MARCH 25, 2021 VOL. 28 NO., 12
PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON COLLEGE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
Mr. Walsh Goes to Washington
INSIDE 3x Diversity Headline & Inclusion Summit Registration begins April 5 for this xxxxx. year’s event, taking place May 26.
x Headline 4 Campus School History xxx.
A new book celebrates the school’s x50th Headline anniversary. xxxxx.
8 Burns Scholar
Fearghal McGarry to give talk on interwar Ireland and modernity.
Trustees Set 2021-22 Tuition The Board of Trustees has set undergraduate tuition for the 2021-2022 academic year at $60,530, as part of a 2.5 percent increase in tuition, fees, room and board, bringing the overall annual cost of attendance at Boston College to $77,308. To maintain the University’s commitment to providing access to students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, the trustees voted to increase need-based undergraduate financial aid by 2.98 percent, or $6 million, to a total of $151 million. Boston College remains one of only 20 private universities in the United States that is need-blind in admissions and meets the full-demonstrated need of all undergraduate students. Overall, more than 67 percent of Boston College undergraduates receive financial aid, with the average need-based financial aid package projected to exceed $49,000 in 2021-2022. The Board of Trustees also set tuition
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BC alum is confirmed as U.S. Secretary of Labor for Biden administration BY PATRICIA DELANEY SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
On Monday, Boston College alumnus Martin J. Walsh, who had served as the 54th mayor of the City of Boston since 2014, was confirmed by the United States Senate in a bipartisan vote as U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Joseph R. Biden. A graduate of the Woods College of Advancing Studies, Walsh becomes the third University alumnus to serve in the U.S. Cabinet in recent years: BC Law School alumnus John F. Kerry J.D. ’76 was secretary of state during the Obama administration, while Ernest Moniz ’66, a graduate of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, was secretary of energy. Kerry now holds a newly-created cabinetlevel position as special presidential envoy for climate under Biden. In his new role, Walsh will head the
Martin J. Walsh: “The word ‘labor’ means everything to me.”
department entrusted with promoting the welfare of the nation’s wage earners, job seekers, and retirees, a charge that encompasses improving working conditions, advancing opportunities for profitable employment, assuring work-related benefits and rights, and administering federal regulations that affect everything from minimum wage and overtime pay to workplace safety. He will have leadership
still from video by john walsh
responsibility for both policy and operations and will oversee some 900 employees in the department’s national headquarters and six regional offices. A lifelong champion of working people and the first union member to serve as labor secretary in nearly half a century, Walsh has “worked tirelessly to rebuild the middle class, create a more inclusive, resil-
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BCSSW Initiative Focuses on Trauma Impact BY SEAN SMITH CHRONICLE EDITOR
The Boston College School of Social Work has launched a multifaceted initiative that organizers say will enable the school to become a national thought leader in addressing the impact of trauma on individuals, families, and communities. Launched in 2019, the Trauma Integration Initiative (TII) incorporates teaching, fieldwork, and research into a holistic program that not only prepares BCSSW students to help their clients deal with trauma, but to guard themselves against its effects. Keeping with BC’s Jesuit, Catholic tradition, the TII also advances a formational element to guide students in
contemplating the challenges of traumainformed social work. At a time when, according to studies, 85 percent of social workers routinely treat clients with a traumatic condition, and one in seven social workers themselves develop post-traumatic stress disorders, the TII organizers say a fully integrated traumainformed perspective is needed for social work education. The TII is one of the school’s strategic priorities, an indication of its level of commitment to the initiative. To understand the necessity for the initiative, BCSSW Professor and TII cofounder Scott Easton said, it’s important to understand what trauma is and how it can affect lives. “To a certain degree, ‘trauma’ has be-
come a buzzword in popular culture,” he said. “A working definition of trauma is an event or condition that is physically or emotionally harmful, causes significant distress and suffering, and overwhelms individuals, families, or community coping resources. “Trauma can occur from a single event, a series of events, or an ongoing, pervasive, environmental cause—living in a home where abuse takes place, or in a community affected by long-term poverty or racial injustice. What’s more, two people can experience trauma in different ways; it may be apparent in one person, hardly at all in another. “So it’s incumbent upon social workers
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I hope that you, too, continue hearing the voices of your mentors, long after you’ve left the Heights, like the bell atop Gasson tolling across the distance of your lives. – assoc. prof. michael serazio (communication), page 3