News
The Importance of Student-Led Discussions in a Post-Truth Age
It has been a fun week, despite the messy weather. On Tuesday afternoon, the students eeked out a narrow victory against the faculty and staff in a spirited basketball extravaganza, complete with a halftime show! Tonight many students will stay on campus for the semiformal dance. And with spring break around the corner, spirits are high. I visited two history classes earlier this week and, in both, observed students speaking much more than their teachers. Juniors in American history were discussing our country’s overseas entanglements and imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century. Ninth graders were discussing the Etruscans, Greeks, and Phoenicians and contrasting the historical record of those civilizations with the contemporary Roman accounts. Active, student-led discussions have long been a hallmark of what we do, particularly in the humanities. Teachers, as the experts in the room, frame up interesting questions and periodically enter the conversation to offer... More
Joyful Learning and Shakespearean Knock Knock Jokes
In a funny scene in Act II of The Tragedy of Macbeth, a drunken porter responds to a repeated “knock, knock, knock” at the door to the castle imagining that he is greeting sinners at the gates of hell. I visited a ninth-grade English class earlier this week where students were acting out that scene for their classmates. With a wonderfully convincing and slurred Scottish accent, a student played the porter’s role to the amusement of the whole room; he was the only one not laughing! What struck me most was that the students were laughing along with the jokes in the way Shakespeare intended – delighting in the imagery, linguistic tricks, and performance. How lucky are we to be at a school where we all – teachers and students – find so much joy in learning? I imagine that for some of us reading Shakespeare in high school felt like... More
Three BUA Seniors Selected as Top 300 Scholars in 2023 Regeneron Science Talent Search
Three seniors at Boston University Academy -- Alex Jin '23, Alvin Lu '23, and Joseph Wang '23 -- were selected as top 300 scholars in the 2023 Regeneron Science Talent Search, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. BUA is one of the few high schools to have three scholars named in the top 300 list. The top 300 scholars were chosen “based on their outstanding research, leadership skills, community involvement, commitment to academics, creativity in asking scientific questions and exceptional promise as STEM leaders demonstrated through the submission of their original, independent research projects, essays and recommendations,” according to a press release issued by the Society for Science, the sponsor organization of the Regeneron Science Talent Search. Each student’s winning project forms the basis of their senior thesis, an independent research project that is the culmination of a student’s academic career at BUA. Alex, More
BUA Athletes Win All-Scholastics Honors
Boston University Academy student athletes earned All-Scholastics honors in the MBIL league for cross country and soccer in the fall 2022 season. Congratulations to the athletes on these well-deserved accolades. Go Terriers! Boys' Soccer MBIL All-Stars: Dominic Iafrate '23, Isaac Rajagopal '23, Ajay Raman '23, Nick Reason '23 Girls' Cross-Country MBIL All-Stars: Sally Jamrog '23, Coco Mueller '26, Giselle Wu '23 Boys' Cross Country MBIL All-Star: Nicholas Kennedy '26 You can find a complete list of 2022-2023 All-Scholastic athletes in the Boston Globe's All-Scholastics section.
BUA Junior Wins World Cup in Épée Fencing
BUA junior Luka Loncar, '24, won the World Cup in épée fencing in the 16-and-under men's division at the Cadet European Cup in Grenoble, France earlier this month. Over 200 fencers from 12 different countries competed in his division, and Luka's is the first win by an American fencer in six years. Luka fences with the Olympia Fencing Club in Cambridge, MA. Congratulations, Luka, on this impressive accomplishment!
“Boston in the Diasporic Imagination” Senior Seminar Visits Murals in Roxbury
Dr. Carlos Martinez's “Boston in the Diasporic Imagination” Senior Seminar took a field trip to see murals in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. These murals were mentioned in Zadie Smith’s novel On Beauty, which the class is currently reading. The "Boston in the Diasporic Imagination" class relishes in some of Boston’s rich immigrant history as they delve into academically acclaimed, recent literature by and about people who have all found themselves in this great city. Originally a term referring to the exile of various Jewish populations, Diaspora can refer to people who have been forced to leave their home countries because of oppression, but it can now also refer to emigrants who have chosen to leave their countries for a variety of reasons. These people have sacrificed everything they’ve known and loved in the hopes of bettering their fates and that of their families and ancestors. Dr. Martinez shares: "In these texts... More
HOS Blog: Parent-School Partnership and the Three-Legged Stool
“Can I come back and go to school here?” I heard this question a few times on Tuesday from those who joined us for Parents and Guardians Day. For several hours that morning, adults in our community walked through their children’s class schedules, sitting in on actual math, science, language, history, arts, and English classes right alongside our students. Some of the adults even participated – in some cases to the embarrassment of their teenage onlookers! The feedback was heartwarming. “I can’t believe how active and engaged these kids are. That’s not what high school was like for me.“ “The teachers are so creative; each classroom felt different.” “I feel so lucky that my son is surrounded by other kids who are as curious and bright as he is. He’s learning so much from them and is making friends for life.” “You’d think these kids are in college based on the sophistication... More
Dr. Magdalena Slosar-Cheah Receives Inaugural BUA Distinguished Alumnus/a Award
Boston University Academy's Alumni Council is honored to present the inaugural Distinguished Alumnus/a Award to Magdalena Slosar-Cheah ’99 for her work in the field of infectious disease. The award celebrates an alumnus of the school who best exemplifies BUA’s values and makes an impact on the community and world around them. Dr. Slosar-Cheah grew up in Massachusetts, daughter of a puppeteer and an architect and the oldest of three sisters. After graduating from Boston University Academy in 1999, she obtained her BA in physics at Yale University, where she also enjoyed taking classes in medical anthropology, modern literature, and Anglo-Saxon, and her MD from the medical school at the University of Massachusetts (now UMass Chan). She subsequently completed her internal medicine residency at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell in Manhattan followed by a fellowship in infectious diseases at Montefiore/Einstein in the Bronx. Upon completing her medical training, Dr. Slosar-Cheah continued to work at Montefiore... More
54% of BUA Senior Class Receives National Merit Recognition
An impressive fifty-four percent of the Boston University Academy Class of 2023 received recognition in the 68th annual National Merit Scholarship Program competition. Twenty current BUA seniors were named National Merit Commended Scholars. They are among the roughly 34,000 US seniors recognized for "exceptional academic promise," and place among the top 50,000 students who entered the competition by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). Out of these 20 Commended Scholars, two BUA seniors were named National Merit Semifinalists, placing them among the top 1% of all US high school seniors who entered the competition. Semifinalists will have the opportunity to compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $25,000 Scholarships. National Merit Scholar finalists will be announced in February of 2023. Two members of the BUA Class of 2023 received College Board National Recognition Program honors by scoring in the top 2.5% of PSAT/NMSQT test takers who identify as African... More
Alums Want to Help
On the evening of September 29, in what promises to be a wonderful tradition, seven graduates who identify as people of color joined two dozen current students of color for dinner and conversation, with the aim of sharing their experiences, building connection, and moving our community forward in terms of belonging. Several dozen alums began their months-long volunteer work as admission interviewers this week. Over the course of the admission cycle, they will collectively meet with more than 100 prospective BUA students and families. Twenty-four graduates from 1997 to 2016 will come together this weekend for the first Alumni Council meeting of the year to plan alumni events and offer feedback on the school’s emerging strategic vision. Plans are in place for several alumni career panels and all-school meetings where graduates will share their stories with current students and offer models of lives well lived. The list goes on. Many are in early stages of their careers, working hard to... More