Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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and strengthened in value. The College sought new and excellent teachers, while the tendency toward inbreeding was eliminated. We can recognize the present Super Committee and its goals as stemming from this incentive to furnish constructive criticism and better our academic life. The two most conservative elements on campus, the Departments of Theology and Philosophy, were reformed under the inspired leadership of Reverends William Leo- nard and Joseph Flanagan, S.J. Dr. David Neiman, a Jewish rabbi. Dr. Mary Daly, a lay woman, and Dr. Her- mann Schussler, a Lutheran minister, were added to the Theology faculty. The Philosophy Department now offers such courses as Zen Buddhism, Arabian Philosophy, and Contemporary Atheism. The University Catalogue listsa great number of courses that were not presented just four years ago. In that short span of time, the Speech Department, under Dr. John Lawton, has evolved from virtual nonexistence into one of the strongest and most active departments on campus. 19

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In the past four years, Boston College has undergone a major and far reaching academic evolution. Admittedly, progress was made in previous years, but it came neither as swiftly nor as sweepingly as the changes that have been recently witnessed. This evolution has created ef- fective structures in which the momentum of progress will be maintained far into the future, bringing new im- provements to make Boston College more vital and more modern than ever before. The Centennial Celebration four years ago marked the end of a century of birth and growth, and promised greater things for the years to come. Now a mature and estab- lished institution turned from a nostalgic remembrance of things past to a dynamic determination to create an even better university. The first step toward creative evo- lution was taken by the College of Arts and Sciences with the initiation of its self-study program. This internal criti- cism, which bettered its curriculum and revitalized its philosophy of education, was soon seen to produce sig- nificant results. Core courses were reduced in number | r»F ' « ir o,j « pr«yr .;r -W| MH M V- »T a ' ' r ' ] K 18

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with courses in theater arts, group dynamics, and radio and television. In 1963 the School of Education intro- duced a Special Education major designed to train stu- dents for the teaching of the mentally retarded child. In Arts and Sciences, The Honors Program initiated and then expanded Modern Man: The Cultural Tradition, a course which cut across departmental lines and fulfilled core requirements. In the fall of 1965, a special group of commuting stu- dents arrived at Boston College — the scholastics from Weston College. This was a result of Weston ' s own self- study which decided that their future priests would bene- fit from the more diverse academic potential available at B.C. These young men have been very successfully assimilated into the academic community and their in- tellectual curiosity clearly re-emphasizes the type of stu- dents that now populate the Heights. The quality of the student attracted and accepted by Boston College has risen significantly in recent years, and consequently, this new student has helped in the forma- 20