Faculty

Originally from Michigan, Biz Bracher is a 1991 graduate of Boston College who majored in Human Development in the Lynch School of Education. While an undergraduate, Biz was a member of the women’s Varsity Lacrosse team for which she served as a captain her senior year. After graduating from BC, she worked for FAO Schwarz in Boston and later for the Etruscan Foundation in Siena, Italy before returning to the Heights in 1995 to earn her MA and Ph.D. in Applied Developmental and Educational Psychology in the Lynch Graduate School of Education. Biz spent 17 years in the Office of First Year Experience, first as a graduate assistant, then as the Assistant Director, the Associate Director, and ultimately as the Interim Director. In FYE she oversaw and facilitated BC’s Student/Parent Orientation, First-Year Academic Convocation, the 48HOURS Retreat Program, and taught in the Courage to Know First-Year Seminar Program (CTK). In 2017, Biz moved into the Morrissey College of Arts & Sciences, bringing the CTK program with her and she now serves as the Director of the Cornerstone Seminar Program including the First-Year Topic Seminars as well as some sections of First-Year Writing Seminars and Perspectives I. In 2018, she began teaching in the Capstone Seminar Program and now also serves as the Director of the program. Biz also serves on the University’s Pre-Health Advising Committee.

Biz and her husband Troy (CSOM ’91 and CGSOM ’98) have three sons, all of whom have benefited from Jesuit education in high school and college. In her free time, you can find her playing tennis, pickleball, running, or working her way through an ever-growing stack of books. She loves to travel, cook, and share meals with family, friends, and students. A highlight of each semester is having her classes over to her home for a festive dinner and a competitive game of salad bowl!

Professor of Sociology and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Academic Planning Brian Gareau is an environmental sociologist. His research team has recently published two articles on changes in the social and ecological conditions of cranberry production in New England in the journals PLoS Climate (2024) and the Journal of Rural Studies (2022). As Senior Associate Dean, Professor Gareau helps the MCAS dean and departments select the very best faculty to join the Boston College community. Brian holds a joint appointment with the International Studies Program and is an Affiliated Faculty Member of the Environmental Studies Program

A former D1 soccer player for the Providence College Friars, Brian still enjoys playing soccer for Concord United. He also enjoys spending time with his three children, his wife (Prof. Tara Pisani Gareau), and their various yard animals (dog, chickens, etc.).

Tom Kaplan-Maxfield received his PhD from BC in 1993 and as a full time professor has taught writing and literature courses in the English department here ever since. He is a novelist and sometime friend of the writer Lawrence Durrell. His latest book, Belongings is a fictionalized recounting of his time spent with the famous writer in the south of France in the 1980’s.

He writes a series of novels that are set on the BC campus, called Adventures on the Heights, the latest of which, Satanas Mysterium concerns good and evil, featuring the Devil in residence on the Heights. Other novels include the award-winning Memoirs of a Shapeshifter (a treasure hunt for a brooch hidden on main campus is tied to the novel) and Hide and Seek, a murder mystery in reverse. He has worked as a book editor, reporter, and political activist.

In his third life he is a licensed building contractor, and is most dedicated to teaching at the intersection of practical lived life, writing and love. His Litcore on Love has been a perennial favorite of Freshmen, and Capstone, in connecting theory with practice, is a natural extension of his interests. He is most passionate about connecting with students in all his courses via challenging talk—and food. At home he plays flute, cooks with his wife Ellen, writes with his cat Pepper asleep on his lap, and builds houses on his days not teaching.

Paul McNellis, S.J., taught political philosophy and social ethics at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, before coming to Boston College to teach in the Perspectives program.

His most formative experience was growing up in Minnesota as the oldest of nine children, which proved to be an excellent preparation for two later challenges in life: military service in Vietnam and entering the New York Province of the Society of Jesus.

As for the latter, being the sole Midwesterner among NY Province Jesuits, a special mission fell to him. He reminded native New Yorkers that the term "the city," as in "Let's go to the city," could have a referent other than "New York." One could, for example, have in mind Minneapolis, Chicago, Seattle, Omaha, Cleveland, or even Duluth.

Before entering the Jesuits he worked in Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia, as a soldier, journalist, and refugee relief worker. Since 1995 he has periodically taught in Vietnam and Cambodia.

His pastoral work as a Jesuit includes prison ministry, Project Rachel; and The Sons of St. Patrick, a group of Christian gentlemen at Boston College.