Welcome to the Spring 2022 semester, T-birds! I wish you health, happiness, and success in this new semester and year.
We have exciting milestones coming up this semester. There are over 60 new students joining the T-bird family, and Das Tor sends a warm welcome to all of them. These new faces will soon be joining our Thunderbird Portrait gallery, so be sure to keep up to date to learn more about the new members of our community.
Das Tor also has many fun and professionally enriching events planned for Spring 2022. To kick off the semester, we will be hosting a networking luncheon on January 13th from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. on the tables outside of Thunderbird’s Global Headquarters (near the ASU law building). We invite you to join us for sandwiches, drinks, cookies, prizes, and more to celebrate the new semester and learn more about Das Tor. This will be just the beginning of the events we have planned for the semester.
Aside from Das Tor’s official events, the Das Tor team and I are looking forward to finally celebrating Thunderbird’s 75th Anniversary. Thunderbird has an incredibly rich history, and Das Tor is intricately interwoven into it. The fact was just emphasized in a series of interviews I conducted with alumni from the Class of 1970. These interviews will be coming out later this semester, so be sure to stay tuned to learn more about these incredible T-birds.
Before the 75th Anniversary, many of us second-year students will be heading off to far-flung places to participate in the Global Challenge Lab (GCL). Personally, I will be traveling to Brussels, Belgium, and I couldn’t be more excited, especially since two of my GCL teammates are also from my Das Tor team. We look forward to bringing you content and Day in the Life of Das Tor on our Instagram stories from all these far-flung locations.
Das Tor also will be continuing our well-loved series this semester. In particular, I am excited to announce a cooking competition based off of our Global Eats series. Aside from winning a Thunderbird-brand apron, the winner has the opportunity to film a cooking video for their recipe at the ASU Multicultural Center. You can learn more details here.
On a more somber note, we enter this Spring 2022 semester challenged by COVID-19 and the Omicron variant. There is uncertainty and often isolation in these challenging times. However, we will overcome this challenge together as T-birds. All of us will support you and be there for you as we live through these unprecedented circumstances.
Finally, I want to end this welcome letter on a personal note. This letter is especially poignant for me because this will be the last time I write an introduction to the new semester as Das Tor’s Editor-in-Chief. Like many in my Fall 2020 cohort, I have gone from classes online, to classes in the Arizona Center, to classes in our new Global Headquarters, and am fast approaching graduation in May. I am so incredibly grateful to have been given the honor to tell your stories as Editor-in-Chief. I look forward to a good final semester and wish you all the best as we embark on this journey together.