From Interim Dean Rachel A. Walsh, September 2024
We are off to an excellent start to the fall quarter and the 2024-2025 academic year. While we face some challenges as a University and as a College, we have a lot to rally around and to look forward to as a community. I’ve enjoyed seeing so much energy from CAHSS students, faculty and staff this fall.
I’m always glad to meet new members of our community and this fall it was wonderful to connect with our new undergraduate and graduate students at our College Welcome and graduate welcome breakfast. I also had the pleasure of meeting with 22 new members of our distinguished faculty. They are highly accomplished researchers and artists, who bring deep expertise and a wealth of experiences to CAHSS. If you haven’t met them, you can read more about them here in the University of Denver New Faculty guide.
We have three new faculty directors this fall who will lead programs that help drive our commitment to students, community and the public good:
Santhosh Chandrashekar, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, and an affiliated faculty with Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Gender and Women's Studies and the Joint Doctoral Program in Religious Studies, will serve as our 2024-25 Faculty Director of CAHSS DEI initiatives.
Kareem El Damanhoury, Associate Professor of Multimedia Journalism, Digital Storytelling and Media Studies in MFJS, will serve as our 2024-25 Faculty Director of DU’s Prison Arts Initiative.
Susan Walter, Associate Professor of Spanish Language, Literary and Cultural Studies, will serve as our 2024-25 Faculty Director of the CAHSS First Generation College Student Program.
I’d also like to highlight two CAHSS faculty members who were recently recognized by DU as Career Champions, for their mentorship of our students in their professional development:
Elizabeth Escobedo, associate professor of history, who was nominated by CAHSS undergraduate students
Chinn Wang, Teaching Associate Professor and Foundations Coordinator in the School of Art & Art History, who was nominated by graduate students.
This is the third consecutive year that a CAHSS faculty member has received a Career Champion award, which speaks to our deep commitment across the College to our students.
Along with these well-deserved recognitions, we have so much to look forward to throughout the quarter and this academic year. CAHSS will be at the nexus of Homecoming Week next month, with the Estlow and Margolin lectures featuring the thought leadership of prominent journalists and DU alumni David Von Drehle and Sara Castellanos. They will join MFJS alumni, faculty and students in celebrating the 125th anniversary of the DU Clarion, our school newspaper.
Throughout this academic year we also will celebrate a few more notable milestones. Just last week many of us gathered with past directors, alumni, faculty and students to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies program. This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the Lamont School of Music, featuring several special concerts and programs in honor of its centenary, and the 50th anniversary of the Denver Publishing Institute.
I hope that you will join me in supporting our community at a few of our many upcoming events, where together we can learn from and enjoy the unique breadth and depth of programs that CAHSS has to offer. I’ll see you there!
Best,
Rachel
Interim Dean, Associate Professor
College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences
