Welcome from Dean Woods

Excel in a Competitive Environment

Profit and learning go together. We profit when learning allows new perceptions to widen our horizons, makes our lives more enjoyable and advances our careers. How much we profit from the learning process depends largely on the quality of our educational experience.

Strengthened by more than a century and a quarter of dedication to academic excellence, Boston College commits itself to the highest standards of teaching and scholarship and to the pursuit of a just society. It seeks both to advance its place among the nation's finest universities and to bring to the company of its distinguished peers and to contemporary society the richness of the Catholic intellectual ideal of a mutually illuminating relationship between religious faith and free intellectual inquiry.

Boston College draws inspiration for its academic and societal mission from its distinctive religious tradition. As a Catholic and Jesuit university, it is rooted in a world view that encounters God in all creation and through all human activity, especially in the search for truth in every discipline, in the desire to learn, and in the call to live justly together. In this spirit, the University regards the contribution of different religious traditions and value systems as essential to the fullness of its intellectual life and to the continuous development of its distinctive intellectual heritage.

Boston College fosters the rigorous intellectual development and the religious, ethical and personal formation of its students in order to prepare them for citizenship, service and leadership in a global society.

Boston College expands its mission by producing significant scholarship to enrich the culture and address important societal needs.

Boston College is committed to advancing the dialogue between religious belief and other formative elements of culture through intellectual inquiry, teaching and learning, and the community life that forms the University.

Boston College recognizes the important contributions a diverse student body, faculty and staff can offer, and is firmly committed to academic freedom, and is determined to exercise careful stewardship of its resources in pursuit of its academic goals. The Woods College of Advancing Studies has been totally committed to this mission for eighty-one years. It is one of the reasons that the same Boston College degree with all the prestige it represents, is conferred to full-time and part-time students alike.

The Woods College of Advancing Studies, dedicated in my name in April 2002 through the generosity of Kate and Bob Devlin, welcomes all who plan for tomorrow.

So whether you plan to take an undergraduate course or two, register in a certificate program or enroll in an undergraduate or graduate degree program, Boston College deserves your consideration. If you have any questions about part-time study or about personal matters relating to your becoming a student, I welcome your interest.

James A. Woods, S.J., Dean
Boston College, Woods College of Advancing Studies