Last week we held our 8th annual Faculty Convocation for the Lakeside Campuses, attended by over 350 faculty. It was a wonderful afternoon on which to welcome 92 new faculty to our community and to celebrate the accomplishments of our faculty. Among those being recognized were Professor Nenad Jukic, of the Quinlan School of Business, who was selected as the Faculty Member of the Year, for his exceptional performance in teaching, research and service. We also awarded for the first time, the Ignatius Loyola Award for Excellence in Teaching, to Professor Anita Weinberg of the School of Law, an extraordinary teacher both inside and outside of the classroom.
Because we are closing in on the end of our current strategic plan, “Our Commitment to Excellence,” I used my convocation talk to provide a snapshot of our key accomplishments toward bringing the plan to fruition during the past five years. You can read my remarks and those of Fr. Garanzini here: http://www.luc.edu/academicaffairs/convocation/. I hope that you will come away from my presentation with the same understanding that I have. That is, because of the collaboration among faculty, the collaboration between the Academic Affairs Division and the Student Development Division, and the collaboration among the senior university administration, the deans, and the faculty—we have accomplished some major objectives to enhance our mission to deliver a transformative education in the Jesuit tradition. We still have much work to do to bring the plan to completion. But as we prepare for our February 23-24, 2015 reaccreditation visit by the Higher Learning Commission, we have a strong position from which to present our quality assurance case to the accreditors. And as we begin the process of developing the next plan and vision for Loyola, we do so with the knowledge that our institution is on a solid foundation and poised for an even more successful future.