Wheelock College Merger
October 11, 2017
Dear Friends,
I am pleased to announce that we have reached a definitive agreement with Wheelock College to merge with Boston University. In this agreement, all assets and liabilities of Wheelock College will be transferred to Boston University on June 1, 2018.
The cornerstone of the merger will be the combination of our School of Education with the equivalent school at Wheelock College to form the Wheelock College of Education & Human Development (WCEHD) as an academic unit within Boston University. Boston University will commit additional funding and resources to the support of new faculty positions and expanded programming at WCEHD. In addition, although the present Wheelock College endowment will be integrated into that of Boston University (conferring the advantage of investment scale), income from that endowment will be deployed to support WCEHD faculty, students, and programs.
The combination of the programs of the two schools and the additional resources we plan to deploy gives Boston University the opportunity to commit with renewed energy to our long-standing efforts to promote quality early childhood and K–12 education as the foundation for the prosperity and stability of our city and the nation. We believe that BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development will be one of the leading colleges of education in the country, focused on clinical practice, scholarship, and community engagement. The commitment to establish and support this new college will, I believe, appropriately preserve and enhance the great legacy of Lucy Wheelock and Wheelock College.
We are also pleased to announce that the president of Wheelock College, Dr. David Chard, has agreed to lead the initial development of BU’s Wheelock College of Education & Human Development by assuming the role of interim dean of the college beginning on June 1, 2018. Dr. Chard served as the founding dean of the Simmons School of Education & Human Development at Southern Methodist University and associate dean of the College of Education at the University of Oregon. He holds a PhD in special education from the University of Oregon and is a prolific researcher and writer, with particular interest in instructional practices that meet the needs of students with learning disabilities. He has held faculty positions at Boston University, University of Texas-Austin, and University of Oregon.
Other academic units within Wheelock College will be integrated into similar programs at Boston University. A process has been agreed to for determining the titles and responsibilities that will be assumed by currently tenured Wheelock faculty when they transfer to Boston University. The continuation of non-tenured faculty members at Wheelock College will be decided on a case-by-case basis according to the needs of the relevant academic units at Boston University.
Similarly, the administrative and operations functions of Wheelock College will be merged into equivalent units at Boston University, and Boston University will offer Wheelock staff appropriate positions where it is practical to do so.
Current Wheelock students will be offered the opportunity to transfer to Boston University in the fall of 2018 into existing BU programs; or into select Wheelock programs that will be incorporated into Boston University; or, in some cases, into transitional programs that Boston University will “teach out” as part of its commitment to successful program completion for Wheelock students. For all current Wheelock College students, the net tuition (net of financial aid) will be the same as their cost would have been to attend Wheelock College. Beginning in 2018, admission of all new students will be through Boston University, using our standards and processes.
Many of you have likely walked past or through the Wheelock campus. The proximity to our campus is one of the attractive attributes that we took into account in our early review of the merger opportunity. It is six-tenths of a mile from Marsh Chapel (the Charles River Campus, for reference, is 1.5 miles long). It is our current plan to use the Wheelock campus for Boston University academic programs.
The merger is scheduled to officially occur on June 1, 2018, and in the coming months we will work toward the integration. There is a great deal of work to be done, including some difficult decisions about the scope and organization of the combined college and the integration of other programs of Wheelock College into Boston University; however, we are confident that the results will be worth the effort. I want to thank all of the faculty and staff who have worked to get us to this point and whose efforts will be essential for us to make this merger a success. Our goal is to treat the Wheelock College students who join us in the fall of 2018 and all Wheelock College alumni as part of the Boston University family. With the efforts of many people and the goodwill from our community, we will be successful.
Sincerely,
Robert A. Brown
President