Ryan Maher, S.J.,(COL’ 82) Associate Dean of Georgetown College, will be leaving Georgetown University at the end of this academic year.

On Tuesday, Kevin Quinn, S.J., President of the University of Scranton, announced that Maher will be the founding executive director of the university’s newly created Jesuit Center. Maher has served on Scranton’s Board of Trustees.

The Center will “foster faculty and staff participation in the Jesuit higher educational mission, support faculty teaching and scholarship that advances the University’s Catholic and Jesuit character, and promote Ignatian spirituality within an interreligious context.”

During his tenure at Georgetown, Maher has become one of the most popular and well-known Jesuits on campus. In 2009, Maher received the Georgetown University College Democrats’ Alumnus of the Year Award. Fr. Maher is also known for his popular class “Jesuit Education.”

“I love teaching that course, and I told the president of Scranton that I would only make the move to Scranton if I could continue teaching it up there,” Maher wrote to Vox in an email.

Maher becomes the executive director of The Jesuit Center at the University of Scranton in July 2012. He assured Vox in an email that he plans to teach at Georgetown for the remainder of the academic year.

Read the full text of Fr. Quinn’s email to University of Scranton students after the jump.

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Maybe @ruiyongchen should consider not seeing movies in 3D. #firstworldasianproblems

@carlosreyesazdc it is probably because the greedy corporations won’t let them use their bathrooms.

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This week, Vox wanted to give the Class of 2015 a sneak peek into each of Georgetown University’s four undergraduate schools. Today, we take a look at the School of Foreign Service (SFS).

A strong core builds a strong degree, so they say

With a heavy load of core requirements, you’ll still be stuck in Comparative Political Systems while your friends in the College are taking drawing classes.

One of those required classes is the proseminar.  Freshmen SFS students takes this course—usually taught by a top professor—during their freshman fall in order to improve their writing and analytical skills.

Overall, the core consists of two government courses (international relations and comparative political systems), three history courses (one introductory course and two regional histories), and proficiency in a modern foreign language. Sincerest apologies to those who have spent countless years studying Latin—it counts for nothing in the SFS.

Perhaps to weed out the weak of constitution, the SFS also requires all of its students to take four—yes, four—economics courses, including international trade and international finance.

“I’m sorry, I have to go participate in (insert major world event)”

This might not make up for those four econ classes, but the School of Foreign Service faculty does boast a number of big shots in the domestic and international policy realms.

Dean Carol Lancaster has served as deputy administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, while her predecessor Robert Gallucci now runs the MacArthur Foundation. Other notable professors include former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former National Security Council member Victor Cha, and former Special Envoy to Sudan Andrew Natsios.

Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe served as a Distinguished Scholar in the Practice of Global Leadership this past year, an appointment that set off a firestorm of complaints from human rights activists. He and former Spanish President Jose Maria Aznar, another controversial guest lecturer, left last spring.

“You mean you don’t know where Tuvalu is?”

Even though you’ll all take pretty much the same prerequisites, you may not all have the same tyrannical CPS professor. Map of the Modern World, meanwhile, unites all SFS students.

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It’s been a great few months and it pains us to leave, but it’s something that needs to happen.

Pretty soon our reign as editors of this beloved blog will be over. Although Nico and I are sad to leave, we are confident that you will enjoy the work of our new blog editors: Leigh Finnegan, Sam Buckley, and John Flanagan.

During our time here we brought you coverage of the Campus Plan hearings, our obsession with food trucks, brought back Vox Talks, reported on the students evacuated from Egypt, and found out how offended our commenters were by the names at Tombs trivia.

No matter how much you hated on us, we truly loved reading all of your comments. As we all know, Vox would not be half as good without our commenters.

Like previous blog editors, we will probably be creeping around here from time to time, but until then, thanks for the memories!

Executive Director of Campus Ministry Kevin O’Brien, S.J., announced plans for the creation of new religious spaces in the Leavey Center to address to the needs of Muslim and Jewish students on campus.

As part of a larger reimagining and renovation of the Leavey Center, in an effort to make it more student-focused, there will be a phased in renovation of the area where the Center Grille currently exists in to permanent prayer space for students.

Current plans for the area include the creation of a Muslim prayer room, Jewish sacred space, an interfaith prayer room, and a kosher/halal kitchen. The interfaith prayer room would be available to any religious group on campus, especially those that do not have a permanent prayer space.

“To have Muslim and Jewish prayer spaces next to each other speaks of our commitment to interreligious understanding,” O’Brien said.

Due to this being a long-term project, O’Brien’s office has made plans for immediate changes as well.

Beginning in the next academic year, the Jewish prayer space will be transferred from the house on 36^th Street to a renovated area in the Leavey Center. The area will be near where the planned Jewish sacred space is planned to be.

For Muslim students, daily prayers will continue to be held in Copley Hall until the renovation of the Leavey Center is completed, but Campus Ministry and Student Affairs plan to refurbish Bulldog Alley this summer to make it more aesthetically pleasing for the students. Friday jum’ah prayers are currently held in Bulldog Alley due to the larger attendance at these services.

Campus Ministry met with student leaders of the Muslim and Jewish Student Associations earlier this week to present their plans and will be working with the students over the coming months to finalize the proposals.

Yesterday afternoon, Phil Boroughs, S.J., vice president for mission and ministry, and Kevin O’Brien, S.J., executive director of campus ministry, announced that the University has hired Rabbi Rachel Gartner after an extensive yearlong search.

Gartner will replace Rabbi Bruce Aft who has served as the interim director following the retirement of longtime chaplaincy director Rabbi Harold White.

Gartner currently serves as director of the Hillel at Miami University in Ohio.

According to O’Brien, one of the deciding factors in the decision to hire her was her demonstrated commitment to interreligious dialogue.

“I want to fan the spark of Jewish life in students, faculty, and staff where it currently exists,” Gartner told Vox in an interview.

Gartner, who is trained in the Reconstructionist movement of Judaism, said that when she visited campus she was moved by the real commitment of students from different Jewish backgrounds to each other.

She said that she fully understands that some students may not be connect with her as well because she is a female rabbi, but she does not believe that will negatively affect the community on campus.

Gartner said that she plans to actively support students already participating in groups such as the Jewish Student Association, but she will also go on a listening tour of her own to seek out Jewish students who are not as active and find out their faith stories.

“The heart and soul of what I do is to be with students,” she said. “I’m really excited to get to meet the students.”

Image courtesy Georgetown University Office of Communications

The Right Honorable Gordon Brown, who served as prime minister of the United Kingdom from 2007 to 2009, spoke earlier today in Gaston Hall on global values and institutions.

Brown, the Labour Party leader who followed Tony Blair, was in office during the time of the global financial crisis and focused much of his address on the issue.

“We are in a new situation in the year 2011,” Brown said. “We now have problems that we can call global problems that can only be solved by global solutions.”

Brown noted that the focus has too often been on what individual nations or small groups of nations to solve crises, but he believes that this is no longer feasible for the problems the world is facing.

“Bilateral, trilateral, and multilateral solutions will no longer work for them. There must be global solutions,” he stressed.

Brown also emphasized that everyone must take responsibility for what happens in the world, rather than blaming other countries. He noted that European nations blamed the United Kingdom and the United States for the global financial crisis at a meeting shortly after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Brown told the crowd that he reminded the leaders at this meeting that more than half the subprime mortgages that were a part of the problem were actually held by European banks.

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Students running to Dixie Liquor at 9:55 p.m., rejoice!

D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray’s proposed budget includes a one percent increase of the sales tax for alcohol—from nine to ten percent—but, in return, stores in the District would be able to sell liquor two hours later on Monday through Saturday.

Stores that only sell beer and wine will also be able to offer the extended hours on Sundays as well.

Current D.C. statutes currently require that sales of alcohol cease at 10 p.m.

Gray is currently facing a $322 million gap in the budget.

If the proposed budget is approved, the tax increase and extended hours are expected to provide an additional $2.36 million in revenue for the District.

h/t: GW Hatchet

As a part of their College Crawl, the Big Cheese Truck is headed to campus this week.

Part of the fad of food trucks, the Big Cheese Truck the truck is scheduled to be near campus on Friday according to their website.

The truck will likely arrive between 11 and 11:30 a.m. and park either by the front gates or the library steps, according to an email to Vox.

The truck’s menu includes a variety of gourmet cheeses from the Cowgirl Creamery served on artisan bread. And as all grilled cheese should be, the truck also serves tomato soup.

The Big Cheese Truck’s College Crawl will have been to the University of the District of Columbia, Howard, American, and George Washington University prior to heading to Georgetown to determine which school loves grilled cheese the most.

You can follow the Big Cheese Truck’s location on Twitter and Facebook.

If you are looking for a way to enjoy the nice weather and still take a trip down to see a Washington Nationals game, you’re now in luck.

American River Taxi has begun offering a limit scheduled in April and May from the Georgetown Harbor to the Southwest Waterfront and National Stadium.

The ride—which takes about 35 minutes—takes a similar amount of time as a ride on the Metro takes.

A ride on the river taxi is a bit more expensive than on the Metro—$9—but is probably much more enjoyable.

The river taxi was originally supposed to start last year but faced delays.

h/t and image: Georgetown Metropolitan