Rockhurst News

This is it, folks.

This Friday, Nov. 11, Sandra Cassady, Ph.D., will be inaugurated as president of Rockhurst University in what is shaping up to be a joyous, celebratory afternoon.

Presidential transitions in higher education are usually historic moments — in Rockhurst’s 112-year history, there have only been 15 presidents (counting Cassady). But this one will have its own distinction in our history books — Cassady is the first lay person and first woman to be inaugurated as president of Rockhurst.

A member of the Rockhurst University mathematics faculty has been honored alongside other local female leaders in STEM for work that seeks to inspire a love of math in young people, particularly girls and young women.

Zdenka Guadarrama, Ph.D., professor of mathematics, received the WiSTEMM Educator STEMMy Award from women’s leadership organization Central Exchange during its 9^th annual STEMMy awards ceremony Oct. 27, recognizing her contributions to STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine) disciplines through her Mathapalooza program.

Over the next two years, Rockhurst University will expand its athletics program with the addition of seven teams. Men’s and women’s swimming and diving, and men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track and field will join the Hawks lineup as varsity sports for the 2023-24 academic year.

Men’s volleyball will also be added as a varsity sport beginning with the 2024-25 academic year. The addition of the seven programs will increase the university’s total number of varsity sports to 22. The teams will compete at the NCAA Division II level and in the Great Lakes Valley Conference.

Nothing says Halloween like a double-feature of scary movies, right?

The red carpet (obviously the spookiest carpet color) will be rolled out at Arrupe Hall Saturday for the premiere of two short films with a cast and crew made up of mostly students in the Rockhurst Department of Film Arts, part of the Center for Arts and Letters’ ArtOberfest calendar. “Harper’s Tapes” and “Can You See It?” scratch that spooky itch, with creepy vibes and mystery at their core.

Since the 1950s, the small, paved area on the northeast corner of the quad has served a lot of functions.

Established as a home for a statue of Mary donated by the class of 1954, over the years this site has served as both a social and spiritual hub, a place for students, faculty staff and visitors to visit with each other during down time, to study between classes, or sit or stop for a quiet moment of reflection.

Filmmaker Chad Sogas, '03, had a rat tail for 10 years growing up. It was so much a part of his history that he decided to make a film about it, but the film uncovered something he kept hidden for years.

Sogas is now an editor/director in the advertising industry in Brooklyn, New York. He created the film “Rat Tail” and it has won a hoard of awards and been shown at the two biggest film festivals in North America – Hot Docs & DOC NYC. However, his biggest accomplishment is the change he was able to make in himself.

Rockhurst University’s civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering programs are now fully accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission (EAC) of ABET, the global accreditor of college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology.

ABET accreditation assures that programs meet standards to produce graduates ready to enter critical technical fields that are leading the way in innovation and emerging technologies and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of the public.

In the middle of Kansas City’s bustling Crossroads Arts District is an unexpected patch of prairie. And in the middle of that, you’ll often find junior Gavin Schaefer.

“It’s really serene, but it’s in the middle of the city,” he said. “A lot of people don’t know that this place exists — I grew up here and walked by it so many times on First Friday without knowing it.”

Nearly every nurse has a story of why they got started in the profession, and almost all involve a nurse providing care and comfort to them or a loved one.

For Addie Griffith, it was after breaking her orbital bone, face, nose and suffering a severe concussion when getting in a nasty collision on the soccer field at Shawnee Mission East High School. It took a lengthy hospital stay and nearly three years to fully recover.

Once a year, Rockhurst University alumni are invited back to the classroom, this time as teachers.

The annual Leadership and Ethics Day has become a tradition in the College of Business, Influence and Information Analysis at Rockhurst — a one-day marathon of guest lectures from alumni, who bring their own experience into the classroom on everything from statistics to leadership, with many touching on the difficult ethical challenges they have been faced with and how they’ve navigated them.