senior thesis boston college

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Q. How do I find a Boston College thesis or dissertation?

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Answered By: Steve Runge Last Updated: Feb 02, 2018     Views: 4305

Recent (post-2008) Boston College undergraduate honors theses  and graduate theses and dissertations are in the eScholarship archives.

You can also check to see if the thesis or dissertation you need is online via   ProQuest Dissertations & Theses .

If you can't find it via the above options, search the catalog  to see if the thesis is available on microfilm.  The microfilm area is located on level one of O'Neill Library.

If you cannot find the thesis/dissertation through any of the above options, please contact the John J. Burns Library of Rare Books, Special Collections and University Archives .

Send Burns Library an e-mail or contact by phone at 617-552-4861.

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Undergraduate Theses in eScholarship@BC: a Part of Boston College’s Institutional Record

The eScholarship@BC program makes possible the preservation of the thesis work of undergraduates as part of the University’s institutional record.  Archived theses are accessible either openly via the internet, or on Boston College campus premises only.  Students, with guidance from their faculty advisors, can elect the most suitable type of access on the thesis deposit form.

The Libraries support thesis students who take advantage of the eScholarship@BC program in many ways, including research assistance provided by subject librarians during the writing phase, and procedural aid when the time comes for actual submission into the repository.

Guidelines and instructions for submitting a thesis to the repository can be found on the   Undergraduate Theses Submission Guidelines page.

Examples of undergraduate theses archived in eScholarship@BC at present can be seen here .

Questions regarding the undergraduate thesis deposit program may be directed to Lopa Williams at [email protected] .

Published by Lopa Williams

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Summer and Fall 2024 Honors College course descriptions packet (v.4-1-24)

Honors College Course Descriptions SP24_10-26-23

Honors students complete a minimum of 18 credits in honors courses, and meet special requirements in mathematics and foreign language. Students who successfully complete the college's curriculum will be recognized at their major college's annual Honors Convocation in May of senior year, and a notice of successful completion will be added to their official transcripts. The honors curriculum’s six components are divided into lower and upper division studies.

Lower Division

All lower-division honors courses can be counted toward general education requirements. 

• An honors-level course in English composition
• The Honors First Year Seminar, an exploration of how knowledge is constructed and communicated with emphases on the uses of language and technology
• Four 200-level courses
• The completion, through course work, placement test, or other evidence, of pre-calculus or statistics and intermediate proficiency in a foreign language, OR calculus and elementary proficiency in a foreign language

Upper Division

• The Honors College Junior Colloquium, ideally taken in the second semester of the junior year. Through a multidisciplinary engagement with a specific topic and through the presentations of guest speakers, the colloquium builds the skills necessary to the research process; it prepares the students for the tasks they will encounter in their senior year as they write their thesis.
• The senior thesis/final project, normally undertaken in the student’s major department, which earns the student honors in the major while also satisfying Honors College requirements: The college encourages the presentation of such projects at national and statewide conferences on undergraduate research.   More information about the Senior Thesis/Final Project can be found on our Student Resources page .

Learning Outcomes

Honors college learning outcomes.

Honors College students will:

• Engage in the practice of integrating insights from multiple disciplines, and analyze connections among disciplines
• Learn from other students from diverse majors and colleges by engaging together in the lively interchange of ideas
• Appreciate that expertise and deep knowledge in a student’s major can be enriched by conversations about other areas of knowledge
• Become increasingly aware of current events, ethical issues, and controversies that permeate and impact multiple disciplines of study
• Understand that asking questions in different ways, utilizing different methodologies, and making different assumptions impacts the construction of new knowledge
• View complex challenges in ways that incorporate local, national, and global perspectives
• Engage in intellectual exploration of unfamiliar subjects, places, situations, and cultures, while being aware that deep understanding may only be achieved after significant time and thought
• Acquire critical writing, critical reading, and critical thinking skills, while recognizing that these skills are continuously refined
• Work closely and collaboratively with students and faculty
• Approach complex arguments by evaluating evidence from multiple sources, and draw supportable conclusions based on this analysis
• Invest time and careful thought into brainstorming and developing ideas for workable solutions to complex issues
• Build self-awareness about one’s own interests and processes of learning
• Apply new knowledge outside of the classroom through experiential learning opportunities (e.g. research, internships, service learning, student teaching, studying abroad)
• Develop and practice the skills necessary to perform independent research
• Engage deeply in field(s) of interest through a senior thesis/ final project that requires sustained commitment and careful follow-through
• Practice asking thoughtful questions – both broad and defined
• Identify primary and secondary sources relevant to a refined thesis statement, and generate an annotated bibliography of those sources
• Deliver one or more oral presentations at university, local, or national events and conferences
• Practice informed decision making, in contexts such as selecting courses, applying for internships and jobs, choosing thesis/final projects, and considering as well as preparing for future careers 

The Honors Experience

Honors college components.

The Honors College experience includes the following components:

• Taking courses in the Honors College (two 100-level courses, four 200-level courses, and one 300-level course)
• Fulfilling additional requirements in math and foreign language
• Writing and presenting a senior thesis on a long-term project (e.g. research, internship, service learning, student teaching)
• Obtaining personalized advising from an Honors College advisor, in addition to a major advisor
• Engaging in co-curricular activities (e.g. orientation activities, special events, student organizations, etc.)

• Research guides

Finding Dissertations & Theses

Getting started, about dissertations and theses.

Doctoral dissertations and master's theses  are rich information resources.  In the past, they have been very difficult to obtain, but many are now readily available through various databases and repositories.

Dissertations and theses generally provide original research, but they also offer:

• A comprehensive literature review on the topic
• An extensive bibliography for the topic
• A biography section, which can provide hard-to-find biographical information on a researcher's early life and career

In addition, if you are contemplating graduate study, performing a search on keywords related to your interests can give you a sense of what research graduate students are pursuing at different institutions, and  skimming the dissertations and theses of your potential departments (or even potential advisors) can give you an inside look into the nature of research there (hint: read what students write about their advisors in the acknowledgements section!)

Find Boston College Dissertations and Theses

• Boston College Dissertations and Theses

Find dissertations and theses from other institutions

• ProQuest Dissertations and Theses This link opens in a new window Citations and abstracts to more than 2 million dissertations and masters theses in all fields produced in North American colleges and universities from 1861 to the present, and from around the world since 1988. The full text of dissertations published since 1997 is also available for download.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) Provides open access to electronic theses and dissertations in worldwide repositories.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations
• Center for Research Libraries Dissertations
• EThOS: Electronic Theses Online Service
• DART-Europe
• Theses Canada
• Registry of Open Access Repositories
• WorldCat Discovery This link opens in a new window Search WorldCat to find materials in thousands of libraries worldwide, including the BC Libraries, the Boston Library Consortium (BLC), and The Center for Research Libraries. Current BC faculty, staff, and students may request items from other libraries through WorldCat.
• HathiTrust This link opens in a new window A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.
• Institutional repositories Many colleges and universities now have students deposit electronic copies of their theses or dissertations in an institutional repository. Search for these on the institution's website, or contact their library to ask.
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• Last Updated: Sep 1, 2023 1:07 PM
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• Tags: dissertation , thesis

•   OpenBU
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Boston University Theses & Dissertations

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Search within this collection:

This is the master collection of contemporary BU theses and dissertations. We plan to consolidate school- and college-specific collections into this one, and add school- and college-specific metadata to enable users to browse appropriately.

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Towards biologically plausible mechanisms of predictive learning 

Adaptive time-dependent decisions: behavior, cognition, and neural mechanisms 

Detecting and mitigating software security vulnerabilities through secure environment programming 

Resource-efficient, performant in-memory KV stores for at-scale data centers 

A scale-invariant representation of temporal context: support and constraints from neural and behavioral data 

Broken links: millennials' quest for (re)connection during COVID-19 

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• Sustainability

‘A really amazing thing’: The 2024 Senior Thesis Exhibition has arrived

By Bates News — Published on April 12, 2024

A week ago, much of the artwork destined for the 2024 Senior Thesis Exhibition in the Bates College Museum of Art could be found in various studio spaces in the Olin Arts Center.

For the eight senior artists, moving their artwork from studio spaces into the museum for a professional exhibition is like having their name up in lights. A visitor approaching the double glass doors of the museum sees the names of all eight seniors displayed in big block letters on the gallery wall facing the doors.

“This moment validates what is possible. And that’s a really amazing thing.” Michel Droge

Whether an artist’s name is in lights on a Broadway marquee or on a Bates museum wall, the effect is the same, says Michel Droge, one of the Bates faculty members helping the seniors display their work in the popular annual exhibition.

“Seeing your name in big letters when you first walk in, or on a poster or postcard, really solidifies the idea that ‘I can do this. I can do this for a living.’ Sometimes people are like, ‘Oh, being an artist is too hard of a life,’ or whatever. This moment validates what is possible. And that’s a really amazing thing.”

This year’s Senior Thesis Exhibition, on display through May 25 , features seniors working in paint, mixed media, digital animation, and installation/performance. 

In moving just a few hundred feet from those studios into the museum’s galleries, the artwork, has traveled into a new dimension. It’s now in community — alive and almost begging for conversation.

“Since they moved their work into the museum, we’ve been talking about how everybody’s work is sort of bouncing off each other’s,” says Droge, a visiting assistant professor of art and visual culture. “They saw that when they were working in the studios, but you can really see the conversation happening now.”

Droge pointed to a piece of driftwood on a pedestal, which accents a presentation of oil paintings by George Peck ’24 of Philadelphia that recall a camping trip along the Down East coast. Nearby are oils by Amelia Hawkins ’24 of Sun Valley, Idaho, that capture the phenomenon of forest fires in Idaho. 

In some of Hawkins’ oils, “the way the [tree branches] are painted and drawn relates to the driftwood,” says Droge. “Then you look at the driftwood and then look at Emma’s work.” That’s Emma Upton ’24 of Amherst, N.H., who used drawn self-portraits to create mixed-media abstractions. “There’s all sorts of back and forth. And all of the work is transformative.”

Droge has supported this week’s installation of the show in the museum. The students’ advisors are Associate Professor of Art and Visual Culture Carolina Gonzalez Valencia (fall semester) and Senior Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture Elke Morris (winter semester).

— Jay Burns

Amelia Hawkins

The oil paintings of Amelia Hawkins ’24 of Sun Valley, Idaho, capture the phenomenon of forest fires in Idaho.

Fires have occurred for eons and can be part of a healthy forest ecosystem, but are now more frequent in the era of climate change. Hawkins recalls how in her childhood summer activities were canceled due to unhealthy air quality. 

“Once August rolls around, smoke from forest fires rolls in,” Hawkins says. “I remember asking my mom, ‘Where are all these ashes coming from?” 

Now such memories provide subject matter for her artwork. “I portray the various stages of forest fires. From the fiery inception to the tranquil regrowth, I’m captivated by the juxtaposition of chaos and serenity.”

The senior thesis by Yuri Kim ’24 of East Brunswick, N.J., drew from a daydream and parallels her research into the colonial origins of Easter that has roots both in Europe and Pennsylvania. It was made through digital animation and compositing.

“I found repeated violences in the colonization of pagan traditions, the colonization of children’s innocence, and the colonization of the land. I hope you consider these parallels in the viewing of this work,” Kim says.

In the work, Kim considers how  children interpret events in fascinating ways. “These interpretations are often rebutted, degraded, and dismissed by those around them. Sometimes, this is because the way children interpret things is not seen as particularly appropriate for the occasion.”

She explores “silliness, weirdness, discomfort, and inconsistencies” in her artwork.

“This work embraces these maligned apostles with its arms wide open. It sees the valuable things that lay inside children’s daydreams – eggs, waiting to be hatched,” Kim says.

Avery Mathias

Turning a common household object into art worth considering, Avery Mathias ’24 of Needham Heights, Mass., features the chicken egg in her recent oil paintings to illustrate how one can find “intrigue and beauty in the mundane.”

And as one who has fond childhood memories of making breakfast with her father on the weekends, Mathias wants to celebrate in her art how “a shared meal brings people together.”

Food and people’s relationships can inspire a range of emotions, Mathias points out. A single fried egg can evoke thoughts about health, life, routine, cooking, science, and sexuality, she says. Through the simplicity of her subject, Mathias endeavors to encourage viewers to bring their own associations.

As a biology major, she further wants to emulate the scientific perspective. So the eggs are painted larger than life to present the perspective of looking through a microscope. “To look at an object from a drastically different point of view made it infinitely more intriguing,” Mathias says.

Miguel Ángel Pacheco

Using mixed media that includes wood, cardboard, sticks, and a suitcase, Miguel Ángel Pacheco ’24 of Caracas, Venezuela, says he consciously and subconsciously changed, rearranged, and transgressed these materials to create a work that serves as a way to summarize his years at Bates.

“I stand in the missing place in between. In the place of forgetting an expression in my mother tongue, or thinking twice about how my accent sounds nowadays. Or the doorway of my grandma’s house in Los Teques, the positioning of the door, or the plant next to it. The crossroad between where I am, what I remember and what I’m trying not to forget,” Pacheco says.

The body of Pacheco’s work combines gestures and found materials in the act of “approaching memory as an active verb… like the skeleton of a house, without walls, see through.” 

“These are different scenes that I set for myself to remember or forget. Where actions occurred, materials and memories were boxed, carried and moved. They’re about movement, actions that I propose to myself, trying to understand the distance between here and there. The still remaining distance… deshilachandola,” Pacheco adds, using the Spanish word for “unraveled.”

George Peck

The oil paintings by George Peck ‘24 of Philadelphia are based on his memories of a camping trip last fall to the Cutler Coast Public Land along the Maine Down East coast.

He took no photographs during the trip. “I am just building this world from the way that I remember it,” he says, using themes of driftwood and fire as metaphors for how the vivid moments that we experience become memories that shift, change, and sometimes fade away.

“After you’ve lived a moment and have a memory in your head, it’s subject to change. It’s impermanent — kind of loose and vague.”

Peck began collecting natural objects to create sculptures last fall. Driftwood becomes a focus for its beauty and the myriad of metaphors within it, such as the growth rings in a tree, which mark time.

He says the driftwood and dead weathered trees symbolize how a moment in space and time “dies” when the moment has passed. But, like a tree, an experience doesn’t ever truly disappear, “but rather lives on as its own subject.” Both memory and driftwood, Peck says, change shape over time.

Olivia Rabin

Olivia Rabin ’24 of Montclair, N.J., wants to explore the emotions and sensations of the world around her and the experience of “being captivated by nature and the fantastical,” as illustrated in her mixed-media work using watercolor, wax, and graphite. 

She is interested in illustrative and abstract work “rooted in reality while distorting it or finding new meanings.” She recalls watching the documentary series Blue Planet , narrated by David Attenborough, as a child. This and other works by people who are inspired by nature provide material for her art. 

“While I am interested in many different things, I am always working to visualize them to help me understand how I connect them internally. In my work, I am trying to synthesize my own process into something tangible and observable. I am exploring the connections between my headspace, the act of expression, and the physical world,” Rabin says.

Joseph Vineyard

Joseph Vineyard ’24 of Danville, Vt., created a digitally drawn animation sequence that seeks to convey the overwhelming physical and emotional intensity of a panic attack.

While it’s not possible to convey the universal experience of a panic attack, Vineyard hopes to help those who have never experienced one get a sense of what it is like and to offer affirmation for those who have experienced one.

Vineyard explains it can make one feel as if “their bodies feel suffocated and out of control as if something else has taken over.”

“Art to me is a gateway into an alternate world, a place for the viewer to get lost in and find an experience that reflects or is unlike their own,” Vineyard says.

Emma Upton ’24 of Amherst, N.H. processed emotions from the Oct. 25 shootings in Lewiston through her mixed-media artwork to express “the sorrow, fear, and mourning” she witnessed in her community following the tragedy. It also is a personal expression of her experience during the lockdown.

“In the days that followed, I found myself in a state of numb disbelief within the surreal limbo of lockdown. In an attempt to process my emotions, I turned to art. I created a series of 50 continuous line self-portraits that seek to illustrate my internal state of sorrow and uncertainty. These portraits became the foundation of my work which involved abstracting the original self-portraits using a variety of techniques and mediums,” Upton says.

She found abstract forms within the interconnected lines of her self portraits to create a series of new abstract portraits that she then layered with pages from magazines that she later trimmed to reveal areas of light. Stained glass that is also used in the work, she says, creates a “transparent effect and enables the use of lighting that is a uniting element within this series,” while the use of mirrors incorporate the viewers into the artwork.

“The material is fundamentally connected to the initial experience during the lockdown, because it incorporates the same fractured mirrors that I looked into while creating the 50 original self-portraits,” Upton said. 

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School of Visual Arts MFA Thesis Exhibitions Feature Work by 61 Artists

Emily Taylor Rice (CFA’21,’24) (foreground) and Delaney Burns (CFA’24), both grad students in the College of Fine Arts Print Media & Photography program, working on their respective thesis projects ahead of the School of Visual Arts graduate thesis exhibitions.

Five shows by graduating students in painting, graphic design, sculpture, print media and photography, and visual narrative on view on and off campus through April 20

Sophie yarin, cydney scott.

As the academic year draws to a close and commencement season approaches, there’s no shortage of reasons to celebrate at the College of Fine Arts. Not only does 2024 mark the school’s 70th birthday— CFA was founded as the School of Fine and Applied Arts in 1954 —but it’s also a year of exciting firsts for the School of Visual Arts and its five Master of Fine Arts programs: painting, sculpture, print media and photography, visual narrative, and graphic design. 

This year marks the first that the print media and photography and the visual narrative MFA programs, both launched in 2022, will graduate a class. The 2024 exhibitions also mark the largest cohort to date—61 graduating MFA students—in the school’s history. And for the first time, this year’s shows include an off-campus venue: the sculpture exhibition is being shown at 1270 Commonwealth Ave., where what was once a CVS pharmacy has been transformed into a pop-up art gallery. 

All of the exhibitions, on view through April 20, are free and open to the public. Collectively, they offer a sense of the breadth and depth of work being done by MFA students across a range of mediums. For those who cannot make it to all five of this year’s shows, we’ve pulled together some works from each program for your viewing pleasure. But remember: there’s plenty more to see in person.

The visual arts are often compared to a written language, notes Josephine Halvorson , a CFA professor of art, painting, and chair of graduate studies in painting, in the 2024 painting thesis exhibition catalog. “Reading, literacy, and lexicons are terms we frequently cite in critique,” she writes. “Students [have turned] to language, either materially or analogically, to help them navigate meaning in their work.”

James Gold, Mosaic Excavation with Carpets . Egg tempera, India ink, acrylic gouache, and pigmented gesso on panel.

Abbi Kenny, Atlantic Cranberry Sauce (courtesy of Weight Watchers) . Acrylic, molding paste, acrylic gouache, black pepper, glitter, glass beads, muscovite mica, glass flakes, and yupo collage on canvas.

Some works in this year’s exhibition speak plainly, relying on a strong instinct toward realism and representation. James Gold (CFA’24) imbues his canvases with a photographer’s sense of discovery: his subjects—ancient tapestries, mosaics, and scrolls—are rendered so as to capture every detail and texture.

Paintings by Abigail Kenny (CFA’24) share Gold’s photorealistic sensibility, but her concerns are more outlandish, less rarefied. Vivid-hued reproductions of illustrated recipe cards, from Kenny’s own family collection, comment on Andy Warhol’s iconic soup cans from the early 1960s.

Ellen Weitkamp, Remembering 75 East Cove Lane . Oil on panel.

Cody Bluett, Where Are the Sleeping Fish . Oil and spray paint on canvas, wood carving on frame.

Yingxue Daisy Li, Tunnel. Oil and charcoal on canvas.

Ellen Weitkamp (CFA’24) and Cody Bluett (CFA’24) suffuse their paintings with a more surreal and symbolic language, more poetry than prose. Weitkamp’s works suggest the haziness of recalled memories, depicting domestic scenes through the glass of a storefront or the gauze of a curtain. Bluett is also concerned with memory; drawing from his background in working-class Pennsylvania, his scenes are nostalgic for the bucolic landscapes enjoyed by what he describes as “the proletariat during moments of respite, repetition, and reminiscence.”

Visual language dissolves into whispers and murmurs in paintings by Yinxue Daisy Li (CFA’24). Her abstract landscape works hover on the outer edges of representation, the result of a process of erasing and redrawing that transforms an idyllic outdoor scene into gesture, space, light, and shadow.

The MFA Painting Thesis Exhibition is at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Graphic Design

The theme for this year’s graphic design thesis show, Side B , refers to the flip side of a record, and “a willingness to defy expectations, explore uncommon tools, and present a multifaceted expression of craft,” write thesis advisors Christopher Sleboda , a CFA associate professor of graphic design, and Kristen Coogan , a CFA associate professor of graphic design and chair of the MFA graphic design program, in the catalog for the show. 

For her thesis project, Between Waves , Bella Tuo (CFA’24) literally crowdsourced a new font. Over the course of a day, she encouraged strangers to contribute a hand-drawn line, curve, or serif until each letter of the alphabet was complete .

Bella Tuo, Between Waves project feat. Rainbow Hui. Digital media.

Arjun Lakshmanan, The Grand Tour-50 Iterations. Digital media.

Arjun Lakshmanan (CFA’24) was inspired by a NASA mock travel poster that imagined interplanetary tourism. With the same retro futuristic style, he produced a series of 50 similar postcards that emphasized three-dimensionality and warped perception. 

Lindsay Towle (CFA’24), whose design sensibility is informed by the graphic imprint of basketball and other facets of urban street culture, devised new aesthetic associations that make room for visual subcultures within the dominant narrative. A poster of her thesis concept, Backcourt , mixes graffiti lettering, a hallmark of elements of street culture, with classic typography and handwritten elements.

Lindsay Towle, The Backcourt . Digital media.

Carolina Izsák, Masking Tape Proportionality . Belgian linen.

Dhwani Garg, Firki typeface. Digital media.

“The relationships between structure and emotion, constraints and freedom, and a set of parts and pieces to create a whole have always been part of my practice as a designer,” Carolina Izsák (CFA’24) writes. Bursting with color and built to foster interaction and joy, Izsák’s thesis project—which includes prints she has laid onto fabric and wooden blocks—emphasizes playfulness and versatility.

Firki , a typeface created by Dhwani Garg (CFA’24), considers the scalability of typography in a new way. The font uses negative space to construct each figure, an inversion of the simple and expected formula used since the dawn of typesetting. 

The MFA Graphic Design Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

Visual Narrative

The first graduating class of the MFA visual narrative program has created a collection of work that runs the storytelling gamut, crafting work that’s “humorous, poignant, and thought-provoking,” writes Joel Christian Gill , a CFA associate professor of art and chair of the visual narrative program. 

Sadie Saunders (CFA’24) and Ella Scheuerell (CFA’24) both opted to create graphic memoirs, and although their methodologies differ (Saunders uses digital drawing while Scheuerell relies on collage and mixed media), their stories are grounded in their experiences as young artists coming of age in the pandemic era. Scheuerell introduces readers to her uncle, whose art she discovered among his effects after his death by suicide. As she comes to terms with his loss, the drawings and his invisible presence keep her company. Saunders’ work reads more like a memoir-slash-sitcom, a self-deprecating tour of her barista job and the cast of characters who challenge her to find her voice. 

Sadie Saunders, pages from Spilled Milk and Other Reasons to Cry at Work . Digital drawing.

Ella Scheurell, Heavy Shoes , Colored pencil, watercolor sharpie on paper.

Avanji Vaze, page from Vrindavan House . Digital drawing.

Works by Avanji Vaze (CFA’24), Sandeep Badal (CFA’24), and Ariel Cheng Kohane (COM’22, CFA’24) have created stories that revel in invented universes and complex plotlines. Vaze’s graphic novel combines a Utopian fairytale (where Earth is run by a species of benevolent mushrooms) and MTV’s The Real World , centering a lovable-but-dysfunctional crew of artist roommates as her main cast. Badal’s thesis work is a comic within a comic; his protagonist, a graphic novelist, shares the stage with his own invented character, a trans-femme superhero who begins to feel like the world is treating her like a villain. And Cheng Kohane’s world is a reimagination of classic Western flicks, but populated by a cast of Asian and Jewish characters to match her own blended heritage.

Ariel Kohane, page from Hai Noon . Digital drawing.

Sandeep Badal, two-page spread from Phantom in a Jar . Digital drawing.

Lafleche Giasson, two-page spread from New Leaves on the Tree: How Intergenerational Trauma Affects Inheritable Gene Expression . Digital drawing.

For her thesis, Lafleche Giasson (CFA’24) chose an unconventional narrative, opting to blend her research on complex post-traumatic stress disorder with digital illustrations to create a comprehensive visual guide to the diagnosis.

The MFA Visual Narrative Thesis Exhibition is at the Commonwealth Gallery, 855 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm. Students will present their thesis work on Wednesday, April 10, and Friday, April 12, from 3 to 5 pm at the Howard Thurman Center, 808 Commonwealth Ave.

Print Media & Photography

This year’s graduates of the print media and photography MFA program have created work that “disrupt[s] the viewer’s sense of the familiar and, in turn, prompt[s] more questions than answers,” write thesis advisors Lynne Allen , a CFA professor of art, printmaking, Toni Pepe , a CFA assistant professor of art and chair of photography, and Deborah Cornell , a CFA professor of art and chair of printmaking, in the show’s catalog. The four graduates whose work is in the thesis show have subverted the expected with their thesis work, in the process highlighting a core principle of printmaking: that it’s a medium of endless possibilities.

The photographs of Sofia Barroso (CFA’24) have been processed to the point of distortion, incorporating fabric, paper, thread, paint, and processes like cyanotype and silkscreen printing.

Sofia Barroso, Exploration of Possibilities . Cyanotype on fabric.

Julianne Dao, Walking Shadows . Collagraph, Chiné-colle archival inkjet print.

Julianne Dao (CFA’24) creates prints that play with negative space; each of her prints began with an object from nature, which she then processed through woodcut, embossing, and other techniques to create a bold design full of light and shadow.

Emily Taylor Rice (CFA’21,’24) and Delaney Burns (CFA’24) injected messages of social activism into their works: Rice creates prints that reflect the emotional turmoil of substance use disorders, using found textiles and colored pigments to reflect the chaos of alcohol dependence and utilizing embossing techniques to replicate emotional scars and ripped-and-torn sections to represent a process of deconstruction and rebirth. 

Emily Taylor Rice, Standing Smack in the Middle of the Truth About Myself . Silkscreen on found fabric.

Delaney Burns, One In Four. Screenprint on tea bags with peacock flower seeds and birth control pamphlets.

Burns incorporates items from all aspects of her life—plants from her mother’s garden; diary entries, notes, and cards written by women in her family; birth control pamphlets; and used teabags—to draw attention to what she says are the unseen, misunderstood, and taken-for-granted experiences of women. Techniques such as bookbinding and wood carving mirror domestic tasks, imbuing her process with a metaphysical interaction with traditional gender roles.

The MFA Print Media & Photography Thesis Exhibition is at the 808 Gallery, 808 Comm Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesday to Saturday, 11 am to 5 pm.

The pieces in the MFA sculpture exhibition may have little in common visually, writes David Snyder , a CFA assistant professor of sculpture and chair of graduate studies in sculpture, “but what they have built together is…a conversation, a culture, a language, a heart.”

The works by the five students included in this year’s show respond to one another, playing on unconventional uses of space.

Yolanda He Yang, section of Sand Floor and Two Holes to the Basement and Happenings on the Wall. Piano strings, sand, LED spotlight and motor, glass, projector, wood, plastic sheet, mylar, telephone wires, marble.

Helena Abdelnasser, I think it’s dying. Wood, hinges, screws, white paint, soil, grass seeds, plastic bag, water, unfired clay, baby monitor.

In one area, a section of a piece by Yolanda He Yang (MET’21, CFA’24) shares room with a pillar constructed by Helena Abdelnasser (CFA’24). Yang’s sprawling narrative installations include materials that evoke personal significance, and the artist has painstakingly cataloged the origins of each object. The result: an annotated roadmap of a memory. Looming nearby is one of Abdelnasser’s sculptures: an obelisk made of whitewashed picket fences planted in a patch of earth—an untouchable idealization. In one corner of the work, blurred by decay and dirt, is a reproduction of a dead bird—a gruesome reality.

Alyssa Grey (CFA’24) is fascinated by the relationship between art and its modes of display—walk past one of her entries and a motion-sensing camera will project you onto a small television mounted on a plywood pedestal. Mae-Chu Lin O’Connell (CFA’24) injects a self-deprecating, almost paranoiac sensibility in each of her works, making liberal use of claustrophobia, clutter, sensory discomfort, and haphazardness in her installations and videos. Boxmaker , a scattered assemblage of objects in the shadow of an assembled piece of box furniture, brims with frustration, while her videos create an eerie sound collage out of the banal act of eating.

Alyssa Grey, HomeVideos . Wood, roof sealant, plywood, TV, electrical cords, camouflage duct tape, DC motor, camera.

Mae-Chu Lin O’Connell , Boxmaker (How to build a 36-drawer Wunderkabinett in a week) . Plywood, brass knobs, casters, wood screws, wood glue, epoxy, screws, nails, wood putty, and various objects.

Liam Coughlin, r/decks . OSB, dimensional lumber, towels, salvaged floor boards, adhesives and fasteners, plastic bags, garbage bags, Gatorade bottle full of spit, PEZ dispenser, sawhorses, sawdust.

Meanwhile, Liam Coughlin’s work addresses the sociopolitical landscape of the suburbs. Coughlin (CFA’24) encases trash—plastic bags and bottles, Halloween pumpkins, fast food cups—in plywood prisons to replicate “growing up in a homogenized, hermetically sealed, village-like culture of a small New England town.” 

The MFA Sculpture Thesis Exhibition is at 1270 Commonwealth Ave., through Saturday, April 20. Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, 11 am to 5 pm, and Mondays and Thursdays by appointment.

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Associate Editor, BU Today; Managing Editor Bostonia

Sophie Yarin is a BU Today associate editor and Bostonia managing editor. She graduated from Emerson College's journalism program and has experience in digital and print publications as a hybrid writer/editor. A lifelong fan of local art and music, she's constantly on the hunt for stories that shine light on Boston's unique creative communities. She lives in Jamaica Plain with her partner and their cats, Ringo and Xerxes, but she’s usually out getting iced coffee. Profile

Photojournalist

Cydney Scott has been a professional photographer since graduating from the Ohio University VisCom program in 1998. She spent 10 years shooting for newspapers, first in upstate New York, then Palm Beach County, Fla., before moving back to her home city of Boston and joining BU Photography. Profile

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Undergraduate research provides in-depth exposure to the frontiers of chemistry and the culture of scientific research. Undergraduates interested in pursuing a career in chemistry or biochemistry are encouraged to seek out opportunities as freshman or sophomores to participate in the world-class research programs supervised by the Chemistry department faculty. The department offers diverse opportunities for scientific investigation within the areas of organic, biological, physical, or inorganic chemistry. In addition, many research programs are interdisciplinary and involve techniques and principles related to different areas of chemistry.

Students interested in becoming involved in a research project should contact individual faculty about the possibility of a position in their research group. This process should be initiated several months in advance of the planned starting date.

Research for credit

During the academic year, there are several options for BC undergraduates to earn academic credit for research. The Chemistry Department offers three main research courses:

• CHEM4491-4492 Introduction to Undergraduate Research I-II for juniors who have shown exceptional ability
• CHEM5591-5592 Undergraduate Chemical Research I-II for senior chemistry majors
• CHEM5593-5594 Undergraduate Biochemical Research I-II for senior biochemistry majors

Students who enroll in one of these research courses must obtain permission from a faculty research advisor and must complete a Research Course Contract. Both the student and professor sign the contract and submit it to the Director of Undergraduate Studies .

Research Course Contract

Students who would like to write a thesis during their senior year can register for CHEM6601-6602 Senior Thesis Research in Chemistry I-II with the permission of their advisor.

There is also the option of doing research through the Scholar of the College program during senior year, CHEM5595-5596, Advanced Research in Chemistry I-II . For more information vist the Scholar of the College website .

Research for pay

Some students opt for doing research as part of the work/study program, both during the academic year and the summer. If you qualify for work/study funds and are planning to engage in research within the department, discuss the possibility of getting paid through the work/study program with your faculty advisor. During the summer months, stipends for a number of students are paid from research grants or via a shared arrangement with the work/study program. See your faculty research advisor and get your plans set well in advance.

Research off-campus

If a student finds a research opportunity off-campus during the academic year and would like to learn academic credit for the work, a description of the project must be submitted to the Director of Undergraduate Studies .

Students can consider taking part in a research project at another university during the summer. The National Science Foundation (NSF) funds a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program that provides students with the opportunity to carry out research at participating institutions. A current listing of the participating REU sites can be obtained from the NSF website . The application deadlines for the REU program are in February and March.

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