Harold Petersen of Fertile, Minnesota (population 842), joined Boston College’s economics faculty in 1960 with a Ph.D. from Brown University. He would spend the next 56 years on the Heights, chairing his department twice (1971–78 and 1984–88) and teaching more than 10,000 undergraduates in courses such as “Capital Markets,” “Statistics,” and “Econometrics.” Petersen spoke with @BC on April 14, a month before his retirement.

Associate professor of music Ralf Yusuf Gawlick has never met his biological mother. He knows only that a young Kurdish woman risked much to travel and give birth to him in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, West Germany, and then left him in an orphanage. Forty-seven years later, Gawlick has composed Imagined Memories, a 40-minute “musical memoir” for string quartet that conceives shared experiences between mother and son.

The Hugo Wolf Quartet, whom Gawlick chose to premiere the work, rehearsed the score for three months in their home city of Vienna in early 2016, but Gawlick waited to hear them until he could be in the same room. @BC interviewed the composer in his office on April 21, three days before the quartet landed in Boston, and filmed a rehearsal in O’Connell House, where Gawlick heard his score performed for the first time.

The quartet premiered Imagined Memories in St. Mary’s Chapel on April 28, with a second performance scheduled in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall in New York City on April 29.

Gawlick teaches courses in “Tonal Composition” and “Music of the Modern Era” at Boston College.

Listen to a clip from the Hugo Wolf Quartet’s studio recording of Imagined Memories.

More than 140 undergraduates with an interest in pursuing “the business of sports” turned out for an evening of speed networking on February 22. In 15-minute segments, and in small groups, the students had the opportunity to sit down at a table hosted by a representative from Under Armour, Nike, the Boston Globe, the Women’s Tennis Association, the Boston Celtics, ESPN, or one of 12 other companies and organizations—until the melody of “For Boston” resounded and it was time to move on to another table. Wan-Yi Sweeting ’16 and fellow members of the student-run Sports Business Society at the Carroll School of Management organized the event, which took place in the Murray Room. The Career Center and Boston College Athletics were cosponsors.

Vera Kreilkamp, a lecturer in the Irish Studies program, and Diana Larsen, assistant director of the McMullen Museum, spent four years gathering more than 150 rare pieces from around Ireland for the spring 2016 McMullen show, The Arts and Crafts Movement: Making It Irish, which they co-curated. Kreilkamp describes the hunt and why they undertook it. The exhibition runs through June 5.

Invited to create a gift of holiday music, renowned fiddler Séamus Connolly, Boston College’s Sullivan Family Artist-in-Residence, chose two Irish Christmas pieces, one traditional, the other contemporary. On December 10, he brought his fiddle to Gasson 100 to perform before the stained-glass “Irish Window”: “The Piper Through the Meadow Straying,” with a melody similar to “Deck the Halls,” and “Christmas Eve,“ composed by Tommy Coen (1910-74).

In September, Connolly announced he would retire at the end of the fall, after teaching music in Boston College’s Irish Studies program for 25 years. Connolly is the winner of 10 all-Ireland fiddle championships—taking home the first when he was 13 years old. Other honors include, in 2013, a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship and the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. In 2003, he founded and went on to direct the University’s Gaelic Roots Music, Song, Dance, Workshop, and Lecture Series. For this performance he is joined on piano by Elizabeth Sweeney, the Irish music librarian at the John J. Burns Library. Sweeney was one of two students in Connolly’s first class at Boston College.

On December 3, Boston College Magazine’s Zachary Jason ’11 stood in front of the O’Neill Plaza Christmas tree and interviewed passing students about their holiday traditions and wishes.

With thanks to, in order of appearance (groups, left to right): Sarah Mandelblatt ’19 and Rebecca Ramjug ’19; Aba Samaan ’19 and Dan Casey ’17; Cristy Hernandez ’16; Steve Sheehan ’18; Jamie Kim ’17 and Khadijah Stephen ’16; Matt Garbus ’18; Catherine Zhang ’19; Paola Perez ’16; Coco Muir ’18; Shawn McNiff ’16; Emily Curley ’18; Deven Rana ’18, Sean Hughes ’19; Jojo Leveroni ’18; Kevin Kane ’16; Jacqueline Lacovara ’18; Billy Antonides ’18 and Matt O’Connor ’18; Kelly Sennot ’16 and Lydia Ahern ’16.

Aspiring student entrepreneurs took the stage in Gasson 100 on the last Tuesday night of October to present their ideas for new businesses to a panel of four alumni judges with backgrounds in venture capital. An audience of their peers, friends, and faculty (who arrived to find thunder sticks on every chair) provided applause. Fifteen entrepreneurial teams had been pre-selected from among 27 applicants on the basis of video submissions. Each team had 60 seconds to present, as a large digital clock, stage left, counted down. Two minutes were then allotted for questions from the judges, who chose winners in four categories—best overall, best product, best service, and likely social impact—with cash prizes ranging from $200 to $500. A “crowd favorite” award was determined via text messages. The event was sponsored by the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carroll School of Management.

Students (and their ventures), in order of appearance: Elyse Bush ’16 (ModilMe), Chris Jewett ’16 (Pacnote), Anders Bill ’17 (MusicSplitter), Ellie Baer ’16 (Levelas), emcee Eliott Chapuis ’16 (of the student organization Start@Shea), Brianna Beaumont ’16 (Green Tops), Ameet Kallarackal ’18 (Fide), Aakash Garg ’18 (U Start), and Daniel Williams ’16 (Xperii).

Judges, from left: Thomas Jennings ’95, managing director, Summit Partners; Joe Matarese ’90, CEO, Medicus Healthcare Solutions; Rita Rodin ’90, partner in the intellectual property and technology division, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP; and John Clavin ’84, executive vice president, Merganser Capital Management.

Assistant professor of biology Tim van Opijnen applies an approach called systems biology—a process of examining simultaneously all elements of an organism—to the common and potentially deadly bacterium Streptococcus pneumonia. Using genomic sequencing along with high-volume robotic testing systems and computer modeling, van Opijnen and his lab members aim to identify “pressure points” in the bacterium’s system that might allow effective treatment of the disease and reduce the likelihood of antibiotic resistance. Van Opijnen has been pursuing this line of research since 2009. He has published accounts of his work in numerous journals, including Nature Methods, Nature Reviews in Microbiology, Genome Research, and Cell, Host & Microbe. The lab’s research is supported by several grants, amounting to more than $4,000,000, from the National Institutes of Health and the PEW Charitable Trust.