Welcome to the Dean's Corner

March 2, 2026

I love seeing groups of prospective students and parents visiting Emory. Our tour guides do a fantastic job, and I sometimes find myself sidling up to a group, eavesdropping on which wonderful aspect of Emory they are highlighting.

The other day I passed a group, and the young man leading the tour was talking about the great sense of community on the Oxford campus, where everyone knows each other’s names. When you get to the Atlanta campus, he said, you can walk around all day without seeing someone you know.

“Now wait a minute,” I said, interrupting with a smile. “A lot of us here on the Atlanta campus know each other’s names as well.” The parents laughed, but the tour guide looked flustered—and a little annoyed. I apologized as warmly as I could for interrupting him and moved on.

The truth is the young man was not entirely wrong. We probably don’t know each other as well as we should here on the Atlanta campus. It’s easy to forget sometimes, tucked in as we are between a massive medical center, shiny professional schools, and a historic inner-ring suburb, that we are the Emory College of Arts and Sciences. As members of a college, it is incumbent upon all of us to create an environment where people are known, where conversations spill beyond the classroom, and where intellectual life is integrated into our common life together.

Six weeks into the semester, it is worth asking ourselves: What am I doing to cultivate community? How am I making the most of my time here with these extraordinary friends, colleagues, teachers, and mentors who surround me?

If you don’t have an answer to that question, here’s an opportunity for you: At the Dobbs Common Table, there’s a program that’s been around since 2018 called Dining at the DCT. Any student can take a faculty member to breakfast, lunch, or dinner—or any faculty member can take a student. And, best of all, it’s free! See the details below.

In my own liberal arts education, many of the most important moments did not happen in a lecture hall or a lab, but across a desk or a table—often over a shared meal, in an unhurried exchange prompted by curiosity and a genuine desire to learn from another person’s experience or perspective.

In the hyper-scheduled, attention-fractured lives we lead, there is something quietly radical about sitting down together simply to eat, talk, and think. A free lunch at the DCT is a nice perk that the university offers, but it is also an invitation to intellectual exchange, mentorship, friendship, and the kind of community that shapes not merely what we know but who we become.

So take someone to lunch. Ask a question you’ve been meaning to ask. Tell a story—or share a book that changed you. Don’t just eat and leave. Go get coffee and dessert on the other side of the DCT by those big, beautiful windows. Let the conversation wander.

The strength of a college is not measured only in rankings or research grants, but in the habits of attention and fellowship that we cultivate together. Community does not simply happen. It is built, meal by meal, conversation by conversation. Let’s make this a semester when we choose to know one another a little better.

P.S. – If you are the student whose tour I interrupted, please get in touch so that I can take you to the DCT for lunch.

Details on Dining at the DCT: Tell the staff at the entrance that you want to use the Dining at the DCT program. They’ll have everyone in your party sign your name to a form, and then you walk right in. You can go in a group up to six people, but I recommend keeping it small – no more than three or four. Or be bold and make it a one-on-one lunch.