The 2019-2020 academic year was my 16^th and last as the founding dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  This year began with our new President, Philomena Mantella bringing us together for a series of meetings of the campus community to look toward the future and meeting its challenges.  I don’t think many of us thought those challenges would include having to decamp from our beautiful campus in mid-March in a matter of days and teaching all of our courses remotely. 

Our resilience, critical thinking skills, and teamwork were tested.  I could not be prouder of our faculty, staff, and students who put others before themselves and supported each other through the difficult first weeks of the pandemic response and saw our students through the winter term and successfully into the spring and summer terms.  I want to recognize the enormous effort of our faculty and staff, and their amazing success.

I’d like this year to remembered for a few other things though.  Let it not be forgotten how the college excelled this year. 

• Faculty and staff were awarded federal grants totaling almost $5 million dollars for their scholarly and creative endeavors. 
• The Chemistry Department and many others in the college contributed to a world record attempt for the largest periodic table. 
• Norwood Viviano’s Cities Underwater will be included in the exhibition “Venice and Studio Glass” at the Le Stanza Del Vetro as part of the Venice Architecture Biennale.
• Rachel Powers of Chemistry had a Fulbright to Argentina.
• The GVSU Public Relations Student Society of America (GVPRSSA) received a Star Chapter Award at an international conference.
• Melba Vélez Ortiz of the School of Communications brought home the 2019 Communication Ethics Teaching Award given by the Communication Ethics Division of the National Communication Association.
• Caitlin Horrocks’ book The Vexations was deemed one of the Ten Best Books of 2019 by the Wall Street Journal. David Eaton of History saw publication of his book World History Through Case Studies—historical skills in practice, and Beth Peterson of Writing saw to fruition her book Dispatches from the End of Ice. 
• Janel Pettes Guikema, Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, received the Michigan World Language Association’s Georges J. Joyaux Post-Secondary Educator Award.
• Clarinet student Andrei Mazanko established himself as one of the top woodwind students in the U.S. after winning the national level of the Young Artist competition for the Music Teachers National Association
• Angel Bista, an international relations major, and Eric Brink, a Spanish major, spent summer 2019 studying critical languages abroad after being awarded the competitive U.S. Department of State's Critical Language Scholarship; 15 of 18 GV students awarded Gilman Scholarships this year have a CLAS major.
• Political Science alumna Caitlin O'Rourke was appointed by Gov. Whitmer to the Michigan Board of Veterinary Medicine and Creela Hamlin (alumna of Natural Resources Management) was appointed by the governor to the Blueberry Commission.
• Alumna Jasmine Bruce ‘18 led a group of local artists to create meaningful murals on the many boarded-up businesses in downtown Grand Rapids.

These awards, fellowships, publications, and other achievements are just tastes of what happened this year to make us understandably proud of each other as a college community.

As you will see in the articles to follow, CLAS is achieving its mission to be a student-centered and diverse learning community that engages in critical inquiry extending knowledge to enrich and enliven individual and public life. 

I have no doubt that the college will adapt and change and excel in new ways under the leadership of the incoming dean, Jennifer Drake who takes the helm this August.  I wish her, and all who have contributed to the college, fair skies and following seas.

~Frederick J. Antczak, Founding Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences