Should Santa visit Kansas University this year, he’ll find professors and administrators with a variety of wishes on their lists.

We asked a handful of them the following question.

With your, your department’s or your students’ KU experience in mind, what would you like for Christmas this year?

Marc Greenberg

“I would like every KU student to consider the transformative value of adding one of KU’s 40 foreign languages and cultures to their skill set.”

Marc L. Greenberg

director, School of Languages, Literatures and Cultures

Mohamed El-Hodiri

“I would like for all institutions of higher education to stop thinking of themselves as business enterprises, to think of their faculty as partners in a creative process (each of them looks at his work as a calling), to think of their students as charges to be cared for and developed, not as clients, to think of society at large to be the ultimate beneficiary of the service, and to think of administrators as facilitators not as mangers. It is a tall order — I know — but I can dream, can’t I?”

Mohamed El-Hodiri

professor, Department of Economics

Lisa McLendon

“I’d like to have a whole year without any fabrication or plagiarism in the national news media, to set a good example for our students. And correct punctuation, for the same reason. And ample pizza on election night!”

Lisa McLendon

Bremner Editing Center coordinator, William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications

John Hachmeister

“My students’ needs come to mind first. My wish for all students is to get in the habit of turning off their cellphones from 7 in the morning to 7 at night. I want them to find their own voice. The gift of silence is powerful, enriching.”

John Hachmeister

associate professor, Department of Visual Art

Terri Friedline

“No matter their professional interests or employment contexts — working with individuals and families in clinical settings or advocating for wide-scale community and policy change — I wish for our social work students to embrace and become conduits for justice this holiday season. Their work for economic justice can begin to make meaningful and lasting change in people’s lives, actualize equal economic rights and opportunities, and boldly lead our profession and society into the future.”

Terri Friedline

assistant professor, School of Social Welfare

Tim Caboni is Kansas University's vice chancellor of public affairs. Photo courtesy of KU.

“First, for generous funding and warm wishes from the State of Kansas. Second, for stories of amazing discoveries by our faculty and students to appear on the front pages of newspapers across the country. And last, for the bow tie to be duly recognized as official academic regalia to be worn at all university events.”

Tim Caboni

vice chancellor, Public Affairs