April 2024
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences,
What a beautiful month this has been! Along with the blooming tulips and record numbers
of prospective students visiting campus, we have witnessed inspiring accomplishments
across our College.
Several of our colleagues were honored at the Distinguished Scholars event this month. The Haggerty Award—Marquette’s top honor for research—went to Dr.
Risa Brooks of the Department of Political Science. Congratulations to all of this
year’s award recipients! April also brought to campus several outstanding speakers
on engaging topics. The Père Marquette Lecture in Theology focused on Christian Hellenism, the Coyne Lecture in Physics offered insights into the mysterious phenomenon of fast radio bursts from
space and the Casper Lecture in History examined the crucial subjects of climate change and the Anthropocene.
Climate change was also the focus of a Marquette Civic Dialogues program segment that aired this month on Wisconsin PBS. A&S colleagues were part of the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute Symposium
“Bridging Innovation & Impact”; I particularly appreciated meeting Ann Skeet from
our fellow Jesuit institution Santa Clara University and hearing her keynote on “Integrating
Ethics into Innovation.”
This month we hosted an all-Colleges meeting—including both Arts & Sciences and Education—to
commemorate this year’s milestones and envision the year to come. That same week,
we held an in-person meeting of our A&S College Leadership Council, featuring a Near West Side neighborhood tour thanks to Pat Kennelly and Sherri Walker of the Center for Peacemaking and robust discussion of the many strengths and opportunities in our College. This
month also brought the inaugural A&S Breakfast Club for alumni, hosted by a CLC member
at the Milwaukee Athletic Club and featuring Drs. Nakia Gordon and Alyson Gerdes who
presented on their student wellness program. In addition, this month I visited with
alumni in Chicago, where John Baworowsky, Siena Morrissey Boutelle and I co-hosted
a dinner for admitted students.
April afforded us a special chance to honor and thank our staff colleagues on April
24, Administrative Professionals Day, at a breakfast in Sensenbrenner Hall. We also
kicked off staff annual performance evaluation season, an opportunity to appreciate
the many contributions and achievements of staff members this academic year and to
plan for the coming year.
Amid this whirlwind of events, Dr. Michael Olson of the Department of Philosophy was
appointed the new director of the Marquette Core Curriculum. Let’s continue to help students and colleagues
understand and embrace the MCC as a crucial part of the liberal arts education that
Marquette offers. MCC courses deepen our sense of possibility and broaden our imagination.
They draw us to transcendence, that is, to a higher calling beyond the mundane. Through
these courses, students have the occasion to reflect upon our shared humanity and
values, which remain central to Marquette’s Catholic, Jesuit mission.
To stay updated on College events, please follow us on social media, including our
newly launched Arts & Sciences LinkedIn page. Thanks for everything you do!
As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, concerns or suggestions. I appreciate hearing from you and exploring
ways we can all work together for the common good.
Dr. Heidi Bostic Dean, Klingler College of Arts and Sciences
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