Many good things
We’re off to a phenomenal start this year. It’s hard to keep up with all the good things happening at Dominican.
We announced the name of our new publication, The Constellation: A Journal of Undergraduate Research. Our first issue will appear in the spring under the leadership of our terrific student editors. I can’t wait.
This week and next we have information sessions for our upcoming study abroad programs in Cuernevaca and El Salvador.
The first in our weekly Recipe Box Café series begins this week. This has been a wonderful Rosary College tradition for over 50 years and is part of our Quantity Food Production and Service course. The first café dinner is managed by senior Atinuke Isola featuring homemade tomato soup with a touch of coconut milk, banana-leaf wrapped salmon on a bed of quinoa with tropical fresh fruit salsa, and a dessert of frozen bananas enrobed in yogurt, dark chocolate, and diced dried apricots. Sounds good, and healthy, too!
WGN did a nice piece with Eboo Patel and me that aired a couple of weeks ago. Then Eboo gave a superb talk to our entire freshman class. Here’s the link.
Our students have started Interfaith Teahouse, to express opinions or values derived from religion, philosophy or elsewhere on various topics, sharing cookies and tea.
My own wonderful students in my Freshman Seminar Dimensions of the Self: Know Thyself! make me laugh and get me to tell them all kinds of things to make their heads spin. In an early assignment I asked them to invent a course they wished students could take and here were a few of their responses:
- In Their Shoes “takes students outside of the classroom to work with different service organizations, and challenges them to see life from other people’s perspectives.”
- Your Community 101 “offers you the opportunity to learn more about what your community used to be like, to learn more than you already know about it now, and more.” This student went on to say that during high school, “I tried to do whatever I could to help my community, not because I was asked, or told, or getting paid to do it, but because I wanted to be a bigger part of the community.”
- Improv would “require students to pair up and act out responses to particular topics or emotions. This will teach students how to use their imaginations and create a story that they will bring to life.”
- Money Mania would teach students “how to manage money—not money that their parents let them use, but money students work for and earn. Students will be shown the expenses of life as an adult from owning a car to bill paying methods, mortgage payments, household expenses, etc. Once completed students will have a more clear idea of the responsibility that comes with managing their own money.”
- Humanities “lets students get exposed to life’s big questions such as the existence of God, what reality is, and how good and evil are developed. By arousing these questions, students are asked to dig deeper than they normally would in order to strive to answer questions that could directly affect their lives.”
A few of my students joined the many other freshmen on a recent Emerging Leaders Retreat.
Tomorrow is our second annual university-wide Caritas Veritas Symposium, where faculty, staff and students will share their research and reflections on how our motto of love and truth translates into a mission of creating a more just and humane world. A great day at Dominican.
So, it’s an exciting start to a new school year. It makes me remember why I love this work, why it’s a privilege to be in conversation with our amazing students. And I haven’t even mentioned the Caritas Veritas tattoo.
