Yesterday at our faculty and staff meeting, our department chairs shared some of the exciting curricular updates and changes students can look forward to next year. This is a meeting we hold every year before advisors begin working with students to build their schedules to ensure everyone is aware of the recommendations, requirements, and new/noteworthy offerings from each department. Some new offerings I am excited about include a class on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (with a component dedicated to the critically acclaimed novel James by Percival Everett); a science class called “Climate Change: From Data to Debate”; an interdisciplinary history and music class centered around protest music; a math class focused entirely on the fundamentals of pre-calculus; and a theatre course on sound design. And of course, our teachers are always iterating and fine tuning their classes, even those that have been taught for decades.

However you feel about the Olympics, there’s no denying that there are always some inspirational stories that come out of them. I was particularly moved by the stories of the two American bobsledders who took home the gold and bronze medals in the women’s “monobob.” Elana Meyer’s Taylor is 41 years old and the mother of two young children with special needs, and Kaillie Humphries is 40 years old and also a mother to a young child. How cool is that?