Is The Tide About To Turn For the University of Dallas?
The little Catholic university on the hill has been afflicted by a number of bad decisions lately, such as wasting money to compete with SMU for the George W. Bush Library (hel-lo, where did Laura Bush go to school? And isn’t W a Methodist?). But in its search for a new provost, there is very good news. Among the candidates for the post is Thomas Hibbs, the well-known Aquinas scholar and current dean of the honors program at Baylor. If there is a man to get UD back to its mission and to attract the kind of talent that will restore its reputation, Hibbs is the man.
4 Comments to “Is The Tide About To Turn For the University of Dallas?”
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If the University of Dallas can lure Thomas Hibbs from Baylor to Irving, they are no longer that “little Catholic university on the hill” but will have demonstrated that they have arrived and are indeed an institution of national and intellectual prominence. The academic world will sit up and take note. I wish them and Dr. Hibbs continued success.
Baylor won’t let Hibbs go without fight. He’s not just the Dean of the Honors Program but a Distinguished Professor of Philosophy too. He is very important to Baylor’s vision, and they’ve given him time to teach and write his articles and books. He’d be great for UD but he’d be a fool to take it. He’d spend all of his time trying to right the ship.
I was pretty disappointed in the MBA I got at UD back in 2002, and was more disheartened when the Monsignor fired the only person interested in attempting to get the MBA program accredited, but I always keep my fingers crossed. Now I just hope they don’t sell off all their land to developers. It’s a good school, but it gets easily overlooked with all the choices in the area.
Mr. Wharton makes a good point about UD getting overlooked. However, it seems to me that since they got into the competition for the Bush Library that’s been less of a problem. It might also explain why Mr. Hibbs is even considering going to UD. It seems to me that all of that tends to negate Wick’s original point that getting into the library competition was a bad idea.