June 2022
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences,
I hope that your summer is off to a wonderful start. After an incredible Commencement
weekend, I savored the opportunity to spend time with faculty and staff colleagues
at a Marquette Center for Teaching and Learning retreat. The theme was Developing
Your Signature Pedagogy in the Ignatian Tradition. It was a time of renewal and community,
enabling participants to share successful pedagogical strategies, to debrief about
the past year and to deepen our connections with Marquette’s Catholic, Jesuit mission
as well as with one another.
In my family, this summer holds special opportunities for celebration. This month,
my father celebrated his 80th birthday. We gathered for a party, enjoyed the sunshine and shared stories. His birthday
has called me to reflect upon my father’s journey and how it relates to the work we
do at Marquette. My father grew up as the eldest of eleven surviving children. His
family was poor. Although he rarely talks about it, they experienced significant hardships
including food insecurity. He became a first-generation college student, an education
available to him thanks only to a basketball scholarship. That he ultimately led his
team to a national championship matters less than the fact that he learned discipline
and teamwork, grew as a person and earned his degree. His education opened doors to
a successful and satisfying career that culminated in leadership roles of progressive
responsibility. He was always involved in community work and philanthropy. The other
benefit of his time at the university is that he met my mother, who shared and helped
shape a devotion to public service. Thanks in part to my dad and the example he set,
I have deep empathy for students who need financial aid to access a university education
and I have a special place in my heart for student athletes. Of all the leadership
lessons my father taught me, one of the most significant is that leaders are here
to support the people on their team and to help secure the resources they need to
flourish. Happy Birthday Dad!
Here on campus, summer is a time of taking and teaching classes, welcoming students
to SPARK, planning for the coming academic year and intensive research for many faculty, staff
and students. I would like to highlight research in Arts & Sciences involving undergraduates
this summer. A dozen students in A&S have their research funded by Marquette’s Office
of Research and Innovation. The Department of Biological Sciences has organized a
10-week Summer Research Program for 23 students. In the Department of Physics, eight
of ten faculty members are hosting undergraduate researchers this summer. The Data
Science Across Disciplines initiative is an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates)
program sponsored by the National Science Foundation. In addition to core data science,
research projects include topics like electronic monitoring of juvenile defendants,
analyzing how a social media company CEO views privacy and predicting donations to
Ukraine. Other projects include the Indigeneity Lab and efforts sponsored by a variety
of offices, such as the McNair Scholars, the Honors Program and the Institute for
Women’s Leadership. I wish all participants a productive and enjoyable experience
engaging in faculty-mentored research this summer, and particularly thank our faculty
colleagues who demonstrate in this way their joint commitment to research and to student
success.
The summer months are also a time to establish high-level priorities and goals for
the Fall semester and beyond. As a College, as for the University, our priorities
will include student success, research excellence, community engagement and the pursuit
of diversity, equity and inclusion. Our work across these areas will reflect a steadfast
commitment to Marquette’s Catholic, Jesuit values, to the Universal Apostolic Preferences of
the Society of Jesus and to the tenets of Catholic Social Teaching. All of these values
were much in evidence this month as we celebrated our alumni through Alumni Awards
and welcomed alumni back to campus for reunion weekend. Here are the profiles of our award winners in Arts & Sciences. I was particularly honored to attend the
Black Alumni Association luncheon, featuring BAA President Erika Brown (Arts ‘97),
an HR executive who was a guest speaker last fall in Arts & Sciences Influentials,
a one-credit virtual course open to all juniors and seniors. On that note, I’ll be
teaching the course again in Fall 2022. Please encourage any rising juniors or seniors
to consider enrolling; information is here.
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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