Boston University commemorated the anniversaries of the College of Communication and College of Engineering Friday through Sunday, bringing students, alumni and professors together to discuss the legacies of both schools and participate in collaborative sessions.
COM honored its 100-year anniversary with presentations from alumni Denise Albert, Cynthia Cordes, Jay Roewe and Travis Roy, and professors Richard Lehr and Mitchell Zuckoff. The college also offered tours of its facilities, icebreaker activities to acquaint students with alumni and served free ice cream on the COM Lawn.
“It was a bold decision in 1914 to offer courses in communication as something worthy of study,” COM Dean Thomas Fiedler said to a crowd of more than 50 students and alumni. “Storytelling is the basis of what we do, and the speakers here are here to demonstrate the craft.”
Nicole Sagullo, a first-year graduate student in COM who works for the school’s advertising department, said through the presentations, termed “COM Talks,” she learned how each speaker’s career progressed.
“For the 100th anniversary, COM must have anticipated the future starting in 1914 when there was something special about communication,” she said. “The school has maintained its values, and they’ve been around, as I’ve seen through what people [alumni] have done.”
Class of 1999 COM graduate Pammy Salmon, who now works in film and television, said she found her passion for writing through experiences shared with her professors.
“I learned screenwriting with Professor Scott Thompson, who inspired and taught me to write,” she said. “…COM has come so far. All the renovations are inside with the equipment, studio and technology. It’s much better compared to what we had.”
ENG alumni, students and faculty rooted in areas ranging from Bolivia to Connecticut celebrated the school’s 50th anniversary in BU’s Photonics Center Friday with the Student-Alumni Team Design Challenge, an event that R. Glynn Holt, associate professor of engineering, said was “all about the fun.”
The hour-long competition pitted teams of one ENG student, one ENG faculty member and several ENG alumni per table against one another in a race to see which department within ENG would be able to create a device to a carry a small BU-themed stuffed animal from one end of a long table to the other. About 100 other attendees spectated from their seats and offered help when necessary.
“What we’re here to do right now is to play around, basically,” Holt said.
Materials included popsicle sticks, batteries, string, wood pieces, a hot glue gun, duct tape and care packages carrying materials like an electric toy racecar kit.
Class of 1986 ENG graduate Victor Almeida, a business analyst working with cloud-based software, said he felt a similar energy on campus as he did when studying at BU.
“I wanted to connect with some of my old professors,” he said. “I did something similar to this [challenge] when I was a student here with my professor. He used to organize a small team to go compete at a Tufts [University] design competition.”
After several rounds of prototype test-runs and both failed and successful attempts, the Department of Biomedical Engineering team came out victorious. BME was not only the first team to make a successful, accurate attempt, but they also created a track to ensure their invention got to its destination.
Cody Yardley, a sophomore in ENG, said the workshop offered a look into how she may eventually work as she pursues engineering professionally.
“I wanted to see how people work in teams and how they work with a time and a certain number of materials to get to a final goal,” she said. “I want to do aerospace engineering. I want to do work on rockets, and on there, you only have a certain amount of space and a certain number of things that can go up.”
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