Parker Erickson (shown left) is a remarkable undergraduate student. He is a center on the Utah football team who has earned a 4.0 GPA. With the full endorsement of the university, he recently submitted a Rhodes Scholar application. Parker is also a transfer student, joining the U after studying at both Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) and Snow College.
Read MorePresident David W. Pershing has been selected to receive the 2014 President’s Award from Region V of the National Association of Student Affairs Administrators (NASPA). NASPA is the leading association for Student Affairs administration with over 13,000 individual members and 2,100 member colleges and universities from around the world.
Read MoreFollowing six years of exploration, discussions, and negotiations, the U officially opened its Asia Campus (UAC) in Incheon, South Korea on September 1, 2014.
Read MoreLaunching the academic year brings many occasions to talk with colleagues around campus about their hopes and plans for the year ahead. A personal high point of the past couple weeks was delivering the keynote for our campus’ annual Teaching Retreat, hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence.
Read MoreI view universities as the context where the most visionary, path-breaking approaches to urgent challenges should be explored. If not within the academy, where creative thinkers from a wide range of fields work in close proximity in an environment where risky work is allowed if not encouraged, then where would we hope to address societal concerns such as prevention of disease and disability, climate change, air quality, and the analysis, synthesis and application of large quantities of data?
Read MoreGetting to know all of you – as many of you as possible – has been one of the great pleasures of this first year at the University of Utah. I’ve met the amazing people in all corners of the university, faculty and staff from the main campus and in health sciences, as well as graduate and undergraduate students.
Read MoreI loved my first commencement season at the U. What I experienced was a campus-wide ceremony that was both grand and entertaining, including an articulate, astute Alex Smith as the featured speaker, and an astonishingly sage student speaker whose insights left us all feeling optimistic about what our graduates will achieve.
Read MoreClearly, the dialogue about disruption in higher education – the perspective that traditional, residential institutions of higher education are vulnerable to displacement by lower cost online courses and degrees – is underway both within and beyond the academy.
Read MoreI speak often of the close connection between diversity and excellence, the belief that we will be a stronger, more effective university – in education, scholarship, outreach and economic development – when we more fully represent the society we serve.
Read MoreAs a new leader in University of Utah’s academic community, I am often asked what has surprised me about the U, or how the U differs from other higher education institutions that I know. The question was on my mind this past week when I heard that one of our honors undergraduates, Annika Pecchia-Bekkum, was chosen as a Gates Cambridge Scholar, a highly prestigious recognition that will support her medical science graduate work at Cambridge.
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