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May 2025
Dear Faculty, Staff and Students in the Klingler College of Arts & Sciences,
It’s celebration season! Congratulations to everyone on the conclusion of a successful
academic year. Special congratulations to all of the undergraduate and graduate students
who have just completed their degrees along with the professors, advisors, staff members,
peers and mentors who both challenged and supported them along the way.
The month of May began with teaching honors for three of our faculty colleagues who
were recognized at the annual Père Marquette Dinner. There was likewise a strong Arts & Sciences presence at our Commencement ceremonies on May 10, with Diane Foley (mother of the late Jim Foley A&S ‘96) as
the undergraduate ceremony speaker, Justice Osondu (whose two majors included theology)
as the undergraduate student speaker and Anne Basting (professor emerita at UWM and
past collaborator with our A&S Center for the Advancement of the Humanities) as the
graduate ceremony speaker. As they highlighted the talents and commitments of our
faculty, students and supporters, these events illustrated Marquette’s mission pillars
of excellence, faith, leadership and service.
This is also a special month for me, as it marks my five-year anniversary as dean.
As I’ve reflected upon the accomplishments of our college over these years, what has
emerged is a deep sense of gratitude for the outstanding research, teaching and learning,
and community impact you have achieved. Our college has done all of this work during
a uniquely challenging time. One way to make sense of our collective perseverance
is to recognize our shared pursuit of the theological virtues: faith, hope and love.
Although they are gifts of grace, these virtues also deepen through practice. As David
Steindl-Rast O.S.B. writes in Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer: “Faith, Hope, and Love are not three boxes, with specified contents, as it were. Rather
they are ways of being alive, aspects of the one fullness of life” (87).
This “one fullness” indicates the integration we are called to pursue across body,
mind and spirit. In so doing, we bear witness to the ways in which “the difference
is in the and.” As we continue to celebrate this Jubilee Year with the theme Pilgrims of Hope—a
Jubilee launched by Pope Francis and carried on by our newly elected Pope Leo XIV—let’s
remember our charge to accompany young people in the creation of a hope-filled future. Blessings and
best wishes to the Class of 2025!
As always, please feel free to contact me with questions, concerns or suggestions. I appreciate hearing from you and exploring
ways we can all work together for the common good.
Dr. Heidi Bostic
Dean, Klingler College of Arts and Sciences
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