About

Bob Taggart, President, Elected 2023

Bob was Professor of Finance in the Carroll School of Management from 1989 until his retirement in 2020. He held previous faculty appointments at Boston University and Northwestern University as well as visiting appointments at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Harvard Business School and M.I.T.'s Sloan School of Management. Bob’s primary teaching and research interests have been in corporate finance and capital markets, and he has taught numerous courses and published professional papers in these areas. He served as Editor of the journal Financial Management for three years and as Corporate Finance Editor of the Journal of Economics and Business for 22 years. He was President of the Financial Management Association during 1989-90. At BC, Bob served as Finance Department Chair for three years, Interim Dean of the Carroll School for one year and the Carroll School’s Associate Dean for Graduate Programs for six years. Besides School and University committee assignments, Bob served as Boston College’s Faculty Athletics Representative and Athletics Advisory Board Chair for 12 years. He was President of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) during 2012 – 13 and a member of the ACC’s Executive Committee for four years. Bob and his wife Karen have lived in Needham since 1982. They have three grown children, two of whom earned Boston College degrees, and four grandsons.

Michael Clarke, Vice President

Mike joined the Department of Chemistry at Boston College in 1976, became a Full Professor in 1985 and retired in 2013.  He received his B.S. degree from the Catholic University of America in 1968 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1974 with Nobel Laureate Henry Taube.  His research was in how metal ions react with biologically important molecules such as nucleic acids and vitamins.  Mike served as a program director for the inorganic chemistry program in the Chemistry Division of the National Science Foundation intermittently on leave from Boston College for seven years.  He helped to organize the first Gordon Conference in Inorganic Medicinal Chemistry. Locally he has served as a director for the Newton Conservators since 1991 and was President in 1996-7.  He also served as an alternate member of the Newton Parks and Recreation Commission from 1994 to 2020. 

Joe Burns, Treasurer, Elected 2022

Joe Burns graduated from BC High in 1963 and Boston College in 1967. He received his PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 1977. In 1975 he joined the Princeton Sociology Department as an Assistant Professor with specialties in Law and Society, Organizational Behavior and Southeast Asia; later becoming Director of Studies at one of Princeton's undergraduate residential colleges. He joined BC in the fall of 1985 as Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences. In that role he also oversaw the pre-law advising program and the A&S part-time budget and became a long time member of the Pre-Health Advising committee. the MLK Scholarship Committee and the Aquino Scholarship committee. In 1997 he became Associate Vice President/Provost for Undergraduate Academic Affairs where he also served as Director of the Teachers for a New Era initiative and Interim Director of Learning Resources for Student Athletes (now SAAS) while overseeing departmental academic assessment programs. He has taught a course on the History of Boston College in the Capstone Program for 25 years and has also offered a Freshman Topic Seminar on Law and Society. He and his wife, Moy, live in Needham and his sons, Dan and Chris, are both BC graduates.

Maria Brisk, Secretary, Elected 2023

Maria was a faculty member in the Lynch School for 21 years – after 24 years at BU-- and also served as chair of the Teacher Education, Special Education and Curriculum and Instruction department (now Teaching, Curriculum and Society dept) for 5 years. She has authored and co-authored 8 books and 2 second editions and numerous articles in the fields of bilingualism, bilingual education, social context of education, and teaching writing informed by systemic functional linguistics (SFL). She received Federal grants to prepare teachers to work with bilingual students and internal grants to do research related to SFL informed writing. She ran the International Systemic Functional Congress at BC in 2018. In 2016 she developed 3 on-line 1 credit courses to prepare schools to adopt the SFL approach to teach writing. Over 25 schools have participated and more continue to enroll. She continues to teach these courses after retirement and has other 6 people offering additional sections. She is currently working on a second edition of one of her books. She has received numerous awards including, AERA, Scholars of Color Distinguished Career Contribution Award (AERA 2020) and AERA, Bilingual Research SIG, Lifetime achievement award (AERA 2016).      Maria is originally from Argentina and lives in Chestnut Hill (a stone’s throw from BC) with her husband Bill. They have a daughter and, better still, two lovely granddaughters, one a bilingual teacher in NYC and the other a marine scientist in the Boston area. 

Jennie Purnell, Member at Large, Elected 2022

As a member of the Political Science Department since 1993, Jennie’s teaching and research focused on the comparative politics of Latin America, with an emphasis on human rights; race, class, and gender; and the interplay of local and national politics. For the past 15 years she has also served as the Faculty Chair of Intersections, co-facilitating a number of annual writing and contemplative retreats and other programs. She is currently working on a book manuscript dealing with 19th century machine politics in Juchitán, Oaxaca. Jennie lives in Harvard with her husband Petri, children Eric and Belle, and daughter-in-law Carmen.

 

Laurie Shepard, Member at Large, Elected 2023

Laurie Shepard is an Associate Professor of Italian, and taught medieval and renaissance Italian literature in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Boston College from 1986 to 2022. She received her PhD in Comparative Medieval Romance Literature and Philology from Boston College in 1985. Her research focused on the three great Florentine writers of the fourteenth century: Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch, lyric poetry in thirteenth-century Italy, Occitanic troubadour poetry, and medieval epistolography and argument. Among other topics, she taught courses on Dante, Boccaccio, Italian poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Machiavelli, and historical linguistics focused on the development of the Romance Languages from Latin. She published a monograph "Courting Power: Persuasion and Politics" in the Early Thirteenth Century (1999), and co-edited two works: "Songs of the Women Troubadours" with Matilda Bruckner and Sarah White (1995; 2000), and "Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France" with Daniel O'Sullivan (2013). She is currently working on a website dedicated to Italian comedy in the first half of the sixteenth century, comedy that was the precursor to works by Molière and Shakespeare. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, she studied at the Philological Institute in Rome, and she taught for two semesters at Venice International University in Venice. She served as Chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, as Graduate and Undergraduate Program Director, and on many committees. At the university level, she was very involved with the Undergraduate Fellowships Committee. In 2000, she initiated a Public Reading of the Divine Comedy, a program that continues to this day. She has long volunteered as an instructor of English as a Second Language.

Fr. Joe Duffy, S.J. Liaison to the Office of the Provost

University and Jesuit Community Liaison.

Entered the Jesuits in 1944 after graduating from Boston College High School. Holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in philosophy from Boston College; a Licentiate in Sacred Theology from Weston College; and a Master’s and Doctor’s degree from Fordham University.  Before coming to Boston College , he served as Assistant Principal and Principal of Cheverus High School in Portland, Maine; as Guidance Counselor and Principal at Boston College High School; and as Superintendent of Schools in the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire.  Fr. Duffy came to Boston College in 1975 as a member of the School of Education’s Department of Educational Administration.  During his years in the School of Education he also served as Director of Secondary Education of the New England Province of the Society of Jesus; as Rector of the Jesuit Community and on the University’ Board of Trustees.  In 1988 he began a 20 year appointment as Secretary of the University before assuming his current position as Special Assistant to the President.  Over the years he has been a member of numerous boards, committees, and commissions in Jesuit, Catholic and public education.  Noteworthy among these were as a member of the Board of Education of the Archdiocese of Boston; as a member of the Commission on Independent Schools, New England Association of Schools and Colleges; and for twenty-five years as President of the Board of Directors, St. Thomas More School, Oakdale, Connecticut.

Alec Peck, Immediate Past President

Alec was a faculty member in LSOE for 40 years and also served in several administrative positions. He was Associate Dean for Graduate Studies for 6 years and later served for 3 years as Associate Dean for Faculty and Academics. He was also a Department Chair for 3 years and for 8 years served as university-wide Chair of the Academic Technology Advisory Board (ATAB). He co-edited a major journal in his field for 10 years and established and edited an on-line journal for 6 years. He was author or co-author of 2 books and 39 journal articles, book chapters, book reviews, or editorials, and co-editor of 4 additional books.  He now does pro-bono work assisting families of children with special needs in greater Boston and, after leading student groups to the Jamaica Mustard Seed orphanages for 15 years, he now does pro-bono consulting on behavior problems for that organization.  Alec enjoys living in Natick with his wife, Pat. They have 2 married sons and 5 grandchildren who live nearby.