Rockhurst News

It's Inauguration Week!

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.

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.”

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.

Remember the first time you set foot on a college campus?

Hopefully, that experience was a positive one. Maybe it was at Rockhurst at tulip time in the spring, or perhaps the fall, when the leaves turn color. You might have had an interaction with a faculty, staff member or student that really made the difference in your college decision.

Rockhurst University and William Jewell College, located just 21 miles from each other, have enjoyed a healthy rivalry since the 1900s, and since 2011 have been Great Lakes Valley Conference opponents, as well.

This year, the two insitutions have a new prize to play for, as the two schools have agreed to create the Kansas City Crown, presented by Mammoth Sports Construction, with the inaugural competition set for the 2022-23 season across a dozen sports.

The Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst’s on-campus art gallery since 2000, was temporarily closed during the two-year renovation of the adjacent Sedgwick Hall. This fall, it comes back with a new mission, a slightly new look and a new temporary exhibition that in part showcases the city Rockhurst calls home.

Rockhurst University earned the highest ranking among institutions in the Kansas City region and the second highest ranking in the state of Missouri on Money magazine’s 2022 Best Colleges in America list.

The list, which focuses on college value, looks at 2,400 four-year colleges “with sufficient data and above-average graduation rates,” scoring each institution on 24 different measures in three areas — quality, affordability and outcomes — that are important to families making a choice about what college might be the best fit for them. In other words, it’s all about value.