PUBLISHED BY THE BOSTON COLLEGE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
SEPTEMBER 17, 2026 VOL. 34 NO. 2
New Program to Provide Innovative Interschool Learning Opportunities Bridge Program brings together humanities, management, sciences BY JACK DUNN ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT FOR UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
In Community
photos by caitlin cunningham
Boston College held its annual Mass of the Holy Spirit—celebrated by University President John T. Butler, S.J. (right)—last Thursday in the Plaza at O’Neill Library, one of several large-scale events that took place at the Heights during the first half of September. See pages 6 and 8.
‘Awakening Psychology’s Moral Imagination’
$4.3m Grant Will Strengthen Psychological Humanities at BC BY THE OFFICE OF UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
A three-year, $4.3 million grant from the Kern Family Foundation will establish a major hub for the psychological humanities at Boston College, further solidifying the University’s position as the thought leader and principal mover in this space. Specifically, the grant will support a multi-tiered project to help address the current mental health crisis facing the nation. Titled “Awakening Psychology’s Moral Imagination” and housed within BC’s Center for the Psychological Humanities and Ethics (CPHE), the project seeks to bring psychology back into robust conversation with the humanities, and, by doing so, increase the discipline’s capacity to examine the deeper questions and ethical dilemmas at the heart of human existence. In the last century, the empirical and naturalistic side of psychology has risen in prominence and has yielded major advances, project administrators say. However, this rapid growth has at times been accompanied by a diminished appreciation of the more humanistic and ethical dimensions of human experience, an unintended result of psychology’s separation from phi-
losophy, theology, and other branches of the humanities. This initiative, administrators say, is a response to the current moment of cultural crisis when demand for mental health treatment is at an all-time high and troubling mental health trends persist, leaving hospitals overwhelmed, non-clinicians and AI tools thrust into counseling roles, and reports of despair and isolation climbing. “At a time characterized by profound anxiety and despair, it is imperative for the field of psychology, designed to care for sufferers and advance their well-being, to take up the moral, existential, and perennial questions at the core of life in a serious and meaningful way,” said CPHE Executive Director David Goodman, dean of BC’s Woods College of Advancing Studies and a licensed psychologist. “We need psychology to be the very best version of itself—a version attentive to the whole person, including the spiritual and ethical dimensions of our lives.” The project will directly address this aim by advocating for a morally rich, humanistic discipline that embeds character, virtue, and wonder into psychological training and practice, and by providing related pro-
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Building off of its success in interschool and interdisciplinary collaboration, Boston College is launching a new academic initiative called the Bridge Program, in which students, known as Bridge Scholars, will probe the world’s great ideas, problems, and opportunities in custom-designed courses and co-curricular experiences that incorporate the perspectives of the humanities, management, and the sciences. The Bridge Program is open to BC undergraduates combining a concentration or minor in the Carroll School of Management with a major or minor in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, the Lynch School of Education and Human Development, or the Connell School of Nursing. Beginning this fall, sophomores who opt into the Bridge Program will attend a series of lectures, meetings, and other events across campus, maintaining a portfolio in which they will reflect on their experiences. In the spring semester, juniors interested in the Bridge Program will take a required course taught by faculty members Jenna Tonn (Engineering) or Michael Smith (Business Law and Society) that will focus on developing the wisdom and habits of mind needed to successfully navigate technological and social disruptions, culminating in a module and final project on artificial intelligence. Bess Rouse (Management and Organization) will serve as an inaugural Bridge Fellow and Michael Glass (History) will offer the junior course in fall 2027; the pair also helped to design the course. In the course, students will be introduced to methods and perspectives offered by different disciplines in the humanities, management, and sciences and will practice combining them in collaborative teams to develop skills and reflective practices that will help them make wise and informed decisions throughout their careers.
Those juniors will next year become the first Bridge Scholar seniors, when they will take either a new capstone interdisciplinary seminar or a project-based course. Beginning with the 2027-2028 academic year, the program will span the sophomore, junior, and senior years. Graduating Bridge Program students will be presented with a medal to be worn at Commencement, and their transcripts will recognize them as Bridge Scholars. They and their families will also be invited to a Commencement Weekend reception. This integrated and formative-based approach to learning makes Boston College an outlier in higher education, said Robert L. and Judith T. Winston Provost and Dean of Faculties David Quigley. “The modern university in many ways is organized to mitigate against such interschool collaboration,” said Quigley. “At most great universities, almost by design, the architecture is meant to prevent this kind of back and forth among students.” And yet, he continued, embracing the cross-pollination of disciplines is at the center of student formation, and of BC itself. “This process of designing the Bridge Program and now rolling it out is in service of the larger mission and vision of Boston College as a distinctive liberal arts university committed to formative education.” In 2017, Boston College began experimenting with a new approach to classroom learning and student formation that actively encouraged students to take courses outside of their respective undergraduate schools within BC. Students in the Carroll
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INSIDE 2 Around Campus
Pops on the Heights; Clough School fall events.
3 Panel Discussion
BC to host forum on Lindsay Clancy murder case.
8 BC Arts
2013 alum Patrick Lazour is this year’s Monan Professor in Theatre Arts.