Dean’s Welcome

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It is my pleasure to welcome you to the John V. Roach Honors College and the start of the 2026–27 academic year.

We begin this year with renewed clarity about who we are and where we are going. After two years of collaborative work involving faculty, staff, students, parents, and alumni, we have completed our strategic plan, a roadmap that will guide Roach Honors for years to come. At the heart of that plan is our new Honors Ethos:

The John V. Roach Honors College challenges students to unlock potential, cultivate purpose, and transform the future.

These are not merely words on a page. They describe what happens in our classrooms, our advising conversations, and our mentorship-rich community every day. We challenge students to unlock potential they may not yet know they possess through rigorous inquiry, mentorship, and experiences that stretch beyond disciplines and majors. We help them cultivate purpose by connecting their intellectual passions to the questions, courses, and communities that matter most to them. And we prepare them to transform the future, confident that graduates who think critically, engage others with open minds, and act with integrity will shape a better world.

I see proof of this every year in our students. For the second year in a row, 90% of our graduating students knew their next landing spot (a job or graduate school) two months before graduation. Many of the students in the remaining 10% had options in hand but had not yet made a decision or commitment.

As I look ahead, I could not be more energized about what we are building and about the people building it alongside us.

This fall, we welcome two new assistant professors of professional practice who are passionate about working with students both in and beyond the classroom. Dr. Nina Cook joins us from Rice University. With a Ph.D. in English, she will teach interdisciplinary courses that explore a fascinating range of cultural topics, including the history and meaning of Christmas. Dr. Jared LaGroue comes to TCU from Penn State University. Holding a Ph.D. in mass communication, his work spans everything from dialogue and collaboration to the impact of AI on the music industry's algorithms and streaming platforms.

Dr. Cook and Dr. LaGroue join a remarkable group of recent additions to our faculty. Over the past two years, Dr. Sharrona Pearl, Dr. Abby Salopek, and Dr. Gerard Rothfus have all come to call Roach Honors home, offering courses shaped by their research that our students rave about regularly. Each of them shares our commitment to putting students first, and I am excited to see how they enrich our community of teacher-scholars, mentors, and staff.

Finally, we welcome an outstanding new class of Roach Honors students to TCU this fall. Our 285 first-year students (chosen from a pool of 3,200 applications) arrive with curiosity, ambition, and the potential to live meaningful lives of intellectual inquiry on campus. They are joining Roach Honors at a defining moment, and I cannot wait to see how they embody our Ethos and shape our community.

To our students, families, alumni, and friends: thank you for being part of this journey. The best is yet to come. As always, I am fired up to work with you as we make this academic year as phenomenal as possible.

Lead On and GO FROGS!