Boston College

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The history of Boston College is a narrative of response to society's call. In 1863, that call came from an immigrant community that sought a Jesuit education to foster social mobility. Boston College offered that promise.
Today, the call emanates from a world that has experienced an explosion of knowledge, but not a corresponding growth in understanding a world that too often lacks trust in its leaders and faith in its institutions. It is a world that has developed great technologies that link continents but isolates human beings, leaving many men and women weary and dispirited, feeling distant from moral purpose, uncertain about knowledge, or the very worth of human endeavor.
Boston College is uniquely capable of answering this call, of speaking to this world. As an institution of higher education, Boston College is committed to the discovery and transmission of knowledge. However, reflecting its Jesuit and Catholic heritage, it also seeks to integrate excellence and religious commitment to inform and form its students.
Boston College endeavors to educate a new generation of leaders—men and women who will be capable of shaping the future with vision, justice, and charity—with a sense of calling, with concern for all of the human family. Boston College builds upon its traditions. It seeks to be the national leader in the liberal arts to fulfill its Jesuit, Catholic mission of faith and service to continue to develop model programs to support students in their formation and to seek solutions—as researchers, educators, leaders, and caregivers—that directly address the world's most urgent problems.
Boston College remains committed to leading its students on a comprehensive journey of discovery that integrates their intellectual, personal, ethical, and religious formation. Inspiration for Boston College's academic and societal mission is drawn from its distinctive religious and intellectual heritage. As a Jesuit, Catholic University, Boston College is rooted in a world view that calls us to learn, search for truth, and live in service to others. To fulfill that mission, we welcome and embrace a diverse student body's contributions from many faith traditions.
We are educating men and women who shape the world with vision, justice, and charity. Be part of a new generation of independent thinkers and change-makers addressing the challenges of contemporary life.
With nearly 3 million volumes housed in multiple repositories, Boston College's libraries are at our University's heart. They are where you can find the latest research or discover a rare book, from a quiet carrel or the convenience of your tablet. Regularly cited as one of the most beautiful libraries globally, Bapst offers 400 quiet study spaces in a combination of individual carrels and tables. More than 51,000 volumes on art, architecture, museum studies, and photography are housed in our original campus library. Our University's rare books and special collections, including the largest and most comprehensive Irish collection in the United States, are housed in Burns Library. Students and scholars can access original materials from saints and Nobel laureates, surrounded by fantastic art and dramatic stained-glass windows. The ERC meets the Lynch School of Education's specialized resource needs, with an emphasis on learning in K-12 classrooms. An interactive technology room and 50-seat multimedia classroom offer the latest classroom innovations for projects and lesson plans.
Education is a process of discovery and development. At Boston College, you engage in that process in the classroom and through programs across the campus that inspire creativity, nurture friendship, cultivate leadership, and promote social good. Across disciplines, collaborative teams of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty are examining our contemporary world's complex problems, proposing new solutions and new ways of thinking about religion and culture, science and technology, art and education, business, and ethics, and announcing the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society. The Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society will be the centerpiece of a new 150,000 square-foot science facility scheduled for construction beginning in the spring of 2019 at roughly $150 million.
Boston College was founded in 1863 by the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) to educate Boston's predominantly Irish, Catholic immigrant community. On September 5, 1864, it opened its doors in a building on Harrison Avenue in Boston's South End, a "small streetcar college" for commuting students. When it outgrew the space's limitations, then-president Rev. Thomas I. Gasson, S.J., bought 31 acres of the former Lawrence Farm in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, and broke ground in 1909 on a new campus, today fondly known as "the Heights." BC began as an undergraduate liberal arts college, but as its aspirations grew, it added graduate programs and professional schools fulfilling its charter.
Boston College, the first institution of higher education to operate in Boston, is today among the nation's foremost universities, a leader in the liberal arts, scientific inquiry, and student formation. Grounded in the ideals that inspired our Jesuit founders, Boston College urges students to look inward but always reach out—to develop their minds and talents to the fullest and use them in service to others.

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