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December 2024
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences,听
Advent greetings! How have you found this season? I appreciate the contrasts, challenges
and consolations it brings. Advent marks the end of the calendar year but the beginning
of the Church year. It鈥檚 a time of short days and long nights when we seek light in
the darkness. Advent brings good news to our upside-down, wounded world. It鈥檚 a time
to look back over the past year and to look ahead with hope.
For me, a key source of hope and inspiration comes through reflecting upon the past
semester and the good work you all do. This month brought our end-of-semester all-Colleges
(both A&S and Education) meeting for faculty and staff on December 3. During that
meeting, we officially welcomed the 19 new full-time colleagues who joined us this
fall. We discussed updates on our progress toward the goals outlined in Marquette鈥檚
, 鈥淕uided by Mission, Inspired to Change.鈥� Our achievements in enrollment, student
success and research offered reasons to celebrate. In research, we garnered $12.5
million in external grant awards during the most recent fiscal year from agencies
and organizations such as the National Institutes of Health, the Clare Booth Luce
Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the National
Security Administration, Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin, the Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We also cheered for our
Advancement results of nearly $4 million thus far this fiscal year, in support of
faculty research, scholarships, community engagement and student success activities.
This semester saw the launch of the A&S Peer Mentors program, highlighted in a December
6 presentation by our inaugural group of student mentors at the . Those in attendance learned about the mentors鈥� handbook these students created,
their winning strategies for connecting with mentees, and ways to address the most
common questions from students鈥攑articularly about developing study skills. In other
student-success news, our ARSC 1953 First-Year Experience course is going strong,
with an explicit connection to the three Cs of Marquette鈥檚 overall Student Success
strategy: communication, community and classroom. Thanks to Kalyn Gackowski for her
leadership in these endeavors and to all of you who have done so much to foster student
success over the past semester.
This kind of support communicates to students and others a message of Advent. As I
was seeking a way to convey these ideas, I heard a wonderful presentation by Theology
graduate student Brad Carter. Meditating upon the work of Karl Rahner SJ, he remarked:
鈥淸S]alvation is found not in closing down meaning by enforcing division, category
and hierarchy, but in our openness to mystery which invites the infinite to flood
the finite world.鈥� Advent invites us to open ourselves to the emergence of goodness,
to light in the darkness, to hopeful expectation. I wish you and yours a beautiful
season and a wonderful start to the New Year.
As always, please feel free to听contact me听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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