Dinners
Freshman Dinner
Freshman Dinner kicks off the fall semester with a Dean’s Scholars family meal. Traditionally, upperclassmen spend the day cooking a meal for the freshmen at a professor’s home. Professors and students come together to get to know our new students, catch up about summer experiences, and talk about what’s going on in each other’s lives. This dinner is a wonderful time for new Dean’s Scholars (DSers) to get to know each other, upperclassmen, and professors, in addition to getting some words of wisdom about how to start the semester off right!
Holiday Dinner
At Holiday Dinner, we celebrate the end of the semester with a formal holiday meal. The tradition started as a way for students who couldn’t go home to celebrate Thanksgiving to spend time with their DS family and has only grown since then. We use this opportunity to enjoy time with friends and DS faculty and engage in friendly rivalry through annual holiday card and trivia competitions. The evening ends with a dance!
Musicale
The DS community is full of talent, and Musicale is the place to show it off! Musicale is an annual spring talent show where students and faculty have an opportunity to show off their skills. Hosted at Dr. Starbird’s home, Musicale features a wide variety of acts from an impressively skilled set of students. Previous acts include (but are not limited to) slam poetry, improv games, magic tricks, instrumental performances, singing, and much more! Before, during, and after the performances, Musicale is a great time to relax, laugh, and learn about your peers’ and professors’ hidden talents!
Senior Dinner
Every year ends with a farewell dinner to honor our graduating seniors. After a day of cooking together in a professor’s home (just like their first DS dinner four years before), our graduating seniors get one more chance to enjoy great food and company. Graduating Dean’s Scholars let us know where they will be going after graduation, share advice with younger students, and talk about what Dean’s Scholars meant to them. The Senior Dinner menu changes every year, and recent years have included Japanese, Cajun, and South American cooking. This dinner is a great place to say good-bye to friends before the summer, graduating or not.
“Senior dinner is always bittersweet. DS Council and friends whip up a fantastic meal at the Cline-Rich household; there are always 6 rice cookers going off at the same time. During the event, we get advice from all of the graduating seniors, meet the new DS Council Chair, and see who the Alan Kaylor Cline Scholarship Recipient is. When it was held on Zoom in 2020, we played presentation karaoke, which was an absolute blast (the highlight of the evening was seeing Dr. Starbird and Dr. Hillis attempt to present DSers’ research). While it’s sad to say goodbye to the seniors, we know that it’s not quite a farewell — it’s a see you later!”