On March 23, a year and nine days before the date that will mark the 150th anniversary of the University’s charter, @BC sent a camera crew to O’Neill Plaza to get the founding facts—selecting students at random for a good-natured history test.

The undergraduates interviewed, with thanks, were, in order of first appearance: Ashlie Pruitt ’15, Alexander Oliveiri ’12, Kelly Tyman ’14, Elizabeth Gavin ’14, Benjamin Habito ’15, Jake Alexander ’14, Ted Gu ’12, James Keeley ’13, Emily Morton ’12, Korey McIsaac ’12, Sara Gomez ’12, Nina Touraji ’15, Georgia Burke ’15, Ryan Murphy ’13, Thomas Mattera ’13, Noel Simon ’13, Sarah Winglass ’14, and Brandan Ray ’15.

Details of the University’s 150th celebration—which will include a Mass at Fenway Park and a concert at Symphony Hall, as well as speakers and symposia throughout the coming three semesters—can be found at Boston College’s dedicated anniversary website, www.bc.edu/150. Features there include:

An introduction to mathematician Dawei Chen’s research, Carney 305, February 15, 2012.

A self-described “algebraic geometer with broad interests,” assistant professor Dawei Chen joined the mathematics faculty in 2011, as the department entered the second year of offering its Ph.D. program. On February 15, Chen gave a talk to first-year graduate students titled “Counting Branched Covers.” His summary of the talk begins: “A doughnut and a car tire are of the same type, because they both have one hole, but a pretzel with three holes is different. In mathematics, we can classify surfaces based on the number of holes and study their geometric structures.” Branch covers, he explains, are “finite maps from one surface to another.”

The eighth annual BC Idol competition concluded on the evening of Thursday, February 16 in Robsham Theater with 10 undergraduate acts culled from 52 at regional auditions held on the Newton, Lower, and Upper campuses. Contestants vied for prizes ranging from $100 to $350 before a panel of judges from the Jesuit community. Some 350 audience members, who paid $10 for the privilege, voted on the winners. Proceeds from the event will help support music lessons and instrument purchases at the St. Columbkille Partnership School, a Catholic elementary school in Brighton operated in collaboration with the Archdiocese of Boston and Boston College. Stealing the show at intervals were St. Columbkille students who performed a flurry of Irish steps and a traditional Indian dance and were rewarded with small plush Baldwins. The event raised $3,500.

Emcees (from left): Hope Benedetti ’13 and Megan Krakowiak ’12.

Contestants (in order of appearance): Alex Proie ’15, Connor Hutchison ’14, Brian Stamm ’12 and Rachael Glassman ’12 (duet), Alex Layton ’13 (third place), Jesús Tapia ’14, Ricky Scheiber ’15 and Julianne Quaas ’15 (duet, first place), Monica Wright ’14, Ally Norton ’13, Andrea Alonso ’14 (second place), and Kristina Rex ’15.

Judges (in speaking order): Don MacMillan, SJ; Michael Davidson, SJ; and Mario Powell, SJ, ’03.

University sponsors: Emerging Leadership Program, Student Programs Office, Office of Community and Governmental Affairs, and Lynch School of Education Senate.

On February 14, novelist Junot Díaz came to campus for a three-day residency that included delivering a Lowell Lecture and meeting with student writers, faculty, and staff. Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, about a Dominican-American nerd (his term) obsessed with science fiction and comics, garnered a National Book Critics Circle Award in 2007 and a Pulitzer Prize in 2008. On the morning of February 16, the author met with the students of Elizabeth Graver’s Forms and Techniques of Fiction class and Min Song’s Contemporary American Fiction class for a free-ranging Q&A in Gasson Commons. The cameras of @BC were on hand.

The main floor of the O’Neill Library, known as Level Three, has undergone changes in the last year. A center for printing, copying, and scanning was created, with a service desk staffed by students who provide technical assistance. Adjacent to the circulation desk, the former reserves room has been expanded by roughly a third and turned into the O’Neill Reading Room, an open space for individual and group study. (Reserved materials have moved to the main circulation desk.) Along one wall of the new reading room, display cases exhibit rare books and artifacts from the Burns Library. The rest of the space is given over to what University Librarian Tom Wall calls “a mixed landscape”—traditional long wooden tables, upholstered chairs, and booths—that can accommodate approximately 125 people.

On February 2 (above), Louis Serafini ’13 was ensconced in the new O’Neill Reading Room.

Coming together from 17 states and three countries, 92 past and present members of the Bostonians, the University’s oldest a capella group, gathered on campus on December 10 for a concert celebrating the ensemble’s 25th anniversary. After a brief warm-up in an adjacent classroom, the performers moved to the well of a Devlin lecture hall where, in breakout groups of contemporaries or all together, they delivered a playlist of standards. Observed current Bostonians president Erin McKenna ’12, “The mikes probably weren’t necessary.”

Speakers and soloists, in order of appearance: Dave Petrelli ’00, Tom Ferguson ’91, Tom Leyden ’94, Tom Luzarraga ’95, Brian Cromwell ’96, Keri Gleason O’Connor ’95, Mike LeBlanc ’98, Lori Trespicio Regan ’01, Dave Petrelli ’00, Angela Ha ’08, Alvic Plan ’11, Chris Baxter ’09.

A Boston College Minute: Behind the scenes of a new special exhibition, Rural Ireland: The Inside Story, filmed at the McMullen Museum, January 23–February 2, 2012.

With each new show at the McMullen Museum, the rooms are reconfigured—walls moved and painted, features such as alcoves built, a new lighting scheme designed. For the current show, Rural Ireland: The Inside Story, Diana Larsen, the museum’s exhibition and collections manager/designer, also spent some four weeks unpacking, inspecting, positioning, and polishing more than 135 pieces—from drawings to furniture to cooking utensils—assembled from collections in Ireland, Scotland, Great Britain, and the United States (including the University’s Burns Library). Proceeding chronologically through the 19th and early 20th centuries, the exhibition, which was curated by Larsen and Irish studies professor Vera Kreilkamp, will remain on display until June 3.