Message from the Dean
End of Spring 2022
May 13, 2022
It鈥檚 the season of commencement after a year of caution. What better time than now
to turn to the musings of Henry David Thoreau and remember one of his central questions
and admonitions: 鈥淲hat is a course of history or philosophy, or poetry, no matter
how well selected, or the best society, or the most admirable routine of life, compared
with the discipline of looking always at what is to be seen? Will you be a reader,
a student merely, or a seer?鈥�
Thoreau might well be asking what meaningful work you鈥檝e done this year. Is either
knowledge or experience enough on its own to make a difference? Ask yourselves these
questions and let the answers come to you slowly as you 鈥渨alk on into futurity,鈥� as
Thoreau also urges us to do.
Warm congratulations to all university graduates and thank you to students graduating
with Cohen Honors or department Honors distinction. You changed this campus community
with your ideas and actions. Events in the years you鈥檝e spent on this campus have
ranged from wildfires, royal weddings, and the winter Olympics in 2018 to a worldwide
pandemic and the first civilian spaceflight in 2021. Along the way, you worked in
labs and in the library, in service in Oklahoma and around the country, in student
government, in internships in Topeka, DC, NIAR, NetApp, and more.
Thank you to students, faculty, and staff engaged in Honors - for moving us forward into futurity.
Kimberly Engber, Dean
The Dorothy and Bill Cohen Honors College