Dean's Message Fall 2024

Fall 2024

On the west side of Gasson 100 visitors will find a mural, The Church: The Educator of Mankind, framed by 22 shields containing the names of various disciplines representing the arts and sciences. At the apex of the frame, where the arts and sciences join together, we find the Latin word, Sapientia, the virtue of wisdom. This image speaks to the lived reality of the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences today. The College isn’t simply a place where 22 different academic departments exist as isolated entities doing their own siloed disciplinary work. Instead, it is our hope that the disciplines work together—join together—in leading students and scholars to wisdom. Wisdom is not the same thing as expertise or knowledge or information. Wisdom, instead, speaks to the wholeness we desire, to the ability to discern the relationships between things, and to the reflective capacity to make good decisions about how to act in the world.

This issue of Arts and Sciences invites you into that lived reality of the Morrissey College. You’ll meet 12 of the 40 new faculty colleagues who have joined us in the Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences this fall. You’ll learn about an international conference hosted here at BC bringing scientists and theologians together in an effort to end the plastics crisis, protect health, and promote the common good. And you’ll encounter faculty members from across the disciplines doing innovative work that reflects the fundamental human desire to grow not just in expertise, but in wisdom.

Gregory Kalscheur, S.J.
Dean, Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences