Shifting Gears, Part II

The physical shifts now emerging in my summer training aren't the only changes afoot. Here at Holy Cross, the summer's populations and programming are undergoing a transition. More than one hundred summer research students just completed their work, in fields ranging from the hard sciences to the humanities, and have vacated the dorm, labs, and libraries where they've been toiling with their professors since just after Memorial Day weekend. Members of the incoming class have been stopping in for some additional orientation and enrichment activities before arriving for good at the end of August. This morning, I discovered a small flock of office chairs scattered throughout the hallway leading to my office; it's the week for major cleaning, repainting, and moving in the departments inhabiting this particular floor. Construction and renovation projects, always a popular news item on our website, are largely finished. The campus won't be characterized by relative emptiness and planned disarray for too much longer.

Hogan Oval, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester MA
Quiet for now...

With August arriving tomorrow, and grant proposals for the new academic year already rolling in, I'm in a summer endgame mentality, planning for initiatives and projects to undertake and/or adjust in the coming semester, and concluding the summer tasks that have been helping to pass the time during these lighter weeks in the rhythm of the College's workings. With the likelihood of, God willing, moving on to theology studies in fall 2013, I'm looking to the next nine months or so as an opportunity to contribute to some restructuring and strengthening of the Grants Office, as well as to renew or develop ties with other individuals and sectors within the Holy Cross community.

Within a few weeks, the campus should be humming with students preparing to welcome the Class of 2016 through their service as orientation leaders, RAs, and brothers and sisters in the Holy Cross family. Professors will arrive for departmental meetings, administrators will shift their focus as necessary, and campus ministers will help us all to call down God's blessings on a new year. For now, though, we're still making the shift... conscious of what's on the horizon, eager for what is to come, and wrapping up our various accomplishments from the summer months. As I walk the corridors of my building, and see signs of these processes, as well as long-quiet offices being inhabited again, I'm gladdened by these changes, and grateful for the potential that they promise.