CONWAY, Ark. (December 16, 2013) – Another
semester is (nearly) in the books at Hendrix. From national recognition to new
leadership, great things happened at Hendrix this fall.
Here are
some of the milestones from fall 2013:
On a Roll
Hendrix was recognized nationally
as one of
the country’s top “Up and Coming” liberal arts colleges for the sixth
consecutive year by U.S. News and World Report,
whose annual college guide was published today. Hendrix is listed at #2
among national liberal arts colleges that have recently made promising and
innovative changes in the areas of academic life, faculty, student life, campus
and facilities. The 2014 U.S. News Best
Colleges guide also lists Hendrix as #11 in an elite group of
liberal arts colleges that demonstrate “A Strong Commitment to Teaching.”
Enrollment
Up
Hendrix welcomed a record class of 457
new students to campus this fall. Last year’s new student enrollment was 383
students. The new student class represents 32 states and 11 countries,
including Bahamas, China, France, Germany, Guatemala, Myanmar, Nepal, Palestine,
Rwanda, Singapore, and Vietnam.
The record new student class and strong
freshman-to-sophomore retention led to increased enrollment.
Enrollment for the 2013-2014 academic year is 1,432 students, up three percent
from 1,388 students last year. This year’s freshman-to-sophomore retention rate
is nearly 88 percent.
Get
Engaged
A new student course called The Engaged Citizen
(TEC) debuted this fall. TEC replaces Journeys, an incoming freshmen course
that was taught for a decade. Developed by Hendrix faculty from across
disciplines to focus on a topic that relates in some way to being an engaged
citizen, TEC is taught by dyads, or pairs of two professors, to approach their
shared theme from their particular disciplinary perspective. Some of the TEC
topics offered this year include spirituality and the creative arts; poverty;
the art of subversion; sex and gender; origins and ethics; images of politics,
power and civil society; engagement, happiness, and the good life; and ethics,
story, and social transformation.
Touchdown
Outside of the classroom, the Hendrix College football team resumed play opened its first season in 53
years with a last-second 46-44 win over Westminster College in front of a
raucous home crowd of nearly 3,000 fans. Trailing by one, freshman
kicker Steve Crenshaw booted a 25-yard field goal through the uprights
with one second remaining.
Salute
Hendrix dedicated the new Young-Wise Memorial
Stadium and Plaza on Saturday, Nov. 9, when the
Warriors took on fellow NCAA Division III Southern Athletic
Association conference member Rhodes College. Completed this fall, Young-Wise Memorial
Stadium and Plaza is named for Hendrix alumni Robert Young, who was killed in
World War I, and Benjamin and Jeremy Wise, who were killed during separate
actions in Afghanistan. For the memorial plaza in front of the stadium,
Hendrix commissioned public artwork to honor the sacrifice of all Hendrix
alumni who have given their lives in service to their country. The artwork incorporates
the Hendrix Veterans’ Memorial statue of a World War I doughboy soldier and two
new large bronze negative silhouettes of military helmets.
Hail to
the Chief
This fall, the Hendrix College Board of
Trustees announced that Dr. William M. Tsutsui will become the 11th President of
Hendrix beginning June 2014. Dr. Tsutsui comes to Hendrix from
Southern Methodist University where he led Dedman College of Humanities and
Sciences, the largest of SMU’s seven colleges and schools, as Dean and
Professor of History.
Follow Dr. Tsutsui’s transition to Hendrix on his blog.
Amazing Odysseys
From salamanders to soccer and medicine to
masks, Hendrix students and faculty will travel the world serving others,
conducting research, and exploring their interests, thanks to $67,738.25 in
Odyssey grants awarded to 21 faculty and student projects in the October
2013 Odyssey grant
cycle. The grand total for funding since the Odyssey Program’s
inception in 2005 is $2.485 million.
Before classes started this fall, eight Hendrix students spent two
and a half weeks in Vietnam to get a general sense of contemporary Vietnam and 18 students studied marine biology in Belize.
Look for more great engaged learning examples from
these six faculty members who were recently named Odyssey Professors.
Awesome Alumni
Hendrix
alumni continued to represent their alma mater well. For example, recent
graduate Megan Andrews of Bowling Green, Ohio, was recently
named City Year Corps Member of the Year Wendy Anderson, a 1993
graduate and 2011 recipient of the Hendrix Odyssey Medal for Global Awareness,
was recently hired by U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to be his deputy chief
of staff. The College honored three outstanding
graduates at Founders
Day 2013, presenting Odyssey Medals to Liz Langston '84 for Artistic Creativity,
Charles H. "Chuck" Chalfant '81 for Professional and Leadership
Development, and Derek Lowe for Research.
Top Profs
Hendrix faculty members are nationally
recognized leaders in their disciplines and devoted to teaching and mentoring
undergraduate students. They are committed to ongoing professional development
and are prolific artistic performers, published scholars and in-demand invited
guests and presenters at local, state, national and international conferences
and professional meetings.
Here are just a few recent examples of Hendrix
faculty in the news – Biology professor Dr. Andrew Schurko recently
received a $200,000 research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
Idea Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), and English professor Dr. Dorian Stuber was
recently selected to take part in the Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar at
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., in January.
Politics and international relations professor Dr. Daniel Whelan was
selected to participate in the Kanderstag Seminar sponsored by the Remarque
Institute at New York University this spring in Switzerland.
Economics professor Dr. Tom Stanley recently
gave an invited talk at the Harvard Faculty Club as part of a workshop on the
inclusion of quasi-experimental studies in systematic reviews of health systems
research sponsored by the Harvard School of Public Health, the Alliance for
Health Policy and Systems Research (World Health Organization) and the Cochrane
Collaboration.
Super Students
The academic year is only halfway complete, and
Hendrix students are already bringing home honors for their achievements. Here
are just a couple of recent examples from this fall:
Austin Wofford, a
junior biology major from Alma, Ark., was awarded a Student Undergraduate
Research Fellowship (SURF) by the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.The
SURF award will support Wofford’s travel to Mexico City, Mexico, in June 2014,
where he will work with Dr. David Gernandt at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma
de Mexico (UNAM) herbarium.
Dakota Pouncey, a
junior biochemistry-molecular biology major, was awarded the student poster
award for first place in cardiovascular research at the Southeast Regional
IDeA Meeting in Little Rock. His poster was titled "Identifying
Potential R/S-Warfarin Metabolite Biomarkers to Improve Anticoagulant
Dosing Strategies in Children."
Biology major Lizzie Goodwin-Horn ’15 and biochemistry-molecular
biology major Carrie Yang ’15 won first prize for their
research presentations at the Arkansas INBRE Conference in Fayetteville.
Be sure to follow Hendrix news at www.facebook.com/hendrixcollege
and on Twitter @hendrixcollege, check out www.youtube.com/hendrixcollege
and http://vimeo.com/hendrixcollege
for great videos on students and faculty, and browse Hendrix photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/hendrixcollege.
We look forward to sharing many more exciting news stories in 2014!
Founded in 1876, Hendrix College is a national
leader in engaged liberal arts and sciences education. For the sixth
consecutive year, Hendrix was named one of the country’s “Up and Coming”
liberal arts colleges by U.S. News and
World Report. Hendrix is featured in
the latest edition of Colleges That Change
Lives: 40 Schools That Will Change the Way You Think about Colleges, as well as the
2014 Princeton Review’s The Best 378
Colleges, Forbes
magazine's list of America's Top Colleges, and the 2014 Fiske Guide to Colleges. Hendrix
has been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. For more
information, visit www.hendrix.edu.