2025 College of Arts and Sciences Award Winners. (L-R) Laura Nichols, Cory Gong, Emily Reese, Andrew Hedges, Dean Daniel Press, David Gray, Daniel Turkeltaub, Michelle McCully, Tamsen McGinley. Not pictured: Elyse Raby.  Photo by Adam Hays

Dear College Faculty and Staff,

Thanks to all who attended CAS Convocation on Tuesday. It was lovely to see you and to welcome our new faculty and staff to Santa Clara.

Congratulations again to our College Award winners! The CAS faculty and staff are truly top-notch and it’s my great pleasure to work with you all. Coming together to recognize the accomplishments of our colleagues is a wonderful way to kick off the new academic year. It reminds us that we are part of a strong and supportive community capable of achieving great things here at Santa Clara—and beyond!

Welcome Weekend starts today and the excitement is growing—thank you to all of you who work so hard to welcome our first-year, transfer, and returning students!

We were so fortunate to have Assistant Professor of English Daniel Summerhill compose a poem for this year's Convocation and to read it. Many of you expressed your appreciation of his work and wanted to see it, so here it is below.

Onward into the new year!

Daniel

I would like to say something about the daffodil,

about prayer, about the maroon of our humanity.

Around us now, the cauterized purple night, begetting

a halo of yellow tomorrow. I would like to say

something about prayer. How we pray with our feet,

not our tongues, how we might be made holy,

not through our hearts, but with our hands. How

a prayer is deciding to do something repeatedly

the same way a daffodil is perennial years after

a homestead has crumbled into clay and dust.

Once in Mississippi, I stumbled upon a field

of amber, small rebels with enough gall to show up

again and again. The best of themselves left behind

for another shot at bloom. How hope is invented daily.

How we wake the same as daffodils holding our heads

towards a blue-ladened sky in search of something

more honest, more true. How this too is a type of prayer.

A type of rhythm. We cast aside our own petals,

believing in the budding of tomorrow.

The friction between being here or not. The way

we spread like good news on a Sunday. Answers

to our petition found in the perish of late summer.

All we have to do is remember the sound

katydids make in the night. Sighing a raspy blues.

I cannot tell you the sound of a single cicada, but the sound

of a chorus is nostalgic. Grey hum of 10,000

small things. The salvation unity brings. Remember

the way flowers raise their heads in defiance or—

righteousness. How this too is a type

of camaraderie. A type of prayer. If we pay

close enough attention to the ground, our heaven

will emerge from nothing, like a daffodil. If

we have enough courage, our light might spread

a whole field. If we are bold, an entire globe.

College Awards

College of Arts and Sciences Calendar

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Biweekly. Next session: Friday, Sept. 26, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.

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