Sometimes when the calendar starts to look like a solid block, I can’t resist the temptation to count--in the two weeks after Thanksgiving,  I had 102 calendared meetings, events, scheduled phone calls, celebrations and drop ins.  My conversations with others confirm that they are also inordinately busy. Perhaps when Thanksgiving comes late, it compresses things—and after all, ‘tis the season for finals, and an entertaining variety of other things.  All that busyness makes me particularly grateful to those who came out to hear our three excellent Associate Dean candidates (as one person commented, “they’re ALL so good!”), those who served on search committees, and of course the intrepid five who took on becoming interim assistant deans.  I was also very glad that so many carved out some time to join in our Holiday Open House, and in Pat Haynes’s retirement celebration.

2015 brought with it much important good news.  For the first time in GVSU’s history, we were awarded an NEA grant.  While that certainly brings additional prestige to P.I. Bill Ryan and the New Music Ensemble, it is also a powerful reminder of two things: that nothing is beyond us, and that we exceed expectations a great deal around here.  It is also the furtherance of a dream that Bill had to take students on successive tours of national parks, to commission site specific works, and to bring new music to new audiences. Two of our CLAS colleagues, Andy Schlewitz (Poli Sci) and Nora Salas (History), are involved in a recently announced NEH Common Heritage grant.   I hope this success invites others to think ambitiously about ways to make their big dream happen. 

I also wanted you to know that while we were still coming down off the thrill of opening Kindschi Hall of Science, we learned that the long awaited dream of the black box theatre is now on the docket.  Colleagues outside the performing arts have sometimes asked what a black box theatre is.  Unlike the black boxes of science, we actually do know what’s going on inside.  This kind of space is stripped down to the essentials, usually painted black and is highly reconfigurable—it can be set up with the audience on more than one side, for instance.  For those who have worked within the tight constraints of Louis Armstrong Theatre, it provides different opportunities, and more of them.  In a couple years this mutable space will become a huge gift to all of us as we attend performances that are the realized visions of our colleagues and students.  And remember, every new space has cascades of implications that can touch other units too.

I hope you have the chance to congratulate our new Associate Dean for Curriculum, Pedagogy and Academic Opportunity Kevin Tutt.  It turns out that he was performing his interim Assistant Dean role on strategic planning so well that several unit heads asked that we keep him on that task.  Instead of having to refill that slot just as units do their own strategic updates, as mentioned in the Weekly Mailing interim Assistant Dean Brad Ambrose will keep the fraction of his portfolio that addresses student concerns for Winter semester. I’m grateful for his willingness to extend beyond our initial one term deal—and like departments which are living within their means, this solution allows us not to add a dollar of cost to the College Office.  Unable to come up with a similarly excellent excuse, I must allow interim Assistant Dean Janel Pettes Guikema to escape (I meant “return”) to MLL with our deep appreciation and thanks.  Janel proves that “effective” and “a joy to work with” can fit in the same sentence about a dean.  We really do hate to break up the band—the whole office is in agreement that they have brought an injection of great energy, new ideas and perspectives, different timbres of humor, and a reinvigorating respect for all the kinds of work departments do.  They have also been a veritable Urban Dictionary of new terms for the functions of the College Office.  Merritt Taylor and Donovan Anderson continue in their roles as planned through this academic year while masterfully juggling their departmental work, and the interim-senior Associate Dean Gretchen Galbraith’s many humane and effective contributions should not go unnoticed.  If this is what functional stability can look like, well, it’s way more fun than it’s given credit for.

Oh, and while I’m expressing my gratitude to the highly reconfigurable, the variously adaptable, the willing, and the very busy, my hat’s off to our governance committees.  They approached their work with remarkable intelligence, flexibility, and good humor all year.  Much has been done to bring you sustainably better elections, an engaging Out of the Box event coming in 2016, rich curricular innovations, a commitment to strengthening the faculty, and personnel processes based on deep understanding of our standards and the things that matter in an academic life.

At Commencement, we were up slightly on 2014, graduating 432 undergraduates and 9 master’s students.  The numbers are just a shorthand for the many stories in which you played a part.  Perhaps a good New Year’s resolution would be to keep in touch with these Lakers for a Lifetime.

I wish you a happy and fulfilling 2016.  It is already shaping up with exciting events and new ventures.  Most of all, I thank you for a rousing, unpredictable, productive and deeply engaged 2015—the best thing to be said about it is that it raises our sights.