Message from Dean Gregory Kalscheur, S.J.
Message from Dean Gregory Kalscheur, S.J.
Fall 2017
The work of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences lies at the heart of Ever to Excel: Advancing Boston College’s Mission, the ambitious and innovative strategic plan President William P. Leahy, S.J., introduced at the fall 2017 University Convocation. Renewing Boston College’s foundational commitment to providing a formative humanistic education for the common good, the plan comprises four strategic directions: (1) reenvisioning liberal arts education; (2) promoting formation for mission across the University; (3) expanding support for research and scholarship that contribute to the common good; and (4) increasing Boston College’s presence in Boston, in the United States, and around the globe.
Morrissey College faculty members are committed to reconceiving and reanimating the University’s distinctive core curriculum—the foundation of a humanistic Boston College liberal arts education. As the ongoing process of core renewal has become a vital part of academic life at Boston College, I announced in October that the Arts and Sciences Honors Program would come to an end in 2021, once the last group of students currently enrolled in the program has graduated.
The creation of the Honors Program 60 years ago was part of an effort to recruit superior students to Boston College, to offer a distinctive approach to the liberal arts in the core, and to promote the institution’s academic development. In 2017, the pressing needs that led to the establishment of the Honors Program no longer exist. Now nationally recognized as a highly selective university that attracts academically stronger applicants each year, Boston College offers a challenging curriculum to all of its undergraduates. Departmental honors courses and the Scholar of the College program provide rigorous opportunities for our most outstanding students to demonstrate distinctive academic excellence. In many ways, Boston College has become the institution that the founders of the Honors Program dreamed of bringing into being.
All of us who study, teach, and work today at this great university owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to the Honors Program’s leaders over the years as well as to all of the faculty members who have participated in the program. Their dedicated teaching and care for their students have made studying in the Honors Program a life-changing experience for many. We remain committed to providing a transformative liberal arts education for all of our students, continuing to emphasize our distinctive core curriculum, pursuing the goals of intellectual development and character formation, and preparing our students for a lifetime of engagement with fundamental questions about what it is to be human and to live a good life. Through the Perspectives Program, we also remain committed to offering our students an interdisciplinary great books program with an integrative approach to the liberal arts, grounded in the Catholic intellectual tradition and in service to the University’s Jesuit, Catholic mission.
The strategic plan’s call to promote research and scholarship that contribute to the common good is reflected in plans for the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, announced in November. (See the article in this edition of Arts and Sciences.) The Morrissey College will contribute significantly to this dynamic University-wide initiative, which will draw scholars from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities together in research and teaching focused on finding solutions to pressing problems related to energy, the environment, and health.