Conversations in the First Year

The 2008 Academic Convocation will feature author of The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer. 

Since the Fall of 2004, Conversations in the First Year has enriched the intellectual lives of our newest students. It begins at Orientation, where all incoming students are given a common text. This book helps to create the year's academic theme. Then, early in their first semester, all first year students gather for the First Year Academic Convocation. Each year the Convocation speaker addresses the class, inspiring the themes of the summer reading. Convocation is filled with ritual, ideas, and conversation that kick off the academic year. All first-year students are required to join us for this event.

Last September, Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, addressed the class of 2011 and the greater Boston College community, where she shared her astonishing memoirs of her nomadic childhood.  As a Jesuit community, being men and women for and with others, Walls helped lead the discussion on "Finding a home for yourself...and for others."

Thank you to those of you that attended and helped make this year's Academic Convocation a success!

Past Speakers (and Summer Reading)

2007 - Jeanette Walls (The Glass Castle)                                                                         2006 - Senator John McCain (Lives of Moral Leadership by Robert Coles)
2005 - Senator Barack Obama (Dreams from My Father by Barack Obama)
2004 - Dr. Paul Farmer and Tracy Kidder (Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder)

To view these Academic Convocations, please go to BC's Front Row presentation.

"Go set the world aflame."
- Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556)

In the entrance of the Jesuit headquarters in Rome is a striking statue of Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the Jesuits) with the motto Ite incendite - "Go set the world aflame" - his parting words to Francis Xavier who was carrying the Gospel to the East. This is our charge as you begin your experience at Boston College. Take the gift of education and carry it to great places throughout the world.