On Elephants

Elephants figure large (ba dum boom, ching!) in English idiom.

• The elephant in the room.
• Seeing the elephant.
• Blind men and an elephant.
• White elephants.
• Pink elephants.
• When the elephant dances.
• Elephants never forget.

Elephants are large, expensive, complicated, dangerous, gentle, magnificent, social, intelligent, and most assuredly non-ignorable. Sometimes other colleges at the U think of CLA as an elephant, some days beating out a trail for others to follow, and other days blundering around (see dancing elephants and mice).

Here in UGE we have a baby elephant of our own: the Career Readiness Initiative. It’s new. It’s complex. It’s going to grow into something huge and be pretty expensive. You can no longer ignore it. It’s going to establish or widen some paths in CLA, and we think it’s going to be a wonder and magnificent when it is fully grown.

Spring 2017

I hope you are all enjoying your MLK holiday. I read Dr. King’s “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” this morning, and it is just as inspiring today as it was more than 50 years ago. It’s a new semester, and we should all be inspired as we begin a new semester.

Outstanding Service Awards

Just before winter break, we learned that not one, not two, not three, but four (count em, four!) UGE colleagues were awarded Outstanding Service Awards.