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| Posted 03.16.07 |
New Science Center Gets Boost from Trustee, Wife
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A $2.5 million pledge from Board of Trustee
member Joshua Boger ' 73, and Amy Boger will support planning
for a new molecular and life sciences building at Wesleyan.
 Joshua
Boger, pictured at left, who founded and currently serves as president and
CEO of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., of Cambridge, leads Wesleyan's Science
Advisory Council, which works to strengthen the sciences at Wesleyan and to
raise their visibility on and off campus. He also has served as a charter
trustee of Wesleyan since 1999.
Payette Associates of Cambridge, Mass., is working with faculty in the
molecular and life sciences disciplines on programming and feasibility
studies for the building, which would replace the Hall-Atwater Laboratory.
These studies will provide the basis for a schematic design to be completed
within a year. A $1 million gift from Board of Trustees member George Ring P
'98 '02 and his family has supported the initial planning. The Bogers' gift is intended
both to support this work through the schematic design phase and to catalyze
further fundraising for the project. The building is expected to provide at
least 175,000 square feet of space and to cost at least $125 million. If
fundraising proceeds quickly, construction could begin as early as 2009.
Boger believes that, in addition to serving the needs of science faculty,
graduate students and science majors, the new building should support the
efforts of Wesleyan faculty to address a crucial need for science literacy
among college graduates. "The challenge to society is to have everyone
comfortable and conversant with the sciences," he says. "We want all our
students to be able to go out into the real world and be players in
discussions that involve science issues, to understand what it means to be a
scientist, to be confident approaching scientists and talking to them about
the many questions of the day that concern science. That means all our
students, whether English majors or economists, should have some experience
with real science.
"Part of the goal for the new building will be to help pull the rest of the
campus into the experience of real science," Boger adds. "We think the
architecture should be inviting and support the sense that science is fun."
Wesleyan's educational model features science graduate programs situated
within a traditional liberal arts college, as well as a strong focus on
interdisciplinary research and teaching. Wesleyan undergraduates have
opportunities to participate in extramurally funded research in close
partnership with faculty and graduate students. They frequently participate
in upper-level project-based laboratory experiences, and over a third of
science majors execute independent research projects in the laboratories of
Wesleyan faculty. According to data compiled by the National Science
Foundation, Wesleyan consistently ranks among the top 10 baccalaureate
colleges in the numbers of students going on to obtain the Ph.D degree in the
sciences.
Boger began to realize his own love of the sciences when as a boy of nine he
began growing potassium permanganate crystals in a lab he set up above the
family garage. He also swabbed the mouths of neighborhood playmates and grew
cultures in his mother's refrigerator.
"If you had asked me then if I was going to be a scientist, I wouldn't have
understood why you were asking," he says. "It was simply that science was a
fun thing to do.
"Fast forward a few years to the day I walked into Max Tishler's organic
chemistry class, and that was a good moment as well," Boger says. "Max was
amazingly animated and passionate about why this was all so important. Peter
Leermakers was my Intro to Chem teacher, and he had the same sense of fun."
Boger is a director and vice chairman of BIO, the biopharmaceutical industry
trade association; a founding director of the New England Healthcare
Institute, and a director of the Hastings Institute. He holds a BA in
chemistry and philosophy from Wesleyan and MS and PhD degrees in chemistry
from Harvard University. Amy Schafer Boger , a physician and Fellow of the
American Academy of Pediatrics, is a professional ceramic artist.
"We are grateful to Joshua Boger for his leadership on the Science Advisory
Council and the Board of Trustees and to Joshua and Amy for their personal
generosity to Wesleyan," says President Doug Bennet. "Their enthusiasm for
Wesleyan science education inspires all of us to think expansively about
ways we can advance our work to address a crucial societal need. We look
forward to having a facility that will support the experience of science as
a vital and integral part of the education all our students receive."
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By Justin Harmon, vice president for Public
Affairs |
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