Considering care in new ways
September 14, 2023
The CAS deans’ office hopes that everyone has been settling in nicely to our fall 2023 semester. The opening of the academic year feels very familiar to most of us. We have had decades of practice greeting September with an energy that comes with new classes, new students, and new endeavors. The rebirth that most folks associate solely with spring has a particular kind of celebration each fall on the university campus.
There’s a risk, of course, that this same familiarity makes it easy to take the newness for granted—to see the ritual of the academic year as repetitive and our tasks as rote. However, the Xavier campus, I would argue, is particularly well suited for preventing this kind of malaise. Choose any one of the spots designed for reflection at Xavier, and you find that autumn brings out its best aspects. This is true at the Walter Bonvell Memorial Garden (between Albers and Logan), the Shrine of Our Lady (below Edgecliff Hall), or our new Legacy Labyrinth (between Smith and the HUB).
This newness in the air also cannot help but bring to mind Xavier’s newest pursuits. As you may remember, President Hanycz has built Xavier’s new Strategic Plan on the foundation of four aspects of care. These versions of cura offer fruitful ways of thinking about our own newness this fall. As a new associate dean I find myself receiving, offering, and supporting care in a breadth of ways each week. And here in the College of Arts and Sciences we want to make sure that this care (these intersecting “kinds of” care) offers support to you on all fronts.
The curas invite us to consider care in new ways in the College. Cura studiorum (care for the learning) allows us to reflect on the curricular changes that will make our programs stronger; it might have us introduce a new kind of in-class collaboration that helps connect students more effectively to class content and to one another. Cura apostolica (care for the institution) invites us to think about what new goals we can accomplish through a committee; it might call us to move our service energies into spaces we hadn’t considered before. Cura propria (care for the self) reminds us to reevaluate daily our own needs; new, refreshed eyes help us imagine the best versions of ourselves on campus. And cura personalis (care for the whole person) helps remind us of the fullness of each person we encounter on campus; it lies at the heart of Xavier’s educational project.
CAS is pleased that we, this new, unique set of colleagues, get to enjoy fall 2023 together.
Stephen Yandell
Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
