The School of Medicine’s MobileLab, an advanced laboratory on wheels that has been around since 1998, is one example of the many ways Boston University contributes to the Boston community. The MobileLab is now being used at various high schools in Boston to open up the window of science to students not sure of what they want to do once they graduate.
Students come on board the MobileLab and conduct various experiments that they would not be able to conduct in their schools’ facilities, and it has been well-received among both students and educators.
The MobileLab is just one example of how the university contributes to this city, worth reflecting on now that certain city councilors have blamed BU for depriving the city of tax money and for its students disrupting residents during what they have called uncontrollable rioting.
THE EVERGREEN PROGRAM
BU has also contributed to the local community by establishing a program that caters to elderly people interested in taking college-level courses, called the Evergreen Program. It has become popular among locals who have retired and who want to enrich their knowledge by enrolling into a class without having to take rigorous tests and go through the same application process as high-school seniors.
The program attracts about 200 to 300 senior citizens each semester, at a cost of only $50 per class. And it has been open to seniors for over 25 years, initially only to people living in the Allston-Brighton area, but now catering to anyone over the age of 58 regardless of where they live. It is a great benefit to senior citizens who live among the overwhelming population of college students and it serves as a way to better integrate them into the community, by turning them into students as well.
BU-CHELSEA PARTNERSHIP
Another way BU benefits its community is through it partnership with Chelsea Public Schools, which since February has also offered free dental care through the School of Dental Medicine to all students in the Chelsea school district. State legislators have praised the effort by BU administrators to continue the partnership, and plan to continue it until at least 2008.
According to a 2003 legislative report, average daily attendance at the Williams School, a middle school in the Chelsea district, has improved for the second year in a row, a tenth of a percentage point away from the target of 95 percent attendance ever since BU gained administrative authority over the school system.
Chelsea Superintendent Irene Cornish told The Daily Free Press in November 2003 that the BU-Chelsea partnership is “a commitment beyond what any other university has done for the city all over.”
The Early Learning Center, a school for 1,000 three- to six-year-old children in the Chelsea school district, offers services such as counseling and speech pathology, and teaches students to read. It is part of BU administrators’ vision that contributing to the local community is an integral part to their maintaining a good relationship with the city.
To say that the sporadic problems caused by students make it necessary for BU to pay more in tax money is to refuse to acknowledge that BU already contributes to improving this city in a number of different ways. And BU’s tremendous commitment to its community, in these and several other ways, should not be foolishly discredited.
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