Campus Digest: Summer 2025

With the country facing both a shortage of obstetric care providers and a maternal mortality crisis, the Boston College Connell School of Nursing has launched a new master of science degree program in nurse-midwifery. The program will train students to become certified nurse-midwives, which are advanced practice clinicians with expertise in caring for women’s health, including during pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period. “Nurse-midwives are really experts and specialists in women’s health across the lifespan,” said CSON Associate Professor of the Practice Katharine Hutchinson, director of the new program and a certified nurse-midwife of twenty years. Despite spending more on health care than any other nation, Hutchinson said, the US ranks twenty-sixth in the world for maternal mortality rates, and deaths from pregnancy-related causes more than doubled in the country between 1999 and 2019, according to one recent study.

Nationally, demand is growing for certified nurse-midwives, who work in hospitals alongside patients giving birth, as well as in outpatient settings providing primary care. Hutchinson said that introducing more certified nurse-midwives to the health care system through programs like the new one at BC—the only such program in eastern Massachusetts—makes care more personal and improves health outcomes. “The data shows that when women and their newborns are cared for by midwives,” Hutchinson said, “they have fewer unneeded interventions, people like the care better, and it costs less to the health system.” Students in BC’s program will learn both outpatient specialties, like gynecologic and prenatal care, and inpatient services, such as postpartum and newborn care. —Elizabeth Clemente

Not Your Standard Spring Break

Campus News

BC has established the Murray Center for Student Wellness. The center integrates existing campus wellness programs, such as the primary care center and psychiatric services, alongside significant enhancements, including increased access to same-day mental health counseling and the addition of BC’s first full-time medical dietitian. The center was made possible through a gift from Tami Murray ’83, P’09,’15,’19, in honor of her late husband, former BC Trustee Stephen P. Murray ’84.

BC’s human-centered engineering program has graduated its inaugural class of students. Besides offering wide-ranging training in the field, the HCE major is unique for its philosophical focus on solving real-world problems for the common social good. As their final projects, the graduates presented innovative designs for, among other things, monitoring indoor air quality and delivering epinephrine to patients in shock.

Messina College, BC’s two-year residential college, has joined the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society and established the Beta Omega Rho chapter. The official honor society of two-year colleges, the organization provides students with opportunities such as exclusive scholarships and leadership development programming.

BC has again been recognized as one of the nation’s top research universities. The Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education designated BC a Research 1 institution—the highest classification, held by less than 3 percent of American educational institutions—based on the University’s level of spending on research ($81.4 million in 2023) and number of doctorates awarded.

Amanda M. Teo has been named executive director of the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy at Boston College Law School. A career public servant, Teo formerly managed and advised two of Massachusetts’s largest public law offices. She succeeds the retired Elisabeth “Lissy” Medvedow, the inaugural executive director of the Rappaport Center. 

Provostship Endowed