Great people
September 16, 2019 |
Great people. They are the most critical ingredients to providing the high-quality, distinctive and compelling academic programs that serve the needs of our students, our community and our world.And January represents a peak of the year’s season for recruiting and developing the college’s great faculty. We’ve just welcomed (and welcomed back) talented adjunct faculty; we’re in the midst of the annual evaluation and rank & tenure processes designed to foster the continued growth of our faculty; and many of our departments are busy interviewing diverse and talented candidates to join our community next year. We expect to welcome nearly 20 new permanent faculty in the fall.
So for good reason, many of us are spending hours upon hours this month recruiting, mentoring, supporting, and developing the college’s great people.
With that in mind, the start of 2019 calls to mind a particularly critical decision made fifty years ago, one that in a single stroke greatly strengthened our university: in 1969, Xavier fully welcomed women into the college’s undergraduate program. (There were earlier milestones, to be sure; the first (religious) women graduated from XU in 1918.)
And fifty years from now? The future flourishing of the college depends on the great and diverse people we’re recruiting and developing today.
From my vantage point—having spent the past two months already engrossed in faculty dossiers, annual updates, and candidate CVs—we’ve got a great half-century ahead of us.
