Messages from the Dean

Arts & Sciences Dean Dianne Harris offers a personal reflection on the importance of voting.

Dean Harris shares a poem that she wrote as we welcome new and returning Huskies to the College of Arts & Sciences.

The practices we use in higher education are always changing in response to new technologies and shifting priorities, which in the College of Arts & Sciences include an increased focus on student success and increasingly collaborative modes of research and creative productivity. 

February may be the shortest month of the year, but it was very busy, especially for our College of Arts & Sciences Rethinking the Academy initiative. We were grateful to have an extra, 29th day this year since all aspects of the initiative were activated.

Dean Dianne Harris reflects on the importance of being together in person on campus after spending so much time interacting virtually during the pandemic. 

What tools are required in order to think productively about the future? What methods do we need to learn to structure futurist thinking, and what values will inform our visions of the future? How might we be able to identify a set of preferred futures, and then set about working towards their eventual realization?

The dean's leadership team has adopted a set of guiding principles for our shared work as we continue to reimagine liberal arts education for the next 50 years.

A group of undergraduate and graduate students meet with Dean Harris regularly as the Arts and Sciences Advisory Council for Students (ASACS). "I consider these generous students as being among my greatest campus resources," writes the dean. 

Launching this initiative offers opportunities for us to collectively consider what higher education can be when we design it for today and for the near future, writes Dean Harris.

The document provides a framework and a set of actions we can take towards becoming a more equitable, inclusive, accessible, and just university.