Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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Mrs. E.J. Mudd, wife of television journalist Roger Mudd, Rev. Thomas J. Gibbons. S.J., Principal of Boston College High School, is begins her first year on the Board at the December 4 one of 11 Jesuits who serve on the Board of Trustees. meeting. While some of the Board members have served a number of terms, the Board is far from being a static entity. Each year new Trustees move onto the Board as others rotate off. Individuals selected for membership do not fit any stereotypical pattern of age, financial or social status. Each Trustee has a background or specific talent which the Board determines it would like to draw upon in order to provide an expertise that will aid the University in looking at major undertakings. For example, “When it was clear that the University would be going through a lot of building, we looked at people who could understand the inner workings,’’ noted Dwyer. But the position of a Trustee is not one of all work. Many of the Board members attend various social and athletic events throughout the year, as well as meeting with students and others of the University community, in both personal engagements and Trustee meetings. The role a Trustee plays for the University is just as important as the role the University plays for the Trustee. As one Trustee, just before the full Board meeting in December, commented: “The men and women who come here could be at other board meetings earning several thousands of dollars, but they come here because it means much more to them.” McElwee echoes this thought, “The most valuable thing in my life is personal time and 1 give my personal time to causes with great reservation.” In being a Trustee, he remarks, “I am trying in some form or other, as I guess many Trustees who are Alumni are, to pay a dividend or at least repay, in part, what the school has given me; and hope that I can in turn help the University to grow in a way that will make it possible for students in the future to have the same kind of very positive life experiences that I’ve been able to have.” Wayne Budd, of the Boston law firm Budd, Reilly and Wiley, is in his second year on the Board and, as Chairman of the Student Life subcommittee, he has seen a much more active participation on the Board as a result of the work by Margaret A. Dwyer, University Vice-President and Assistant to the President. students to gain a student trustee. “I have a much greater appreciation of B.C. than when I was here as an undergraduate or at the law school. 1 have come to work with outstanding people on and off the Board; and I have a lot of respect for all of them,” he commented. Tim Shea, the student chairman of the Coalition for a Student Trustee, feels the Board is excellent. “Most were very receptive to the arguments presented and many took the time out to meet with Coalition members individually and ask them questions. They are more active than some boards and they have a lot more dedication than one might expect from a board of trustees.” So, one hundred and nineteen years have passed since the incorporation of Boston College was placed in the hands of John McElroy, Edward Welch. John Bapst, James Clark, and Charles Stonestreet, but their 39 successors — the present Board of Trustees — carry on the same tireless and determined fight, guiding, overseeing, and gaining new experiences from an ever enlarged, modem day University. All this done for little compensation other than the knowledge that they are helping to perpetuate that institution known as “the Boston College”. by Peter Van Hecke 1 j 25

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Overseeing the Boston College Dr. An Wang, Chairman of the Board and President, Wang Laboratories, Inc. “As spring burst upon the land in April of 1863, a war weary nation waited expectantly for news of Grant’s offensive against Vicksburg and of Lee’s forthcoming campaign in Pennsylvania. With all eyes turned to these historic events on the national scene, few even in Massachusetts were aware of an important event taking place in the state capitol.” On April 1, 1863, Governor John Albion Andrews signed the Charter entitled “An Act to Incorporate the Trustees of the Boston College,” and the first trustees, “a handful of hardy Jesuits who had fought tirelessly and determinedly to bring Catholic education to the people of Boston,” founded what would become the largest Catholic university in the nation. One hundred and nineteen years have passed since that April 1, 1863, and the role of today’s trustee has evolved tremendously since the day when Boston College was only a single building in the South End. The Board of Trustees is rarely shown as the group of people who interact with students and administrators to carry on the functions of the University. Rather, for the past ten years or so, the prime image of the Trustees has been one of “that group of people who meet each February to raise the tuition.” But this year, with the Board having met with the Coalition for a Student Trustee, and with them having lowered the administration’s proposed tuition and board increases, the image of the “high powered businessman” Trustee is eroding. The reality of the role of a Trustee is one which reaches deeply into their lives and has a profound effect upon them, as well as, the University community. Today’s Board numbers 39 men and women drawn from various vocations, backgrounds and geographical locations, with nearly a third of them being members of the Society of Jesus. “This is a group of very talented and committed individuals,” said Margaret A. Dwyer, “a Frank B. Campanella, University Executive Vice President with William F. Connell, Chairman of the Board and President, Ogden Food Service, and Chairman of the Board of Trustees. Board of distinguished people whose contribution to the University make it function.” Dwyer, University Vice-President and Assistant to the President, has worked with the Board of Trustees since coming to Boston College in 1972. “Basically, their function is to be constantly evaluating and listening, really supervising the institution,” Dwyer explains. The responsibilities of the Board of Trustees run the gamut from selection and evaluation of the University President and officers, to deciding on major policy changes, be they academic or financial, to deciding upon the University budget and planning for the long range stability John G. McElwee, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co., and Rev. J. Donald Monan, S.J., University President. and viability of the University. University President J. Donald Monan, S.J., himself a member of the Board, sees their function as one more akin to supervisors. “The trustees oversee. They listen, they evaluate, they advise you to go in a different direction. We are constantly reporting to them and providing information for them,” noted Father Monan. But Boston College’s Board of Trustees is a far cry from the picture often painted of similar institution overseers, that being a group of old, established, highpowered businessmen, unsympathetic to the plight and needs of students. Of the 39 members on the Board, over two thirds hold undergraduate or graduate degrees from Boston College, while some hold both. Well over half of the current Trustees either have children enrolled here or have had them enrolled in the past, and contrary to a popular myth, they pay the full price for tuition. John G. McElwee, Chief Executive Officer of John Hancock Life Insurance, feels “there is a stereotype which, in a lot of ways, is unfortunate. The stereotype often takes the form such as we are personal friends of the President or someone in the upper part of the administration; or that we are people who have a thirst and a need for status or recognition; or that we are in one way or another acceptable in the sense that we would be rubber stamps. I don’t know that one can ever break the myth, but I have found as a practical matter in 36 years of business experience, that the education that I received there was a very valuable one and I am glad to be able to keep in touch with the University as a Trustee.”

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Green Recognizes Need for Women and Minority Consciousness Dean Carol Hurd Green began her association with the University community in the 1960’s, as a faculty member in the English Department and later in the History Department. Leaving the school in 1973, she took a teaching position at the former Newton College until 1975 when she left the education field for a short time to pursue her own interests. During this time, she served as co-editor of a biographical encyclopedia of famous women, Notable American Women: The Modern Period. After four years of diligent work on this book, Green felt ready for a new challenge. Now, she has returned to campus as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, successor to John L. Harrison. Green remarks that she sees very little change in Arts and Sciences since she was last here in 1970. A firm supporter of liberal arts education, she looks upon it as a learning experience in “how to know things, and how to learn.” She feels that there has been a loss of social consciousness on college campuses as a whole, and she regrets the passage of a general interest in “seeing education work for others.” Green notes that there is no more of the “let’s change the world” attitude that prevailed in the sixties, and she recognizes a new generation of students who are conscious of how the declining job market and rising inflation rates will affect their futures. Calling herself “someone with feminist credentials,” Green feels there is a lack of consciousness concerning women and minorities on campus. Involving herself specifically in the Women’s Study program, as well as the Black Studies program, she would like to see courses on women and minorities come in from the periphery of the college curriculum and be recognized as a vital part of the Arts and Sciences program. Dean Green is comfortable in her new position as Associate Dean. She says that she is continually “encouraged to follow my own interests”, which are mainly her involvements in the women and minority programs on campus. In comparing her present administrative position with her former faculty standing, she says that she is now more aware of the different programs that exist in the school, and that she has a better perspective on the College of Arts and Sciences as a whole, rather than a series of individual departments. Stressing that the deans are not far removed from the academic life of the school, Green would like to dispel the image of the administration as being out of touch with the students. She emphasizes that her job as an Associate Dean is to help students academically, and to be aware of happenings in the academic aspect of the university. Dean Green presently is writing a book on women in the 1960’s, and while she feels it is important to follow her own specific interests, she also sees herself as someone “who continues to be a scholar,” needing to stay involved in the academic activities of the college of Arts and Sciences. As an academic Dean, Green has dedicated herself to continually working toward the school’s improvement, and, through that, her own improvement as well. Associate Dean Carol Hurd Green 26