|
October 2024
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences,
In his spiritual autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Thomas Merton refers to the energy of golden October. This sentiment describes our
college and campus this month: plenty of vitality and sunshine, complete with midterms,
research achievements and alumni engagement as we enjoy the colorful leaves and the
arrival of Fall.
The month began with a lively meeting of our Arts & Sciences College Leadership Council,
a group of committed alumni who serve as advocates and support the college philanthropically.
I’m grateful to the faculty and students representing the humanities, social sciences
and computational sciences who joined us at CLC to present on the Civic Dialogues program, student success and various perspectives on generative technologies. Several CLC members and I were also able to attend an impressive Chemistry undergraduate
research poster session following our meeting.
I’m excited to share that during the past few weeks, we have celebrated significant
gifts to the college. These include a fund to support undergraduate research in Physics,
an excellence fund for Social and Cultural Sciences, a donation to the Dean’s Excellence
Fund and a $2 million planned estate gift to support student scholarships. These generous
investments illustrate the confidence of our donors in the research and teaching in
which you excel.
The ongoing Securing Our Future initiative is another sign of our investment in the flourishing of Marquette, both
now and for years to come. Such flourishing will continue to require conversations
about how we might work to support faculty of all ranks as well as staff and students.
I am committed to doing whatever I can to make the campus environment the best it
can be. Inspiration for this important effort comes from all corners of our college.
For instance, I was delighted to attend the research poster presentations by graduate
students in Mathematical and Statistical Sciences this month. A common theme in much
of this research is how to reduce noise in the data, leading to advances in important
applied work ranging from medical imaging to predicting debris flows. I’ve been thinking
about how this aim—separating signal from noise and focusing on what matters most—relates
to everything we do.
Discerning what matters amid so many pressing demands is no easy task. We are called
to be both Martha and Mary (Luke 10: 38–42), getting the work done and devoting time
to reflection. To me, nothing is more important than strengthening our relationships
with one another and the broader community, as we strive to live out the Ignatian
Apostolic Preferences highlighted in Marquette’s strategic plan: Walking with the Excluded and Caring for our Common Home.
Increasingly, such work includes grappling with the influence of technology. This
month we co-hosted with the Medical College of Wisconsin a screening of the documentary
“The End of Humanity” followed by a panel discussion on the film’s critique of relinquishing human uniqueness
in a technocentric future. This kind of interdisciplinary event was another illustration
that the difference is in the and. Please continue to share your events, consider following the college on LinkedIn, and check out Marquette Today’s new calendar page.
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
|
