huneycutt '03 and Paul A. Taylor '04 become Boston College's first-ever Rhodes Scholars, crowning a year in which BC students win a school-record of 14 Fulbright Grants, as well as a Marshall Scholarship, a Truman Scholarship, a Gates/Cambridge Scholarship and a Goldwater Scholarship.

-Boston College's "Ever to Excel" capital campaign concludes, significantly surpassing its goal of $300 million. The six-year fundraising drive, the most ambitious in the University's history, generates more than $441 million in gifts from more than 90,000 donors.

-Fr. Leahy announces the University's decision to accept an invitation to join the Atlantic Coast Conference, considered the foremost athletic conference in the nation.

-The University sees a surge in graduate enrollment: figures in the Law School, Lynch Graduate School of Education and the Carroll Graduate School of Management set new records, while the Graduate School of Social Work, Connell School of Nursing and College of Arts and Sciences post-graduate programs see significant enrollment increases over the previous year.

-The student group Allies of Boston College is approved to provide support for and address issues concerning sexual orientation on campus.

-Boston College is named a "Teachers for a New Era" school by the Carnegie Corporation. The initiative, also supported by the Annenberg and Ford foundations, is designed to improve both children's learning and overall school effectiveness by developing state-of-the-art, university-based teacher education programs across the U.S.

-Boston College researchers launch the first professional journal dedicated to exploring higher education issues in Africa.

2004
-Fr. Leahy announces that Boston College will purchase 43 acres and several buildings from the Archdiocese of Boston, the largest campus addition since the acquisition of the former Newton College of the Sacred Heart 30 years ago. Also in 2004, the University purchases the St. Stephen's Priory in Dover, Mass., a 78.5-acre property situated on the Charles River.

-The University announces that the groundbreaking two-year Church in the 21st Century initiative launched in 2002 will become permanent, and the Church in the 21st Century Center is established to house the initiative.

-Boston College is numbered among the top producers of Fulbright Awards for students by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

-BC's Graduate School of Social Work announces the creation of a new national social work research center dedicated to improving the quality of supports and services for the elderly and persons with disabilities. The Center for the Study of Home & Community Life is headed by Prof. Kevin Mahoney, program director of Cash & Counseling, a groundbreaking program in which disabled Medicaid consumers decide for themselves how their personal assistance needs will be met.

-The BC Economics Department is ranked one of the top 25 in the United States in a survey published by the Journal of the European Economic Association and based on the number of contributions by faculty researchers to the field's elite professional journals.

-A satellite camera that BC scientists helped build records auroras more than 500 miles above the Earth's surface, a far higher altitude than previously believed possible. Also, BC physics researchers team on a microscopic antenna that captures visible light and could significantly advance the conversion of solar energy into electricity; and a BC chemist is named by MIT Technology Review to its list of the world's 100 Top Young Innovators.

-A national study by Lynch School of Education researchers shows that fewer American students are reaching 10th grade and that US high school graduation rates are showing major declines, especially in some of the nation's largest states.

-More than 2,500 business leaders convene on campus for BC's 2004 Finance Conference on Wealth and Work in the 21st Century, with Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan heading the list of keynote speakers.

-The BC Eagles are ranked in the nation's top five by the NCAA Graduation Rates Report, which shows that 86 percent of scholarship student-athletes who entered Boston College as freshmen in 1997 received their degrees, one of the top academic success records among the nation's 117 Division 1-A football-playing schools.

2005
-BC students launch the University's first-ever undergraduate research journal, an outgrowth of the Boston College Undergraduate Faculty Research Fellows Program, which offers talented underclassmen the chance to work side-by-side with faculty on cutting-edge research.

-The University announces the establishment of the Boston College Center for Human Rights and International Justice, which draws on resources from BC's College of Arts & Sciences and schools of education and law; The Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics in the Carroll School of Management, to engage business leaders, faculty and students in ethical training and leadership formation; and an interdisciplinary Jewish Studies Program, among the first of its kind at an American Catholic university.

-Boston College welcomes to campus 150 students whose schools were closed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

-BC Irish Studies researchers launch the nation's first on-line database for tracking "lost" 19th and early 20th Century Irish emigrants to the U.S.

-Boston College is cited among the leading national universities in offering educational opportunities to AHANA students, according to a study assessing minority enrollment in American higher education.

2006
-Undergraduate applications to the University top the 26,000 mark. That figure, the highest in University history, represented an increase of almost 12 percent over last year's total of 23,823, the previous high-water mark. BC has set a new record for undergraduate applications almost every year in the past decade, and consistently ranks among the top private universities nationally for applications received.

-The University is named to the "New Ivies" list, introduced for the first time this year 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." Boston College also advances to 34th in the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings, its highest placement to date.

-Boston College signs a formal letter of intent to re-affiliate with Weston Jesuit School of Theology, a move that would boost the University's already considerable Jesuit community and enhance its resources in Catholic and Jesuit theology.

-Fr. Leahy announces a groundbreaking partnership among Boston College, the Archdiocese of Boston and St. Columbkille Parish to assist the financially troubled St. Columbkille School in Allston-Brighton. The agreement represents the first collaboration of its kind between a Catholic university and a parochial school in the U.S.

-The University announces the nation's first graduate degree in Church management, a cooperative venture between the Institute for Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry and Carroll School of Management in response to a growing need for business-trained leaders in the Catholic Church.

-Physicists at Boston College show for the first time that carbon nanotubes can be stretched at high temperature to nearly four times their original length, a finding that could have implications for future semiconductor design as well as in the development of new nanocomposites.

-Aspiring cancer researcher Elizabeth O'Day '06 achieves what no one at Boston College - and few, if any, at other universities - has done, winning five of the nation's most coveted academic awards for her scientific research: Beckman and Goldwater fellowships, a Winston Churchill Scholarship to study at Cambridge University, a Fulbright grant and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

-BC's Center for Retirement Research gains international attention with its National Retirement Risk Index, which showed that many Americans are ill-prepared for retirement.

-Boston College receives a record $44.4 million in support of research and sponsored projects.

-A national summit on ways to stem the tide of closing K-12 Catholic schools is hosted on campus.

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