New Dean focuses on improving campus habits, community

After Reverend Brian Konkol thanked the crowd at Syracuse University’s Hendricks Chapel, he remembered his grandmother. He remembered the Sunday morning services spent with her as a child at Nelsonville Lutheran Church in Amherst, Wisconsin - a town with “a single four-way intersection,” Konkol noted. He remembered the candy and doodling paper she provided to entice him to stay for the service.

And, the new dean of Hendricks Chapel said he remembered the reason for these bribes.

“Every Sunday morning, there were two minutes out of the 60 when I was required by Grandma to offer my utmost attention to liturgical rhythm of worship” Konkol told the 500 community members sitting in the chapel. “For two minutes, I had to put down my pencil and paper, contain my sugar high, and give all that I was to that which was taking place around me. And that two minutes was the Lord’s Prayer.”

To Konkol’s grandmother, those two minutes were most important because he was being taught “a habit.”

This early ingraining of religious habits translated into Konkol becoming the seventh Dean of Hendricks Chapel at Syracuse University on November 7, 2017.

At his installation ceremony, the new dean talked about habits. “Habits in many ways shape, guide, and even define the totality of our lives,” he explained.

Konkol tied this in with Jesus’s teachings - saying that ‘we, us, and ours’ are always used in the New Testament. To Konkol, these plural pronouns show people working together, a feeling community and connectivity he wants to preserve. “If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together,” the new Dean stated.

Chancellor Kent Syverud, who also spoke at the ceremony, announced that with the help of the Syracuse Librarians and the Duke University Chapel, Konkol will receive an original Nuremberg Lutheran Bible. Being that Konkol is the first Lutheran Dean of Hendricks Chapel, Syverud expressed that this was a very fitting gift.

Cheryl and David West, the parents of a recent Newhouse graduate, were especially moved by Konkol’s words.

“It just gives us great hope and joy for a really strong foundation at the university,” said Cheryl West.

Her husband agreed.

“I thought the whole concept of habits and so forth was really great,” David West said.

Rabbi Leah Fein, the Interim Director at the Winnick Hillel Center for Jewish Life also thought the ceremony was meaningful and said she loved how it incorporated various aspects of campus.

“[He] just embodied this vibrancy and also this creativity, and you can just tell he’s a really big thinker, and he’s a connecter,” Fein said about the new dean. “I knew this is the kind of person anybody would want to gravitate to and learn from.”

When Konkol took the podium, he looked around the room and continuously said “thank you” to his new Syracuse community.

“I’m relatively convinced now that the pearly gates of heaven must be painted with orange,” Konkol said.