Rockhurst News

The student support network at Rockhurst is strong and is made stronger by student leaders who serve as tutors or supplemental instruction (SI) leaders in the Aylward-Dunn Learning Center.

As a young girl, Laura Forsberg’s father read her Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” thoroughly explaining the minutia of the era’s manners and etiquette. Her world of wonder was magnified through literature and now the Rockhurst Associate Professor of English, author, and new mom is providing a similar opportunity to others through her first book, published through the prestigious Yale University Press.

From an outsider’s perspective, Michael Kidd-Gilchrist probably appeared to have it all.

Even as a talented basketball player with a loving family and good group of friends growing up in New Jersey, he said he felt isolated for so much of his young life, in fear of being heard. All because of his stutter.

In 1997 Merritt Neil was about to graduate from Rockhurst with a degree in Communication Studies. Like other seniors, she needed a job.

Little did she know that the door that would open thanks to a Rockhurst alumnus would lead to what she called “one of the greatest gifts of my life.”

Near the pedestrian entryway to campus outside Arrupe Hall stands a new piece of campus art that serves as both a tribute and a reminder.

The Rockhurst University Board of Trustees has selected Sandra Cassady, Ph.D., to become the 15th president of Rockhurst University, effective July 1, 2022.

Cassady will make history as the first female and first lay president of Rockhurst, which is a Catholic, Jesuit university founded in 1910 by the Society of Jesus, a religious order of Roman Catholic priests known as the Jesuits.

You don’t need an astrophysicist father to understand the cosmos. But it doesn’t hurt.

Keith Brandt, Ph.D., professor of mathematics, and John C. Brandt, Ph.D., a retired astronomer, are the authors of an upcoming article in the AMATYC Educator titled “Andromeda’s Distance: An Activity in Exponential and Logarithmic Functions,” which explores the relatively simple mathematical principles that in 1923 allowed Edwin Hubble to determine that Andromeda actually lies outside the Milky Way Galaxy — something that, at the time, was a major scientific discovery.

  They met through a mutual connection, hit it off, a first date on a hay ride on a crisp fall night.

It seems like one of those “happily ever after” stories. Eventually, though, Tony LaRusso, ’02, and Kristin (Suter) LaRusso, ’03, went their separate ways, Tony said.

Last Thursday, during a virtual panel discussion about Black-owned businesses in Kansas City, guests and members of the Black Student Union were subjected to racist hate speech and obscene images from individuals who hijacked the event.

Rockhurst University conferred degrees to approximately 200 students during its December commencement ceremony Dec. 11, 2021, in Mason-Halpin Fieldhouse. Students Berkley Hays and Nancy Miller delivered remarks on behalf of undergraduate and graduate students, respectively.

The following students received degrees: