Hurricane Maria crippled Puerto Rico last September, leaving hundreds dead and more than a million homes without power. Providing a guest semester to first- and second-year undergraduates unable to attend their damaged home colleges is a way for the University to help them keep their academic programs on track.

By the time they graduate from the University of Rochester, students will have take 128 credits and only one required course. “More than 90 percent of incoming students surveyed last year indicated that Rochester’s unique curriculum had a positive to strongly positive effect on their decision to enroll,” says Executive Director of College Enrollment Scott Clyde.

Since 1986, nearly 1,200 University students have pursued their academic passions through the Take Five Scholars Program, which offers a tuition-free year to complete a self-designed curriculum.

Seven women undergraduate students will be honored this week at the Susan B. Anthony Legacy Awards—a 61-year tradition celebrating exceptional women enrolled at the University.

The University of Rochester football program is making headlines this winter, with a new head coach and an alumnus accepting an NFL coaching job.

Olivares will report directly to the dean of the Arts, Sciences & Engineering faculty. The move elevates the recognition and consideration of the importance of diversity issues within the Deans’ Office.

The Paul J. Burgett Intercultural Center celebrated its fifth anniversary on Friday, January 19. Named after the longtime University dean, vice president and senior advisor to the president, the center is a joint venture of the Office of the Dean of Students and the David T. Kearns Center and is located in Douglass Commons. It promotes cultural awareness and engagement, educates on issues of identity, culture, and diversity, and provides opportunities for collaboration. Nearly 2,000 people visited the center during the 2016-17 academic year. “We are all members of the human race,” Burgett said. “This center celebrates that, and enables us to develop fluency and appreciation for one another.”

Four-time Emmy Award-winner and pioneer of Latino broadcasting Maria Hinojosa says “it’s pretty surreal” to be delivering the University’s MLK Commemorative Address this week. She calls Martin Luther King Jr., her “first American hero, the first person who made me believe I had a voice in this country.”

In this essay, Sasha Eloi-Evans ’05, ’17 (W), the academic programming coordinator for the Office of Minority Student Affairs and a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, reflects on diversity in higher education in the nearly 50 years since Martin Luther King Jr.’s death.

Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honor society for liberal arts and sciences, celebrates its birthday this month, and we honor the 17 students who were elected last spring as juniors.