Rockhurst News

Kat Dolan, ’20, came to Rockhurst University having already had what some might consider a lifetime of experiences. And they’ve all played a part in a new piece in the latest issue of America, the national Jesuit magazine.

Sedgwick Hall has been a lot of things over the years. But it’s been a while since it’s been under construction.

Anyone who has been on campus since December (or looked at the University’s social media pages) will probably have seen what Sedgwick Hall now looks like from the outside, with construction having kicked off on a $23 million renovation that will see the 1914 building transformed into the home of the Saint Luke’s College of Nursing and Health Sciences, the centerpiece of the For the Greater campaign.

This week, Rockhurst University will celebrate the life and legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in a whole new way.

Normally, the University schedules its MLK Day celebration in January to honor King’s birthday. However, COVID-19 means things look a little different this year as a result of the later start to the spring semester.

Instead of honoring King’s birth, the week’s activities will instead be in recognition of one of King’s most famous pieces of writing, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written on April 16, 1963.

Since 2004, Rockhurst University has marked the solemn occasion of Yom Hashoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, with an interfaith ceremony in partnership with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.

This year, in addition to a ceremonial reading on Kinerk Commons of names of those killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust – a list that includes 152 members of the Society of Jesus — the day included another symbolic gesture of interfaith cooperation and companionship.

Last year, senior biomedical physics of medicine major Bella Salerno was looking forward to her summer vacation for reasons other than getting out of town.

Salerno had been accepted to the Purdy Summer Research Fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine’s department of radiation oncology and was looking forward to the experience of delving deeper into a subject she’s grown to love.

“One of the reasons for choosing my major has been my love for both math and science,” she said. “I found that physics really encompasses both the how and why aspect of science.”

The U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate School list for 2022 is out, and several programs within Rockhurst University’s College of Business, Influence and Information Analysis earned recognition among the best in the nation.

The management programs in the Helzberg School of Management, which is part of the University’s College of Business, Influence, and Information Analysis, were ranked No. 24 in the nation. The school’s graduate business analytics programs were ranked No. 39, the only such program ranked in the state of Missouri.

Rockhurst University has named Laura Horne-Popp as the next director of the Greenlease Library, effective June 1.

Horne-Popp comes to Rockhurst from the University of Central Missouri, where she serves as assistant university librarian of the James C. Kirkpatrick Library. She brings to her new role extensive experience in all aspects of library operations and information services. Her instruction and research consultation experience have assisted students, faculty and nonprofits in increasing their information literacy.

Joshua Roberts had all the posters printed for Spring 2020 – his first in charge of an intramural sports program that hadn’t been given a lot of attention in the recent past.

Rockhurst University Companions,

On March 12, 2020, students, faculty and staff alike were notified that campus would be shut down for two weeks, a precautionary measure meant to prevent further spread of coronavirus/COVID-19. They would not be back for the remainder of the spring semester.

That announcement came shortly after the World Health Organization called the crisis a global pandemic and the same day Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas would issue his first state of emergency order related to the virus.