The Property, Name and History Purchase of Wheelock.
DEAD |
ABANDONED |
CANCELLED |
Dont Forget, Social Work was NOT merged!
Articles about the Merger
click photos for actual link
Boston University has agreed to enter into formal discussions with Wheelock College, with the goal of merging Wheelock with Boston University. Wheelock College is a private college known for its focus on education and located on the Riverway, about one mile from the Charles River Campus.
Officials at both institutions have issued the statement below and are unable to provide additional specifics about a potential merger at this time. Joint Statement from Boston University and Wheelock CollegeBoston University and Wheelock College have entered into formal discussions about a possible merger of Wheelock College with Boston University. Wheelock College is a private college composed of three schools, focused on education, social work, and arts and sciences, with a mission dedicated to improving the lives of children and families. Currently it enrolls approximately 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students, housing many of them on its campus. Boston University is a major private research university with approximately 33,000 undergraduate and graduate students and is composed of 17 schools and colleges, including leading programs in education and social work. The campuses of the two institutions are less than one mile apart. Both schools have historically strong ties to the Boston Public School system and to the City of Boston. Over the upcoming weeks the leadership of Boston University and Wheelock College will be working with our faculties and our academic and administrative leaders to shape the vision of our merged academic units and services. (Enjoy those comments) 
It’s a done deal:
Boston University and Wheelock College have agreed to merge. The two schools had said in August they were exploring the possibility of a “merger.” However, a more accurate description of the agreement announced Wednesday may be that BU is absorbing its financially struggling, 130-year-old neighbor. How the merger worksAccording to a press release Wednesday, the merger will take place June 1, 2018, and will give BU ownership of all of Wheelock’s assets and liabilities. Under the agreement, Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies will be combined with BU’s School of Education to establish BU’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. Wheelock President David Chard will serve as interim dean of the new school from the date of the merger until July 1, 2020. Chard will report to BU Provost Jean Morrison. In a letter to the BU community, Robert Brown, the school’s president, said the newly created school is the “cornerstone” of the merger and that BU will support “new faculty positions and expanded programming at WCEHD” with increased funding. “The additional resources we plan to deploy gives Boston University the opportunity to commit with renewed energy to our long-standing efforts to promote quality early childhood and K–12 education as the foundation for the prosperity and stability of our city and the nation,” Brown said. In the press release, officials from both institutions said the newly created college would be mutually beneficial. Chard said WCEHD provides an opportunity to focus on innovation in education, which he said his college hasn’t had the resources to do. BU officials said Wheelock’s strengths in early education and continuing teacher education complement the School of Education’s clinical education, doctoral education, and research programs. The programs offered through Wheelock’s other two schools will be “integrated” into similar existing programs at BU. “There is a great deal of work to be done, including some difficult decisions about the scope and organization of the combined college and the integration of other programs of Wheelock College into Boston University,” Brown said Wednesday. “However, we are confident that the results will be worth the effort.” According to the press release, Wheelock’s endowment will be absorbed into BU’s endowment and managed by the university’s investment office. However, income from Wheelock’s endowment will be devoted to support WCEHD. Donor restrictions will also be honored, while unrestricted donations will go toward WCEHD. What it means for studentsThe roughly 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students at Wheelock will be able to continue their studies at BU — in some shape or form. Beginning in the fall of 2018, officials say Wheelock students “in good standing” will be offered the opportunity to transfer into existing BU programs, continue in new, “select Wheelock programs” at BU, or enroll in transitional programs that BU will “teach out” so they can complete their Wheelock course of study. According to Wednesday’s press release, BU will honor the tuition rates and financial aid packages of current Wheelock students, so that their net tuition will be the same as the cost of attending their old school (though tuition may increase with inflation). Brown wrote that, beginning in 2018, all new students will be admitted through BU, “using our standards and processes.” Applicants to WCEHD following the merger will be subject to BU’s requirements, tuition rates, and financial aid strategies. “WCEHD students will be part of BU’s student body, will complete the same general education program, and will have access to the same educational and cocurricular opportunities as other BU students,” officials said. Wheelock alumni will be treated as both alumni of WCEHD and BU. What it means for staffHere come those aforementioned “difficult decisions.” It’s unclear whether layoffs may be forthcoming for Wheelock faculty and staff, but BU officials certainly alluded to the possibility Wednesday. Officials say a “process” has been agreed to for determining the titles and responsibilities of tenured Wheelock faculty, who will transfer to BU. However, the “continuation” of non-tenured faculty members will be decided “on a case-by-case basis,” according to the needs of BU’s relevant academic units. Wheelock’s administrative and operational functions will also be merged into the equivalent units at BU. “The University will offer Wheelock staff appropriate positions where it is practical to do so,” Brown said. What it means for Wheelock’s campus“Many of you have likely walked past or through the Wheelock campus,” Brown wrote Wednesday. “The proximity to our campus is one of the attractive attributes that we took into account in our early review of the merger opportunity.” Wheelock’s main campus is located along the Fens, less than a mile south from BU’s campus. Brown says the “current plan” is to use the school’s campus for BU academic programs. In June, The Boston Globe reported that Wheelock was selling at least two buildings and reviewing the programs it offered. According to the Globe, the school has been facing an annual operating deficit of more than $2.5 million in recent years, decreased student enrollment, and a shrinking endowment. Officials said Wednesday the school was projected to lose $6 million in the fiscal year of 2018 on a total operating budget of $30 million. Wheelock solicited proposals for mergers from 60 other higher-learning institutions across the country. BU was one of six who responded. “President Brown and I have discussed our intent to support Wheelock students and alumni during this transition and welcome them as part of the Boston University community,” Chard said in a statement Wednesday. “Moreover, we both want to create a college of which our entire community can be proud.” 
Boston University and Wheelock College reached a definitive agreement Wednesday to merge on June 1, 2018. In addition to the legal nuts and bolts of BU assuming Wheelock’s assets and liabilities, a new school of education will be borne of the merger, according to a press release from the schools. The Wheelock College of Education and Human Development will combine Wheelock’s specialty in early childhood learning with BU’s research and doctoral capabilities. Current Wheelock President David Chard will serve as interim dean of the new school. The Wheelock campus, which occupies real estate less than a mile from BU’s Allston hub, will immediately become space for BU academic programs following the merger. The 1,100 current Wheelock students have a couple of paths moving forward: They can enroll in existing BU programs, continue studying certain Wheelock curricula that will be incorporated into BU, or begin a transitional schedule to finish their Wheelock course work. In addition to academic continuity, Wheelock students will also see their financial aid packages and tuition rates stay the same, barring inflation. The BU sticker price is roughly $16,000 higher than at Wheelock, but current students at Wheelock will remain locked into their current monetary contributions. “It’s a very good match,” Chard said in the press release. “Boston University and Wheelock both have a historical focus on the city, and they both have a desire to double-down on efforts to support the institutions that are most important to the city: its public schools and social services.” The schools officially announced the opening of merger discussions at the end of August, but Chard told Inside Higher Ed that trustees expressed concern about the school’s future as early as July 2016, when he was first hired. According to the press release, Wheelock solicited merger offers from 60 institutions across the country, and BU was one of six that responded. Wheelock’s small size, which many community members saw as an attribute, also limited its growth. The school’s endowment in 2016 was $53.9 million, more than 30 times smaller than BU’s $1.65 billion endowment, Inside Higher Ed reported. Financially, Wheelock found itself in the red in both 2015 and 2016, with projected losses of $6 million in 2018. The school also struggled to compete with larger institutions to recruit learners, and the student body shrunk by 39 percent between 2006 and 2016. BU’s considerably larger size could presumably help mitigate the financial problems dogging Wheelock. Since its inception in 1888, Wheelock has focused on early childhood education and family-service professions like social work. The school was founded by Lucy Wheelock as a training ground for kindergarten teachers, and the new education school at BU will keep the Wheelock name alive. 
A MERGER BREWS IN BOSTON:
Boston University and Wheelock College have started formal discussions about merging, they announced Tuesday, a step coming after Wheelock evaluated its future this summer in the face of financial and enrollment pressures. The two institutions’ campuses sit about a mile apart. But a combination would would mean Wheelock merging into BU, not a merger of equals. Wheelock is a small private college that enrolled 726 undergraduates and 327 graduate students last fall and reported an endowment of $53.9 million in 2015. Boston University is a large private research university that enrolled almost 18,000 undergraduates and 14,751 graduate students last fall and had a $1.65 billion endowment in 2016. Merger talks follow a planning process this summer by Wheelock administrators, staff members and trustees, the college said in a statement. The college is trying to find a sustainable way to continue its mission in a changing higher education industry, it said. Neither Boston University nor Wheelock shared a timeline under which the merger talks will progress. They issued a joint statement but said they would not provide additional details for the time being. “Over the upcoming weeks the leadership of Boston University and Wheelock College will be working with our faculties and our academic and administrative leaders to shape the vision of our merged academic units and services,” the joint statement said. “We believe the merger will enhance Boston University’s programs, as well as preserve the mission of Wheelock College to improve the lives of children and families.” Wheelock has three schools focusing on education, social work and arts and sciences. BU has 16 schools and colleges that include education and social work programs. Under the merger, the Wheelock School of Education, Child Life, and Family Studies would merge with BU’s School of Education, according to a letter Wheelock President David J. Chard sent to faculty and staff Tuesday. The merger would create what would be called the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. Wheelock’s other programs would also merge with corresponding programs at BU. Chard wrote that Wheelock's administrative and operational functions would be integrated into BU. Operations would be "right sized" as necessary to realize cost savings associated with a larger university. “This potential partnership with Boston University will allow us to preserve Lucy Wheelock’s vision and continue to educate leaders who improve the lives of children and families while building a sustainable future for Wheelock College,” he wrote. The college tracks its history and founding in 1888 to Lucy Wheelock, a pioneer in early childhood education and kindergarten teacher training. She is also noted for having her students study poor immigrant families in Boston neighborhoods. Chard is a relatively new president at Wheelock -- he took over as president there in July 2016. But when he was offered the job, trustees told him that they were concerned Wheelock, with its history as a small institution with a narrow mission, could not offer students the kinds of experiences they could find at other four-year institutions. "We don't have a gym on campus," Chard said in an interview Tuesday. "We don't have the luxury of a lot of things you find on a lot of large institutional campuses. Well before they hired me, they had started conversations with local institutions about possible partnerships." Those conversations were put on hold when Chard was hired. But college leaders saw challenges enrolling students in the Northeast. That was particularly true for a private college focused on teacher education, a field that does not offer high salaries to graduates. Conversations started in December about strategic options. They progressed to the point where Wheelock followed a request for proposals process seeking financially strong colleges and universities as partners. Boston University came out on top of that process, which netted six proposals. Chard does not expect Wheelock to lose money this year. For the near future, the college could have planned on spending down its endowment to close budget gaps while trying to find a way to enroll more students. But leaders decided now was the time to make a change, when the institution was strong enough to be valuable to partners. Substantial growth would have meant creating new programs and spending capital the college didn't have, Chard said. "Growing would have been difficult for us," Chard said. "I think the kind of growth you talked about would have been very difficult for us to achieve alone and without substantial risk." Wheelock was said to be weighing substantial changes this summer in order to position itself for the future. In June, The Boston Globe reported the college was trying to sell a dormitory and its president’s house. The college was also considering eliminating undergraduate degrees and had suspended freshman recruitment for 2019, the newspaper reported. A Wheelock spokeswoman later denied the undergraduate changes, saying the college planned normal recruitment for 2019. But she confirmed the properties were up for sale. Merging Wheelock and BU is logical geographically and academically, according to Richard Doherty, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts. Wheelock’s education and social work programs have a history of excellence and would blend very well with BU’s programs, he said. Chard likely brought a fresh perspective to the college. “Wheelock has a brand-new president, and I think with brand-new presidents comes a brand-new rethinking of strategic moves,” Doherty said. “I think that’s what they’ve been doing -- a little bit of soul-searching this year.” BU and Wheelock would not be the first two Boston-area institutions to merge in recent years. The Berklee College of Music and the Boston Conservatory announced a merger in 2016. Today, they are known under the joint name of the Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Doherty would not be surprised to see additional mergers in Massachusetts. It is the only state where more students attend private colleges than public colleges, he said. That means there are many small institutions. The Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts has 58 members. Against a national climate where tuition discount rates are rising, net tuition is under pressure and increasing enrollment is expected to be challenging, institutions could very well be looking for new strategies. “Merger activity or affiliation activity is quite new within higher education,” Doherty said. “I think we will end up seeing some more of that activity, just because of the pressures on very small, niche, focused academic institutions.” Still, mergers are not an easy process. They raise hard-to-answer questions about institutional identity. Reactions to the announcement on social media illustrate that fact. Commenters on Wheelock’s Facebook page argued the college’s identity is unique. One said she attended Wheelock because of its small school appeal. Comments were more mixed on Boston University’s Facebook page, but some commenters still reacted strongly, asking if they could pay Wheelock’s lower tuition and worrying about what they saw as the college’s high acceptance rate and reputation. 
Wheelock social work undergrads to attend Simmons College, live at BU. Some former Wheelock students are transitioning to Simmons rather than Boston University, but will be living on BU’s campus. As a result of the scheduled June 1 merger between Boston University and Wheelock College, more than 100 current Wheelock students will be moving to the Charles River Campus. Some of these students, those looking to complete a Bachelor of Social Work degree, will become Simmons College students despite living on BU’s campus.
Due to the fact that BU does not offer a bachelor’s in social work, the students were given the option to transition to Simmons or remain at BU to pursue another course of study. A little over 20 students who chose to attend Simmons will be living on either BU’s Charles River Campus or Fenway Campus, BU spokesman Colin Riley said. “It’s actually very straightforward,” Riley said. “We’ve assured the students who are pursuing a bachelor’s in social work that they’ll be able to continue to matriculate in that program, and we’ve partnered with Simmons College to do that.” Most of the students enrolled in the program are upperclassmen who are going to be matriculating soon, Riley said. As a result, this will not be a long-term arrangement for them. One of the primary reasons that the students are going to be residing on the BU campus is that they had undergone the housing selection process before BU had finalized the agreement with Simmons College, BU Dean of Students Kenneth Elmore said. Jorge Delva, dean of BU’s School of Social Work, said that since BU has never had a Bachelor of Social Work program and Simmons has had one for a long time, it made sense to make the arrangement for Wheelock students to continue their studies there. Wheelock College in Boston. Wheelock College is merging with BU, Sachi Simpson, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she feels sympathetic toward the students transitioning to Simmons and said she believes that BU made the right decision to provide them housing. “It’s definitely not their fault that their major got taken away, so it would only be fair to provide them with housing while they’re transitioning and pursuing their studies,” Simpson said. Chris Larabee, a freshman in the College of Communication, agreed with Simpson, but specified that it was a good arrangement only as long as it was a short-term one. “I guess they need to be accommodated for because it sucks for them that they don’t have a choice that their school is merging and that BU isn’t accommodating them educationally,” Larabee said. “It’s just fair for a couple of semesters, but any more than that, I don’t think they should.” There are some students who may choose not to go to Simmons to continue with their bachelor’s in social work, and will instead come to BU to continue with some other program, Delva said. That option has been left open for the students. Wheelock’s Dean of the School of Social Work, Leadership and Youth Advocacy Hope Haslam Straughan will be teaching at both BU and Simmons to help ease the students’ transition to the new universities, Delva said. Even though Straughan will be a BU employee, she will be teaching at Simmons because she knows the transitioning students and the arrangement has been made to ensure that they are comfortable with the teachers they will not have had before. “We are just essentially lending them one of our instructors to help them at Simmons — to help the students maintain a sense of continuity so that it’s not totally strange for them to go from Wheelock to Simmons,” Delva said.Delva said he hopes that students will consider BU as an option for a Master of Social Work after completing their Bachelor of Social Work through the BU-Simmons program. Delva added that there are no current plans to add a Bachelor of Social Work program to BU’s curriculum. McKenna Kennedy, a freshman in the Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, said she thinks it is important for Boston-area universities to work together to provide students with the education they want and deserve. “If we can offer it, I think it’s fair that they should have the opportunity to pursue the degree they wish to,” Kennedy said. 
Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development has eliminated eight staff positions, eight full-time faculty positions and 64 part-time faculty positions for the upcoming semester, as indicated in a memo sent from Wheelock’s Office of the Dean on Monday. The memo, part of which was posted publicly on Twitter by the Unionized Massachusetts Higher Education Faculty, included the results of the 2021 fiscal year budget reduction and updates on workplace adjustment requests, as well as plans and changes for the Fall semester. dailyfreepress.com/2020/07/25/wheelock-takes-brunt-of-bu-layoffs/ In a June 29 update on BU finances, President Robert Brown had highlighted the $96 million added budget cuts that needed to be identified as part of the financial shortfall of the University for the upcoming fiscal year. Wheelock was asked by the University to reduce its budget by 15 percent, which approximates to around $2.2 million. One-third of the budget cuts were allowed to be “one-time” cuts, which may be filled again at a later date, while the remaining two-thirds of cuts must remain permanent. Dean of Wheelock College David Chard said these decisions were not made lightly. He said the proposal created to meet the budget reduction included considerations about the faculty composition at Wheelock, as well as the school’s student enrollment rates. “We’ve seen decreasing enrollments in certain programs,” Chard said. “So our plan was to reduce the faculty in those programs and take advantage of faculty vacancies.” Chard said it’s important to note that these were position eliminations and not necessarily personnel. Some of them were vacant and had been previously hiring, and so do not equate to the actual number of people laid off. Four out of the eight eliminated staff positions and five of the eight full-time faculty positions eliminated were vacant. The 64 part-time faculty positions that were eliminated could potentially be reopened for hiring in fiscal year 2022, barring budget restrictions. All departments lost positions, Chard said, but the Office of Student Affairs was most affected. Yet it remains the biggest department at Wheelock, with 6 employees and one associate dean. Ellen Faszewski, a clinical professor at Wheelock, is the associate dean leading the Student Affairs team. She wrote in an email that the cuts are a great loss. “Over the last two years, I have had the pleasure of working with a highly skilled, motivated, and dedicated team,” Faszewski wrote. “Losing members of this ‘Dream Team’ has impacted all of us. Deeply.” Faszweski wrote that despite the turn of events, Student Affairs remains committed to its students and will continue to provide high-quality support. “When the merger occurred, there was a large degree of chaos, uncertainty, change, etc.,” Faszewski wrote, referring to when BU absorbed Wheelock College in 2018. “Working through all of that only made us more successful, supportive, and effective as a team. Luckily, we are able to rely on these qualities during this current period of change.” Chard, who was the president at Wheelock College during the BU buyout, also said the loss of faculty and staff was impactful. “Eliminating positions involves very difficult decisions that result in people we value and care about leaving us,” Chard wrote in the released memo. “We all wish these changes were not necessary.” He said it’s been difficult for the entire college to have to experience something similar to what they did during the merger. “Forty, 45 percent or so of faculty and staff at Wheelock College [had been laid off],” Chard said. “This brings back deja vu for many of us who are going through it again, so we know how difficult it is.” Future cuts are possible, Chard said, and are dependent primarily on the rate at which students return to campus in the Fall, as the school relies on student tuition to operate. Significant decreases in tuition may mean some programs must be put on hiatus or discontinued altogether. Gleny Burgos, executive director of operations at Wheelock, wrote in an email that BU is providing support to those who were laid off. “The Faculty and Staff Assistance Office (FSAO) is available to assist the individuals affected by providing an array of services,” Burgos wrote. “Additionally, the university is offering transition and outplacement support to those impacted.” Looking toward Fall, Chard said certain adjustments, such as a reorganization of faculty roles, will have to be made to help the school streamline its operations. “We are looking carefully at the way we did work in the past to see if there are areas where there was redundancy,” Chard said. “We’re hoping to cross-train people so that they can be not necessarily working in a particular siloed area, but rather more flexibly working across areas.” Chard said the school is also looking to further involve faculty in student recruitment efforts, especially as faculty members know the school’s programs best and have a higher chance of sparking a potential applicant’s interest. Roughly one-third of faculty at Wheelock submitted a workplace adjustment request, Chard said. Most of them come from faculty who are in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s high-risk category, and they will be prioritized. Valentin Voroshilov, a lecture coordinator in the Physics department at the College of Arts and Sciences, wrote in an email he thinks BU did not need to lay off people to survive financially. “My approach would be to check what capital is used for — buildings, new buildings, parking lots, other structures,” Voroshilov wrote, “and find the way to freeze or cut some of those before starting cutting off people.” Voroshilov also wrote the University should try to attract more students by lowering tuition by 20 percent for all online courses, advertising examples of high-quality teaching and giving more voice to faculty who tend to earn positive student feedback. “I do not believe the administration has really innovative ideas, or people who can think outside the box and [are] willing to take a risk,” Voroshilov wrote. |
For almost 150 years, Wheelock College has been proudly small.
It began in 1888, as Miss Wheelock’s Kindergarten Training School. "Miss Wheelock" was Lucy Wheelock, a teacher who saw Boston neighborhoods filling with Portuguese, Filipino and Italian immigrants and founded a school to train their teachers. During her 50 years as the school's leader, Lucy Wheelock presented education, especially of young immigrant children, as "the greatest good of mankind." Lucy Wheelock stands in front of the Froebel Frieze in the 1930s. (Courtesy of Wheelock College Archives/Flickr)That sense of mission has animated Wheelock College ever since. The school still produces lots of early-childhood educators, as well as social workers and child psychologists. But lately that kind of smallness has begun to work against many American colleges. Schools like Wheelock have experienced a perilous cycle of shrinking enrollment and rising costs over the past decade. Wheelock's president, David J. Chard, says that means the leaders of small colleges like himself will have to get creative. And Chard's creative solution to Wheelock's problem is to seek safe harbor in a merger with the much larger Boston University, its school of education in particular. Chard has only headed Wheelock since July of last year. He says its founder has been on his mind a lot lately: "I've often thought, over the last several months, 'What would Lucy Wheelock do if she were here today?' " Chard took over Miss Wheelock's school at a perilous moment. In the past two years, its enrollment dipped by nearly 30 percent — to barely 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Only about half of its students left with a degree. And the school's endowment shed almost a third of its value in the recession, and it still hasn't returned to its 2007 heights. As an educator, Chard says he's used to being strapped for cash: "Listen, when I started teaching in the 1980s, we were counting the number of photocopies we made, because we couldn't afford paper. So that has been part of my life for a long time." Still, the college has had to try to raise revenue. Of late, it has accepted nearly all who apply, and charges thousands of dollars more in annual tuition. (It's worth noting that, for the average student, Wheelock is still about $10,000 per year cheaper than Boston University.) Wheelock College President David Chard in his office. (Max Larkin/WBUR)That spiral — of rising costs and shrinking enrollment — is common at small colleges colleges across the country. Michael Horn, an education consultant based in Boston and co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute, puts it this way: pit "significant increases in tuition, year over year over year, against the reality that middle-class wages have largely been stagnant." Horn anticipates that many such schools could end up merging, closing or going bankrupt in the years ahead. "Forty percent of colleges in this country have fewer than 1,000 students — I think all of those are at grave risk," he warns. But Wheelock is further hampered by the purity of its mission. No one wants to see their alma mater disappear. But some schools train doctors or lawyers who might shore up its endowment with donations — Wheelock trains preschool teachers and social workers. Mounting research suggests that high-quality, early-childhood education is just as important to a child's development as it seemed to Lucy Wheelock a century ago. But its practitioners aren't paid very much; American preschool teachers, for example, earn a median salary of just $28,700. That means the average Wheelock graduate leaves the school carrying what could be almost a year's salary in student debt. Making good on Wheelock's promise to its founder, and its current students, meant making a change, Chard said. First they sold off the multimillion-dollar Brookline house reserved for the college's president; Chard and his partner had been living there. Then they quietly asked larger schools across the country to consider a partnership. And this week, Wheelock and BU announced they were in talks to merge. A student walks down the Riverway in front of the Wheelock College campus. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)Chard says BU felt like a natural complement. Wheelock's program focuses on clinical training for teachers, while BU's school of education excels at research. And the two campuses are less than a mile apart. "If you put those two together, we have the potential to create a preeminent college of education and human development in New England," he says. Many of the details of the prospective merger remain unclear. BU refused to comment, but its president, Robert Brown, said in a letter to students and faculty: Over the coming weeks, we will be working with our faculty and our academic and administrative leaders and with the leadership of Wheelock College to shape the vision of our merged academic units and services. We believe the merger will lead to enhancement of our programs, while also maintaining the exemplary mission of Wheelock College. For his part, Chard imagines a new school that would combine the two faculties, continue to train teachers, and bear the Wheelock name. If the plan proceeds, current Wheelock students would be admitted into BU. Many current Wheelock students say they're still processing the news and aren't ready to express an opinion. But many say they're relieved. Like Tim Konowski, a rising senior in Wheelock's special education program, who says he's glad that a school he's loved has a new lease on life. "Not being sure if I was going to be able to take my own family there in the future, because it would be, like, a Stop & Shop at the end of the day — it makes me really happy," Konowski says. It feels like a happy ending to Chard, too, after an uncertain first year on the job. The merger hasn't gone through yet, but Chard hopes that if it does, he'll have done right by Miss Wheelock's vision. "I hope that I'm not doing her a disservice, but really I'm helping her legacy live on." This segment aired on August 31, 2017. 
The merger of Boston University and Wheelock College will create a new school of education that will combine the doctoral programs and research capabilities of BU’s School of Education with the early childhood expertise of Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies, while other Wheelock programs will be joined with appropriate programs at BU. The new college will be called the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development (WCEHD), according to a definitive agreement reached by the parties.
In a letter sent to the BU community this morning, BU President Robert A. Brown says he is pleased that the two schools have reached agreement on the merger. “We believe that BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development will be one of the leading colleges of education in the country, with its focus on clinical practice, scholarship, and community engagement,” Brown says. “The commitment to establish and support this new college will, I believe, appropriately preserve and enhance the great legacy of Wheelock College.” Wheelock and BU will immediately form a Transition Committee charged with advising Jean Morrison, BU provost, on the academic programs that will be offered by the new college. The committee will be chaired by David Chard, Wheelock president, and vice-chaired by Catherine O’Connor, interim dean of BU’s School of Education, and will include four faculty members from Wheelock and four from the BU School of Education. In addition to this committee, Wheelock and BU will put in place a transition implementation structure to ensure that the integration of Wheelock and BU proceeds smoothly and includes input from stakeholders at both institutions. The merger, which is scheduled to take place on June 1, 2018, gives BU ownership of all assets and liabilities of Wheelock College, and combines Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies with BU’s School of Education, establishing a single school, BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development (WCEHD), which will be a centrally budgeted academic unit of Boston University, managed by University leadership and governed by BU’s Board of Trustees. The plan calls for Chard to serve as interim dean of WCEHD from the time of the merger to July 1, 2020, and to report to Morrison. The parties have agreed that immediately following the merger, the Wheelock campus will be used for Boston University academic programs. “There is a great deal of work to be done,” says Brown. “That work will include some difficult decisions about the scope and organization of the combined college and the integration of other programs of Wheelock College into Boston University; however, we are confident that the results will be worth the effort. Our goal is to treat the Wheelock College students who join us in the fall of 2018 and all Wheelock College alumni as part of the Boston University family.” Students currently enrolled at Wheelock will either become students in existing programs at Boston University, will continue in select Wheelock programs that will be newly incorporated into Boston University, or in some cases, will enroll in a transitional program that will allow them to complete their Wheelock course of study. Boston University will honor the tuition rates and financial aid packages of current Wheelock students. They will not have to pay BU rates, although their tuition may increase with inflation. All applicants seeking admission to WCEHD after the merger has been completed will be evaluated in accordance with Boston University admissions requirements, and BU’s tuition, financial aid strategies, and scholarship funds will apply to those students. WCEHD students will be part of BU’s student body, will complete the same general education program, and will have access to the same educational and cocurricular opportunities as other BU students. Requirements for graduate students, including academic and admissions standards and financial aid strategies, will be developed by BU’s Office of the Provost. Alumni of Wheelock College will be treated as alumni of WCEHD and Boston University. Morrison says BU and Wheelock have agreed on a process for determining the titles and responsibilities that will be assumed by currently tenured Wheelock faculty at BU. She says decisions about nontenured faculty will be made on a case-by-case basis and will depend on the needs of relevant academic units at BU. BU and Wheelock have agreed that administrative and operational functions of Wheelock will be merged with corresponding units at BU, and the University will offer Wheelock staff appropriate positions where it is practical to do so. The endowment of Wheelock College will be integrated into that of Boston University and will be managed by the University’s investment office. Income from Wheelock’s endowment will be dedicated to support the Wheelock College of Education and Human Development. All donor restrictions will be honored, and unrestricted funds will also go to support of WCEHD. Administrators from both schools see the pending merger as beneficial to the two institutions with deep and long-standing commitments to public education in the city of Boston. “The combination of the programs of the two schools and the additional resources we plan to deploy gives Boston University the opportunity to commit with renewed energy to our long-standing efforts to promote quality early childhood and K-12 education,” says Brown. “That is the foundation for the prosperity and stability of our city and the nation.” “It’s a very good match,” says Chard, who taught at BU’s School of Education from 1995 to 1997 and was dean of the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at Southern Methodist University from 2007 to 2016. “In addition to the proximity of our campuses, the schools were similar and complementary. Boston University and Wheelock both have a historical focus on the city, and they both have a desire to double down on efforts to support the institutions that are most important to the city: its public schools and social services.” Chard says the merger will create an institution with the resources to bring much needed innovation to public education. “Wheelock really hasn’t had the resources to focus on innovation,” he says. “And this is a time when more of the same in education is not going to get us where we need to be. Education needs new and effective ideas, and this merger will give us an opportunity to be more innovative.” The Wheelock president says he also sees an opportunity for BU to reenergize some legacies of its School of Education, such as its historical focus on special education, while enhancing its focus on college access. BU administrators see similar benefits. They point out that BU’s School of Education excels in clinical education, doctoral education, and research, while Wheelock, which also has a strong presence in clinical education, excels in early childhood education and continuing teacher education. Morrison has high praise for Wheelock’s Field Education program, which places students in schools, hospitals, and nonprofit agencies, guaranteeing that all graduates have hands-on real-world experience, and also for its partnerships that send students into classrooms in Brookline and Boston and provide support for the school districts’ commitments to improve literacy in multilingual urban schools. “Programs like those are consistent with BU’s goals and perspectives,” she says. “Bringing our schools together gives us an opportunity to create a strong, nationally recognized school of education with a local footprint with Boston Public Schools. That’s important to us.” For Wheelock, the merger stands to invigorate a venerable Boston institution whose future was imperiled by the same recent economic developments that plague many small private colleges. Moody’s Investor Services has reported that almost one third of all colleges with fewer than 3,000 students lost money in 2016, up from 20 percent three years earlier. Founded in 1888 with the goal of educating the children of immigrants, Wheelock’s current three schools—the School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies, the School of Arts and Sciences, and the School of Social Work, Leadership, and Youth Advocacy—had a total of 1,157 students in 2016, a drop of 39 percent from a decade earlier. Financial statements show losses in 2015 and 2016 and project a fiscal year 2018 loss of $6 million on an operating budget of about $30 million. “The challenge,” says Chard, “is that small schools like Wheelock have to be all that larger schools are. We have to have all of the same components, but in the past five years the costs of those components have gone up significantly relative to our net tuition.” Merging with a larger school, he says, provides critical cost savings on increasingly expensive central services. In May, the college decided to put its president’s house and one of its residence halls on the market. At the same time, it solicited proposals for mergers from 60 institutions of higher learning across the country. Of the six who responded, Chard says, BU was the best fit, not only for Wheelock, but for education in the city of Boston. 
Boston University’s merger with Wheelock College on June 1, 2018 will see the formation of the new Wheelock College of Education and Human Development, which will cause several changes in regard to the financial, physical and human assets of the two schools.
The net tuition paid by current Wheelock students will remain the same after the merger, according to BU spokesperson Colin Riley. However, tuition may increase with inflation as it would for any other BU student. Financial aid packages for current Wheelock students will remain the same. For the 2017-18 school year, BU students were charged $67,352 in tuition, room and board, and fees, while Wheelock students paid $54,650, the schools’ websites state. Wheelock students’ tuition will increase by the same annual percentage as BU’s, according to Wheelock spokesperson Alexandra Smith. The merger will see that the university’s commitment to educating future educators is maintained throughout and after the process, Riley wrote in an email. The fundamental educational values that the two schools have sought to explore and support will be able to thrive within the new school. “The legacy of Lucy Wheelock – her commitment to early childhood education – and the college that bears her name, Wheelock College will be preserved and continue on through the merger with BU’s School of Education in the proposed Wheelock College of Education & Human Development at Boston University,” Riley wrote. The current plan is to have WCEHD remain on the current Wheelock College campuses in Boston and Brookline, according to Smith. The college will retain the Wheelock education philosophy while incorporating BU’s distinguished post-graduate programs and means of research. “The new college will reflect the current Wheelock College mission to improve the lives of children and families and will combine the doctoral programs and research capabilities of BU’s School of Education with the clinical practice and community focus of Wheelock’s School of Education, Child Life and Family Studies,” Smith wrote in an email. The merger will allow the universities to bestow their respective strengths on the new college, according to Wheelock President David Chard, establishing a school of education that has both a strong vision and the means to achieve it. “BU will get an infusion of assets for [WCEHD], which will include endowments, land, faculty knowledge [and] new programs that they don’t currently have,” Chard said. “For the Wheelock faculty, alumni and students, it means that the mission and identity of Wheelock continues, but under the umbrella of a much stronger institution — both by reputation and financially.” There are several different committees currently working on various aspects of the integration of all academic and administrative components of Wheelock into BU, according to BU President Robert Brown. The committees are finalizing decisions on details concerning the integration of the schools’ academic and administrative programs, Brown wrote in an email to The Daily Free Press. BU and Wheelock also have attorneys who are working together on the documentation and regulation relating to the transfer of assets between the two schools, Chard added. Wheelock’s current assets will be transferred to BU in June, as will all costs and debts, according to Chard, who will serve as the interim dean of WCEHD from next June until 2020. “BU will effectively take over all of our liabilities and our assets,” he said. This includes Wheelock’s property and its endowment of around $50 million. Despite the facilitating committees, there is still much uncertainty in regard to how students, faculty and alumni will be affected by the merger, Chard said, but BU has been working to help communicate the processes to current Wheelock stakeholders — many of whom fund scholarships for current Wheelock students. Chard said he has been meeting with alumni to try to help them understand how they will be integrated with the alumni of BU. “Communication is key,” he said. “We have a transition team that is represented both by BU staff and administration and [those of] Wheelock, and we’re working through every detail of the merger, trying to make sure it’s as positive and progressive as it can be for everyone involved,” said Chard, who was in California to meet with Wheelock alumni during his interview. Several BU students expressed concern about the intentions and effects of the merger and its resulting economic implications. Tatiana Morales, a junior in the College of Communication, said she finds it frustrating that current Wheelock students will get to graduate with a BU degree, even though they are not paying the same tuition cost as current BU students. “[The merger] bothers me because I’m here on scholarships and loans and that’s the only reason I’m here,” Morales said. “It’s kind of annoying in that sense.” Megan Apple, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said she thinks the merger is more of a buyout situation and that it will negatively affect current SED students. “[The merger] is a buyout. It’s definitely for their real estate,” Apple said. “I think it’s going to be a bigger pain for the kids in SED because I don’t really know what they’re going do if they’re going to move the school.” Jake Lee, a CAS sophomore, said although he thinks the merger is a good way for BU to acquire more valuable real estate, but he doesn’t think the way in which it’s being carried out is fair to students of either school. “I honestly feel bad for Wheelock students,” he said. “They signed up for a small campus, small class sizes and all of the advantages that came with that. They didn’t even have a vote. They’re just being forced into a large campus setting now.” Haley Lerner 
Linda Walker sits in a teacher’s office, a cozy affair lined with African wall art, talking about her third-grade daughter, Lilly. “A shy girl on a good day” who’s new to the school, Lilly seems to be overcoming a bumpy start to the year, Linda says. The teacher gently broaches Lilly’s below-par reading scores.
“I’m a little bit concerned they don’t seem to be at benchmark,” the teacher says. “I’m wondering if we might want to provide some intervention.” Linda tilts her head, eyes closed, her body language conveying pensive concern. “You said an intervention? Is it really that serious?” The teacher reassures her. “It might be an opportunity for us to provide a bit of extra support. We want to be able to boost her comfort and independence with reading.” She promises to work with Lilly in small groups of students and perhaps one-on-one, a “seamless” situation designed to avoid embarrassing the child. Linda agrees to read more with Lilly at home to reinforce the in-class help. “End simulation,” says the teacher. Linda and the office, both of them animations on a conference room flat screen at BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, fade to black. The simulator—a tool that will expose aspiring teachers to various situations they’ll encounter on the job—is a blend of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and human input (“Linda” was voiced by an off-site actor in real time; the teacher was actually three Wheelock faculty members rotating in and out of the role). This cutting-edge technology is part of the future of Wheelock—born out of the 2018 merger of BU’s School of Education and Wheelock College. It’s a future that’s to include expanded research efforts, collaborating across disciplines at the University, and broadening the mission beyond teacher preparation and into human development. The simulator, for example, is an initiative of the Earl Center for Learning & Innovation, which was part of the former Wheelock College. The merger also brought more than 30 new faculty to BU as well as an infusion of money. In an important step, at a time when a growing number of smaller colleges are merging with larger ones, BU reserved Wheelock College’s $63 million endowment for the new college, rather than simply absorbing it into the University’s overall endowment. That’s in addition to $7 million the University committed to the school for faculty and research. Those two moves were critical in allowing the newly formed college to launch with a full head of steam. The New WheelockThe new money and faculty brainpower were a boost to a school that already had leapt ahead in the U.S. News & World Report national college and university rankings: in the report’s 2018 scale of the best graduate schools, SED had jumped 9 notches, to 36th in the country. Today, the new Wheelock College is “much stronger than either [predecessor] was separately,” says Mary Churchill, Wheelock associate dean for strategic initiatives and community engagement. An outside expert agrees. Guilbert Hentschke, dean emeritus of USC’s Rossier School of Education, who has studied academic mergers, rates the BU-Wheelock transition a success. One reason, he says, is that rather than swallowing its financially troubled partner, BU retained some of Wheelock College’s identity in the merged school. It gave a leadership role to David Chard, who had been president of Wheelock College and is now dean ad interim of the merged school, and maintained signature programs from that school. We’re not just education anymore. We even toyed with getting rid of Education altogether and just calling it the College of Human Development.” David Chard WHEELOCK COLLEGE DEAN AD INTERIM Bottom line: in an institutionally identifiable way, Hentschke says, “There’s a Wheelock that still exists.” He adds that any school’s reputation in academic circles hinges on a small, star percentage of its faculty, and by bringing over colleagues from the former Wheelock College, BU made a reputation gain for the new Wheelock much more likely. Now, the college is setting its educational priorities. It is in the homestretch of a guide-star process, to conclude early in 2020, which has involved meetings with outside education experts and discussions among Wheelock leaders and faculty. Among the fundamental questions to answer, says Churchill: “Who are we going to serve? What difference are we going to make?” An Emphasis on Human DevelopmentThe discussions about the school’s priorities almost led to a different name for the post-merger school. “We’re not just education anymore,” says Chard. “We even toyed with getting rid of Education altogether and just calling it the College of Human Development.” What’s the difference? Broadly speaking, “education” prepares students to teach at the K–12 or college level. Wheelock isn’t abandoning that work, as that teacher-parent simulator attests. But Churchill says that other investments will be sure to target an expanded emphasis on human development, a catchall for professionals who foster the well-being of children and youth outside of classrooms, and even schools. Careers in human development will place future Wheelock grads in jobs at hospitals, social work offices, and even in police departments and research centers. Emma Talebzadeh (Wheelock’20), a youth justice and advocacy major, has no plans to be a teacher. On a fall day, Talebzadeh and Brighton High School senior Anticious McGhee sit elbow-to-elbow, scanning a laptop for Boston-area plumbing programs that might launch the 19-year-old on his hoped-for career. “Seems like you’re excited about plumbing?” Talebzadeh asks. “Someone’s toilet is always going to have to get fixed,” McGhee replies with unassailable logic. They’re at More Than Words, where towering library shelves are stuffed with 100,000 books, part of its inventory. The Boston nonprofit operates bookstores, both brick-and-mortar and online, and staffs them with at-risk youth to teach them work skills. It also helps them search for jobs, which is why Talebzadeh spent a 200-hour internship here during her senior year. She’s thinking about a career as a juvenile probation officer, perhaps, or in nonprofit work similar to her internship. “I want to explore the field and figure out where I can be most helpful,” she says. Her major taps her interest in both the court system and “understanding where the adolescent brain is developmentally.” In high school, Talebzadeh says, “I had a lot of friends that were going through some rough situations, and I saw that they didn’t really have people there for them…because home wasn’t giving them the right support.” Talebzadeh is not Ann Tobey’s only student pursuing a nonteaching career. “I have two this semester who want to join the police force,” says Tobey, a Wheelock clinical assistant professor and director of the college’s undergraduate Youth Justice & Advocacy program. Students in the program have gone on to pursue law or social work degrees. And yes, some have gone on to work in the public schools. Such is the palette of career options in Youth Justice & Advocacy, which studies adolescents’ development, focusing on their strengths and supporting them in reaching productive, healthy adulthoods. “My students aren’t learning to be teachers per se,” Tobey says. “It’s a little more holistic than just a school focus. Actually, a lot more holistic.” Degrees with this flexibility are “really more reflective of what we think undergrads are looking for today,” Chard says. “They’re not entering their freshman year thinking, I want to be a teacher or I want to be a counselor. They know they want to work with people, but they don’t know in what capacity.” That openness to nonteaching jobs extends to graduate students, who are increasingly an important part of Wheelock’s student body. For fall 2019, BU Wheelock welcomed just 45 freshmen; many who pursue teaching careers will probably stay to get their master’s degree, a credential increasingly demanded by schools, Chard says. Tobey’s youth justice program is part of Wheelock’s counseling psychology and applied human development department, the school’s second largest. Chaired by Melissa Holt, a seven-year veteran of SED and a Wheelock associate professor, the department sits “outside of traditional teacher training,” Holt says. One of its graduate programs prepares students for a non-teaching career introduced decades ago by Wheelock College: child life specialist, a professional who helps children cope with the stresses and fears of hospital stays. Wheelock created the discipline in the 1960s; today, academic research, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and U.S. News rankings of hospitals support its importance. “There are 235 internships in the United States,” Chard says, “and we have over a third of them—because we founded the profession.” Expanding ResearchBU is a world-class research university—why shouldn’t its education and human development college be a citadel of research into the best practices and technologies in those fields? Under Hardin Coleman, dean of SED from 2008 to 2017, SED’s climb up the U.S. News rankings was largely based on a near tripling of research grants, awarded to faculty recruited by Coleman and the school. Building on that past, Chard envisions the possible hiring of a data scientist who would collaborate with the University’s planned Center for Computing & Data Sciences. That, he says, would address a crying need in Wheelock’s backyard: the commonwealth of Massachusetts has collected school data for years, but doesn’t have the resources to use it to analyze things like best teacher training practices. Chard notes that Wheelock already dips a toe in the online data sciences pond with the lexical database for American Sign Language developed by Naomi Caselli, a Wheelock assistant professor of deaf studies. The parent-teacher simulator could be used as a research tool as well. “I would love to incorporate it into my classrooms,” says Rebekah Louis, a Wheelock lecturer and faculty director of clinical education, “and then conduct a research study alongside that” to see how effectively the simulator trains budding teachers. “I think there are a lot of avenues we could explore that haven’t been explored, like how this is being used to train program supervisors,” who oversee teacher trainees in schools. Wheelock could also deploy it among alumni who are teachers, she says, to provide them with professional development. But Teaching Still MattersNo college of education and human development run by Chard, a former teacher, would ignore the first half of that description. One of the college’s priorities likely will be expanding Wheelock’s work with Boston educators and students, says Chard. BU’s School of Education did work in Boston, he says, but many connections with city schools were forged by individual faculty rather than by the institution-wide initiative that Wheelock brings to the task. The University is making the cost of graduate education more affordable for Boston public school educators, announcing in December that Wheelock is discounting the cost of certain programs for the professionals. In addition, one of the legacies from the former Wheelock College, the Aspire Institute, provides professional development to Boston educators “in the broadest definition” of that term, says Kenann McKenzie, the institute’s director and an adjunct assistant professor of education leadership and policy studies. One Aspire mentorship program pairs retired educators with current teachers. Laura Vincent is one of the 2019–20 academic year’s 18 mentees. A third- through fifth-grade special education teacher at Boston’s Samuel Adams Elementary School, she serves mostly autistic students, “increasing independence in behavior and academics,” she says. One of Vincent’s students struggles with reading and sounding out words, and her Aspire mentor, Lisa Besen, is helping her draft useful lessons and finding materials for the student. Besen brings more than three decades as a special educator and reading specialist for students with dyslexia and other learning disabilities. My students aren’t learning to be teachers per se. It’s a little more holistic than just a school focus. Actually, a lot more holistic.” Ann Tobey A WHEELOCK CLINICAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR AND DIRECTOR OF THE COLLEGE’S UNDERGRADUATE YOUTH JUSTICE & ADVOCACY PROGRAM“This is my second year teaching special education,” says Vincent, who previously taught general fourth grade in another district and who was wait-listed for the mentorship program last year. Aspire has helped her learn “more about how to better support my struggling readers,” she says. And Besen “has helped me with planning and implementing lessons to meet those specific reading skills, as well as modify the general education curriculum.” For Besen, mentoring for a second year through Aspire, the program taps a passion for helping new teachers that developed after she retired from teaching and began supervising student teachers. She says Vincent’s “curiosity and continual desire to improve her teaching is energizing and inspirational.” Being a Thought LeaderSituated in the birthplace of the nation’s public schools, Wheelock can leverage its location by aiming research and teaching at problems in its backyard, says Kevin Kruger, president of the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators. Kruger urged this think-locally strategy as a member of Wheelock’s guide-star panels of outside experts in fall 2019. “You have the opportunity to be a thought leader in this area,” he told faculty and administrators in the audience. “You’re in a technological innovation hub here in Boston.” Kruger noted that while other schools are undertaking self-reflection analogous to the guide-star process, Wheelock “can do this without the constraints of legacy- and low-performing program offerings.” The merger, he says, “was not simply about absorbing students and forcing existing academic programs into the BU academic portfolio.” The college’s emphasis on human development reflects what the best colleges of education are doing, and “would allow a breadth of programs that meet the evolving needs” of the workforce. Churchill says the institutions that merged to create Wheelock enjoy high regard among Beantown educators and human development professionals alike. “Both brands are very, very strong,” she says. “Everyone knows BU, right? But I am struck, again and again, with how the community loves [the former] Wheelock.” |
BU, Wheelock public reactions:
The Boston University Wheelock College of Education and Human Development is launching a “Building Bridges” initiative this month to foster community among the faculty and staff of the newly merged Wheelock College and BU School of Education campuses.
The program, created by former SED professor Swati Kshama Rani and former Wheelock College professor Terry Meier, pairs up staff and faculty members with offices in different buildings at either the Charles River or the Fenway campus.
“A couple things happen in a merger,” Rani said. “One is that people don’t know one another, and then on top of people not knowing one another they’re not all in the same building.”
There are 40 people participating in the program, Rani said. Funds for staff pairs to travel off campus together will be provided by Wheelock Dean ad interim David Chard.
According to Rani, the pairs will meet regularly over the course of the four-month program to get to know one another. In May, at the end of the four months, partners will share what they learned about each other during a spring celebration.
Rani said the inspiration for the program came after considering how the merged schools could “build a bridge” between their varying approaches to teaching education. Although there are gatherings within WED, Rani said this program will build a more personal connection.
“We’ve had a lot of gatherings — it’s not that we don’t — but they end up just feeling like meetings and agendas and PowerPoint and not necessarily just getting to know another person as a human being,” she said.
Rani said that one of the aspects of the program she’s most proud of is the fact that pairings are made up of both faculty and staff members.
“We really encourage partnerships between a faculty member and a staff member because it enhances the idea of equity, diversity and inclusion, which is my passion,” she said. “There’s a staff member that I work with, and just because I’m a professor … that doesn’t mean that getting to know that person isn’t important.”
Rani said a lot of credit for instituting the program goes to Chard for funding it with his own funds.
“When I turned [the proposal] in originally I think it wasn’t scholarly enough,” Rani said. “It wasn’t about the next research coming out or something, and then [Chard] got ahold of it and read it, and he was like, ‘No, we really need something like this to build culture.’”
Rani said she hopes that the program makes a difference in the WED community and becomes a tradition to carry on in future years.
Meier, who is Rani’s faculty partner for the program, said that the Building Bridges initiative provides an important opportunity for faculty and staff to get to know each other.
“In order to become a community that really works together, it’s really important to create a common culture and for people in the two schools to really get to know each other on a totally human level,” Meier said.
Samuel O’Konski, a freshman in the College of Communication, said he thinks that having faculty become closer will create a more positive work environment.
“I think that if the teachers have a friend that they can talk to in the middle of the day, I feel like they’ll be in a better mood,” O’Konski said.
Tyler Campbell, a freshman in the College of General Studies, said that he thinks the program will encourage teachers to engage in greater communication.
“Those teachers can discuss and manage workloads and everything like that,” Campbell said. “Yeah, it would be a good idea for professors to collaborate a little bit more.”
Yazan Aryan, a freshman in the Questrom School of Business, said he thinks this will give Wheelock an opportunity to maintain its small campus appeal within BU’s large campus.
“They have a really unique ability to provide that experience you get at a huge university like Boston University — all the different opportunities you can get being in a huge community, all of that,” Aryan said. “But at the same time, they can still hold onto their values that a small liberal arts college has.”
The program, created by former SED professor Swati Kshama Rani and former Wheelock College professor Terry Meier, pairs up staff and faculty members with offices in different buildings at either the Charles River or the Fenway campus.
“A couple things happen in a merger,” Rani said. “One is that people don’t know one another, and then on top of people not knowing one another they’re not all in the same building.”
There are 40 people participating in the program, Rani said. Funds for staff pairs to travel off campus together will be provided by Wheelock Dean ad interim David Chard.
According to Rani, the pairs will meet regularly over the course of the four-month program to get to know one another. In May, at the end of the four months, partners will share what they learned about each other during a spring celebration.
Rani said the inspiration for the program came after considering how the merged schools could “build a bridge” between their varying approaches to teaching education. Although there are gatherings within WED, Rani said this program will build a more personal connection.
“We’ve had a lot of gatherings — it’s not that we don’t — but they end up just feeling like meetings and agendas and PowerPoint and not necessarily just getting to know another person as a human being,” she said.
Rani said that one of the aspects of the program she’s most proud of is the fact that pairings are made up of both faculty and staff members.
“We really encourage partnerships between a faculty member and a staff member because it enhances the idea of equity, diversity and inclusion, which is my passion,” she said. “There’s a staff member that I work with, and just because I’m a professor … that doesn’t mean that getting to know that person isn’t important.”
Rani said a lot of credit for instituting the program goes to Chard for funding it with his own funds.
“When I turned [the proposal] in originally I think it wasn’t scholarly enough,” Rani said. “It wasn’t about the next research coming out or something, and then [Chard] got ahold of it and read it, and he was like, ‘No, we really need something like this to build culture.’”
Rani said she hopes that the program makes a difference in the WED community and becomes a tradition to carry on in future years.
Meier, who is Rani’s faculty partner for the program, said that the Building Bridges initiative provides an important opportunity for faculty and staff to get to know each other.
“In order to become a community that really works together, it’s really important to create a common culture and for people in the two schools to really get to know each other on a totally human level,” Meier said.
Samuel O’Konski, a freshman in the College of Communication, said he thinks that having faculty become closer will create a more positive work environment.
“I think that if the teachers have a friend that they can talk to in the middle of the day, I feel like they’ll be in a better mood,” O’Konski said.
Tyler Campbell, a freshman in the College of General Studies, said that he thinks the program will encourage teachers to engage in greater communication.
“Those teachers can discuss and manage workloads and everything like that,” Campbell said. “Yeah, it would be a good idea for professors to collaborate a little bit more.”
Yazan Aryan, a freshman in the Questrom School of Business, said he thinks this will give Wheelock an opportunity to maintain its small campus appeal within BU’s large campus.
“They have a really unique ability to provide that experience you get at a huge university like Boston University — all the different opportunities you can get being in a huge community, all of that,” Aryan said. “But at the same time, they can still hold onto their values that a small liberal arts college has.”