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Welcome

It’s really wonderful to see so many of you back on campus this morning. Whether you’ve been hard at work through the summer or are just returning from a well-earned break, I hope you had a refreshing summer and are feeling energized for the academic year ahead.

I especially enjoyed seeing so many friends and colleagues at the Fun Run/Walk, representing respective offices with such creative t-shirts. I also had the pleasure of welcoming so many new members to our community.

Congratulations to all our Fun Run raffle winners! I want to thank Varney & Co Benefits Advisors for their generous donation of this year’s grand prize — a Wilderness Systems Kayak and Paddle Bundle — and I thank HR for hosting another outstanding wellness event.

Holiday Schedule

Before I turn to the substance of my remarks this morning, I’d like to take care of a couple of business items.

As is customary at this gathering, I’m pleased to announce our winter holiday schedule:

This year, the University will be closed beginning Wednesday, December 24, and will reopen on Friday, January 2. This entails three gifted holiday days beyond our officially scheduled holidays.

I hope you will use that time to recharge and spend well-deserved time with loved ones.

President’s Award for Constructive Discourse

I continue to be grateful to those of you who are embracing our Marketplace of Ideas project, working to foster a culture at ��ݮ��Ƶ that encourages robust discourse from various perspectives around contentious topics. As you know, the President’s Award for Constructive Discourse is one way we honor members of the faculty and the professional staff who are doing noteworthy work in this area.

I am delighted to announce the 2025 awardees.

The faculty award this year goes to not to a single person, but a dynamic duo team of two: Professor Ken Courtney, a political scientist from the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and Professor John Waterman, a philosopher from the School of Arts and Humanities.

Last fall, John and Ken developed and team taught an undergraduate course focused on the most recent presidential election, with the goal of helping students engage constructively with the many divisive, hot-button issues surrounding the election. The course took place during the height of the campaign season, and the election actually occurred while the class was underway. The topic was of particular relevance to our undergraduate students as many of them prepared to vote for the first time.

Topics covered were wide-ranging, including, among others: populism, global affairs, reproductive rights, threats to democracy, and the Supreme Court. Ken and John contextualized these topics from various perspectives with respect to events unfolding in real time, as well as in relation to larger historical and political forces. They encouraged active discussion and debate among students. Their nominators wrote, “Professors Courtney and Waterman offered a course that complicated the highly curated echo chambers that many of us exist in by getting students to not only confront different perspectives, but to understand and engage with them.”

This course exemplifies the approach that both Ken and John take in other courses, encouraging robust discussion from various viewpoints.

Please join me in congratulating Professors John Waterman and Ken Courtney for this honor.

This year’s award for a member of the professional staff goes to Shannon Zlotkowski, ��ݮ��Ƶ’s assistant provost for Community and Belonging.

In a year marked by a particularly fraught political and cultural climate, where respectful engagement has been too often replaced by either expressions of anger on the one hand or a retreat to silence on the other, Shannon has remained steadfast in creating inclusive contexts where individuals of varying backgrounds, beliefs, identities, and perspectives are empowered to speak, listen, and grow. She challenges students, professional staff, and faculty alike to stretch beyond their comfort zones — pushing toward a more nuanced understanding of themselves and one another.

Shannon recently launched the Community and Belonging Student Fellow program — inclusive of undergraduate and graduate students on both campuses — expanding her impact across the institution and reinforcing ��ݮ��Ƶ’s commitment to dialogue grounded in dignity and respect. She also served as a moderator for a President’s Forum event that focused inward, on controversial topics around the nature of the academy itself. Her support of cultural initiatives across campus reflects a deep understanding that true belonging cannot be taken for granted but must be actively promoted and protected.

Her nominator nicely captured Shannon’s approach, writing: “Importantly, Shannon never centers a single narrative. She invites — and holds — complexity. She ensures that conversations reflect a range of perspectives, even when they are in tension with one another. She listens with humility, speaks with clarity, and encourages a shared responsibility for the kind of community we aspire to be. Her facilitation style is inclusive, honest, and grounded in mutual respect — the very essence of constructive discourse.”

Please join me in congratulating Shannon Zlotkowski for this honor.

I extend sincere thanks to John, Ken, and Shannon for setting examples for us all to follow as we strive to build a Nor’easter community that prioritizes the fundamental role of the academy as the ultimate marketplace of ideas. And I encourage us all to reflect on how each of us can better contribute to a culture that encourages viewpoint diversity and robust discourse at ��ݮ��Ƶ.

Our Progress: Key Highlights from Last Academic Year

The 2024–2025 academic was another one of noteworthy accomplishments for ��ݮ��Ƶ along with profound disruptions for the national higher education sector.

Working together, we achieved many things last year, and we have much to be proud of. I can’t possibly discuss every important accomplishment, but allow me to highlight just a few especially noteworthy ones.

We recruited and onboarded three world-class deans to ��ݮ��Ƶ, including the inaugural Dean of the College of Business, Norm O’Reilly; the Dean of the Westbrook College of Health Professions, John Vitale; and the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Wes Renfro. Among a number of other key leaders, we also welcomed another seasoned professional, Debra Leahy from the California State System, as our new Associate Vice Provost for Global Affairs.

This spring, after years of planning and building, we opened—on time and under budget!—our new health sciences facility and new home of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s medical college, the Harold and Bibby Alfond Center for Health Sciences, or “The Bibby” as the students have affectionately named it. COM has now relocated to this spectacular facility and our medical students are working away in its new classrooms and labs. The building solidifies ��ݮ��Ƶ’s Portland Campus for the Health Sciences as a leading center of health sciences education and research in New England.

On the Biddeford Campus, we completed several infrastructure projects, including the Communications Production Studio, and the recirculating aquaculture system and Sustainable Innovation Center in the Girard Marine Sciences Center. We now turn our attention to re-imagining the Biddeford Campus, taking the opportunity afforded by COM’s relocation to significantly upgrade spaces on this campus with an eye toward the future.

Last fall we celebrated the ten-year anniversary of the opening of our Tangier Campus. We’ve completed several needed upgrades to our spectacular campus there.

As you know, last fall we launched the public phase of our five-year “Doing Our Part” fundraising campaign, and this year will mark the final year of the campaign. I’m happy to report that we hit our goal of $75 million in June, a full year ahead of schedule. I am grateful to all of the donors who have helped us reach this milestone, including especially the many students, faculty, and professional staff who have joined Lynn and me in supporting ��ݮ��Ƶ through your philanthropy. For anyone who hasn’t yet made a gift to the campaign, there’s still time to contribute during this final year.

Last year we launched a number of new academic programs and student support initiatives, and continued development of existing ones. We also finalized both the new University-wide undergraduate First-Year Seminar and the new undergraduate general education curriculum, the Nor’easter Core, both of which will go into effect with this year’s incoming class. The latter represents a first step toward affording greater flexibility for students to design unique cross-disciplinary pathways that reflect their interests, talents, and goals. I look forward to seeing the continued evolution of the Nor’easter Core to allow for even greater flexibility and a more future-focused, student-centered curricular design.

We recruited the inaugural class of undergraduate Honors College students, whose first-to-second year retention rate was 100%. The incoming class of honors students for this Fall exceeded enrollment targets.

We completed the work of an ad hoc task force on men in higher education, which yielded several actionable recommendations.

Led by Dean Nici Kimmes and her terrific leadership team, our College of Dental Medicine underwent its first re-accreditation since its opening. The process went exceptionally well, with a highly successful reaccreditation with zero recommendations. I commend the entire College for the great work that led to this wonderful outcome.

In January, Husson University elected to close its pharmacy program, and we negotiated a teach-out program for their students. This leaves ��ݮ��Ƶ as the sole Doctor of Pharmacy program in Maine.

We deepened academic collaborations with key external partners, including the Jackson Laboratories, MaineHealth, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute, and the Boston Consortium.

We completed a comprehensive wage benchmarking study and developed a University-wide compensation philosophy. We continue to make progress on our multi-year project to upgrade our business operations and systems.

Our work has continued to garner accolades from various external entities. For example, just to name a few:

• ��ݮ��Ƶ was listed, for the eleventh consecutive year, in Princeton Review’s America’s Top Colleges
• We were also again listed in Princeton Review’s Guide to Green Colleges
• We received a Program of Merit Designation (for COM) by the Gerontological Society of America
• We were newly recognized by the Food Allergy Research and Education Society as a national leader in addressing student food allergies on campus
• ��ݮ��Ƶ was newly designated among America’s “Colleges of Distinction”
• The Carnegie Foundation, in partnership with the American Council on Education, recognized ��ݮ��Ƶ among New England’s top institutions for student earning potential in its 2025 Student Access and Earnings report

I am deeply grateful to all members of the Nor’easter community who have worked tirelessly to bring these successes to fruition. Thank you!

Despite these accomplishments, the challenges before us remain significant. The landscape for institutions of higher education, including ��ݮ��Ƶ, has only grown more perilous in the past year. And we need to respond proactively if we are to remain successful

Career Readiness and the Higher Education Landscape

I’d like to turn our attention now to the work that lies ahead. It has been a busy summer, and I have some exciting updates to share about ��ݮ��Ƶ’s future.

��ݮ��Ƶ has always been explicit and intentional in its focus on preparing students for good jobs upon graduation. It’s in our DNA. Our undergraduate programs strive to inculcate deep knowledge and strong skills in their chosen area of study. We simultaneously help them develop the habits of mind–things like unquenchable curiosity, critical and analytical thinking, numerical literacy, cultural sensitivity, and communication and social skills–that will position them to reinvent themselves over the course of their lives. Our graduate programs are, by their very nature, inherently career-oriented. We’re rightly proud of the progress we’ve made, highlighted by the positive outcomes of our students, and the recognition we’ve received for these efforts.

Unfortunately, our competition has also embraced this culture of career preparation. In fact, in some ways, we’ve fallen behind our highest performing peers, particularly with respect to undergraduate programs but also with regards to some of our graduate programs. And in this hyper-competitive higher education environment, we simply cannot afford to fall further behind.

Although the picture is complex, the principle causes of higher ed’s challenges are now well known: the demographic cliff, fewer eligible students choosing to go to college, rapidly growing skepticism about the value proposition of higher education, and ever-accelerating expense pressures on colleges and universities.

Over the past few months, these challenges have been greatly compounded by federal policy changes targeting higher education. I could talk at length about these sweeping, misguided policies, but that would distract from my central focus today. Suffice it to say that, along with my senior leadership team, I continue to monitor developments coming out of Washington closely and to plan accordingly, acting both proactively and reactively as best we can to address these formidable disruptions.

The convergence of these headwinds has resulted in fewer prospective undergraduate students, against a backdrop of an oversupply of college seats, especially in New England.

We’re not alone. Most of our peer institutions, both public and private, have seen enrollment declines, and typically much larger than those we’ve experienced. As a consequence, as you’ve probably read in the press, many of our peers have slashed budgets, eliminated programs, laid off faculty and staff, and instituted wage and hiring freezes.

However, a small number of institutions in our peer group are defying the odds and are meeting their undergraduate enrollment goals. So, what’s going on with them? How are they enrolling more students while the rest of the sector struggles to meet our targets?

This rare group has one thing in common: they are very intentionally and explicitly focusing on preparing students for the world of work. They have understood that today’s families are laser-focused on ensuring that their investment in their child’s education will pay off with a good paying job upon graduation. Research by admissions professionals indicates that since the pandemic, career preparation has emerged as the single most important consideration for both parents and students themselves for choosing a college.

A conducted in June found that half of American college graduates do not believe their college education prepared them for the job market they faced upon graduation. They cited the lack of real-world work experience, an insufficient focus on practical or technical skills, and the absence of a professional network. Only 5% reported feeling “adequately prepared” upon graduation.

Colleges that are meeting their undergraduate enrollment targets despite sector-wide challenges have established programs both inside and outside the classroom to ensure their students are well prepared for work on day one. And they have aggressively marketed themselves along these lines. In essence, they have taken a page out of ��ݮ��Ƶ’s playbook with respect to career preparation but have done it even better.

The Road Ahead: Career Readiness in Three Dimensions

We cannot let any of our peers outpace us. We must lead in this space.

Together with my colleagues in University leadership and in consultation with trustees, faculty, professional staff, as well as partners in the private and nonprofit sectors, I have spent the past several months studying the rapidly evolving job market. Even with the volatility and uncertainties that characterize our current reality, there is an emerging picture of what the jobs of tomorrow will look like. We must now ensure that our work is aligned with not just where the job market is today, but where it is moving. And we must do a better job marketing our distinctive approach.

Today I’m announcing that we will redouble our efforts to promote career readiness among our students. We will do everything in our power to provide our students with the tools they will need to thrive in tomorrow’s emerging workforce. Although I will focus my remarks today primarily on our undergraduate programs, you will observe that many of the themes and initiatives are also applicable to our graduate students, including those learning online.

Let me now turn to our roadmap for preparing students for the workforce of tomorrow — a strategy built around three pillars: the first of which is foundational excellence.

Traditional Foundations of Career Preparation: Bridge Builders Across Silos

First and foremost, we must continue to enhance what I will call “traditional foundations” of career preparation, including high quality, market-aligned academic programs, robust student support services, meaningful experiential learning experiences, and interdisciplinarity. These are all things we are already doing, but we must continue to improve them, with a particular focus on educating students to become bridge builders across disciplinary silos.

To this end, there is much work to do.

We will either upgrade or sunset academic programs that no longer resonate sufficiently with today’s students.

We will ensure that students are supported academically, psychologically, and socially through their college journey, with a consistent focus on building their healthy independence, resilience, and professionalism.

We will ensure that each and every undergraduate program incorporates professionalism and career readiness as explicit student learning outcomes, and we will refine existing approaches and develop new additional programming to promote these outcomes.

We will enhance the progress we’ve already made in breaking down disciplinary silos to promote true interdisciplinarity for our students, as well as for the faculty and professional staff. The future economy will require moving beyond traditional boundaries to work in cross-functional teams. The nurse who speaks the pharmacist's language, the finance person who knows what keeps their marketing colleagues up at night—these are the kind of people organizations want. We must never allow outdated disciplinary silos to shape how we prepare students for the new world.

And very importantly, we will further develop and promote our already extensive experiential learning opportunities. It is these experiences, outside the classroom, that are especially critical in developing the skills that so many employers, and indeed so many students themselves, are telling us are lacking in today’s recent college graduates.

To that end, going forward, we will require every undergraduate student, no matter their field of study, to complete at least one meaningful work experience as part of their studies.

To support this critical work, we recently established the Office of Career Readiness and Workforce Development under the leadership of Associate Provost for Student Success Colin Pears. This office will serve as the hub of our career support for all students, coordinating employer relations, providing career development programming, and serving as a resource for students, professional staff, and faculty. We also fully integrated Academic and Career Advising and implemented a comprehensive career advising curriculum, ensuring that all undergraduate students receive seamless advising support that carries them from their studies and into their careers.

In short, the first, critical category of strategies to meet the future is significantly enhancing important themes and practices with which we are already familiar.

The Nor’easter Global Network

The second category involves strategic connections. Career success – from landing one’s initial job to ongoing advancement across one’s career – will depend increasingly on professional networks. Although strong knowledge and skills are necessary, they alone are no longer sufficient. For better or worse, success depends in large measure on professional relationships.

Some prospective undergraduate students may not initially fully appreciate this fact, but their parents certainly do. Indeed, a primary reason parents are eager to send their children to a marquee, name-brand, highly selective college is to provide them with a robust lifelong network of personal and professional contacts. They know that the quality of the English composition or introductory calculus classes is no better at Harvard than at ��ݮ��Ƶ (and trust me, it’s not!). But they believe their students will graduate better connected at Harvard.

To address this important reality, today I’m announcing the launch of the “Nor’easter Global Network,” a broad, world-wide, living ecosystem of professionals who are committed to our students’ success and who are willing to volunteer their time to mentor and support them in their developmental journeys. The Network will consist of ��ݮ��Ƶ alumni, trustees and former trustees, business partners, community members, and friends who share a passion for our mission. Participation in the Network will not occur by default; members will opt in. Each member of the Network will engage with and mentor students in their junior and senior years, helping students to build their connections and step into their bright futures. As part of the Office of Career Readiness and Workforce Development, our Academic and Career Advisors will support this process to ensure that students are making the Network connections that will foster their professional growth.

In preparation for their participation in the Network and other experiential learning experiences, and as part of the career curriculum, each matriculating student will establish a Professional LinkedIn page during their first semester at ��ݮ��Ƶ. They will then be required to curate their profile, updating it regularly, as overseen by their academic advisor and faculty mentor.

More details of the Nor’easter Global Network and how you can help build it will be forthcoming.

Artificial Intelligence

The third way that ��ݮ��Ƶ will meet the moment is without doubt the most transformational. We will actively embrace digital literacy, and specifically artificial intelligence, in our teaching and business operations.

AI is disrupting every aspect of the world as we know it. This is happening very quickly and at an accelerating pace. The AI revolution brings both enormous potential as well as significant challenges. Like other major disruptions, history shows that its impacts cannot be fully anticipated in advance. But one thing is absolutely certain: AI isn’t going away. For better or worse, it will increasingly feature prominently in almost every aspect of our lives.

The pace of development can be overwhelming. Even AI experts themselves were surprised at the power of the first large language model, Chat GPT, when it was released to the public on November 30, 2022.

AI is already rapidly changing the world of work. Despite unemployment currently standing at historic lows, many recent college graduates are having a hard time finding jobs. According to a recent report by the , the unemployment rate of recent college graduates is significantly higher than the overall rate, a finding echoed by a released in late May. This is due in large part to AI decreasing the need for many entry-level jobs and many recent graduates being insufficiently prepared to use AI in this rapidly evolving labor market. Some companies, like Shopify, to give just one example, are now into their work.

As Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang recently wisely and presciently warned, “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI — you’re going to lose it to someone who uses AI.” This is the world our graduates are stepping into. In fact, Huang that fully two-thirds of the jobs posted on the job search platform Indeed include tasks that can now be performed by AI. Some jobs will be fully replaced by AI, but many more will require a human who knows how to effectively use AI. Huang’s warning is echoed by released by the World Economic Forum earlier this year, which predicts major disruptions in global labor markets by 2030, fueled in large part by AI.

To meet this new reality of the evolving workforce, ��ݮ��Ƶ must thoughtfully embrace AI tools in our teaching and research activities as well as our business operations. We must adopt a mindset that views AI as an opportunity rather than merely a threat.

We will therefore make AI literacy a core component of our academic strategy moving forward. Our goal will be to ensure that all ��ݮ��Ƶ students graduate with fluency in AI tools. We must commit to preparing our graduates not just to effectively use AI, but to question it, to understand it, and to manage it responsibly.

We will teach our students to think and behave like an AI manager. They will learn how to integrate the best from human and artificial intelligence. Their edge will not be the technology per se—it will be their ability to manage it better than others. This includes knowing when to use (and when not to use) both generative and agentic AI and how to understand and adapt to new tools as they rapidly evolve. These skills will give ��ݮ��Ƶ graduates a distinct advantage.

Achieving this vision will require the collective expertise of us all, the faculty and professional staff from across the University.

Earlier this summer I charged two working groups with conducting audits of the use of AI in our academic and our business domains, respectively. In addition to assessing current uses, these groups are exploring best practices of peer institutions and are making recommendations for ��ݮ��Ƶ. Their work is still underway but has already yielded valuable insights. Not surprisingly given the Nor’easter culture of innovation, AI is already being used in many corners of the University. We must now systematize and expand these efforts across the institution.

To this end, I am pleased to announce several initiatives beginning this fall as we continue to map out additional work going forward over the coming year and beyond.

First, in a recently distributed AI survey to faculty, a whopping 86% requested institution-wide AI tools. In response, I’m happy to report that ��ݮ��Ƶ is on the cusp of securing an institutional license of a newly upgraded version of Microsoft’s Copilot. This AI platform has several advantages that makes it well suited to higher education uses, and to ��ݮ��Ƶ in particular. The details of the Copilot license will be forthcoming, including training opportunities and on how you can begin using this powerful new tool.

We are in negotiation with a leading AI consultant team to assist us with implementing AI initiatives across the University, and hope to have an announcement on this very soon.

Consistent with feedback from the recent faculty survey, Ron Schneider, ��ݮ��Ƶ’s General Council and Vice President of Legal Affairs, is partnering with Provost Mahon to lead a team of faculty, professional staff, and administrators to establish policies governing the ethical use of AI that provide the right balance of flexibility and necessary guardrails, with sensitivity to different needs and priorities across units. This work will entail creation of new policies as well as revisions to existing ones. It will be an ongoing, iterative process as policies must be updated as these technologies and our own needs evolve.

Importantly, we must provide robust professional development around AI for members of the faculty and professional staff. For example, we will continue to add to the repository of resources developed by our Center of Excellence for Teaching and Learning. And we will launch a monthly lunch-and-learn program, where we can come together to develop and refine our skills in using AI tools.

I am also pleased to announce that we will develop a faculty AI Fellows program for those who are passionate about further developing their expertise in AI and in championing its use among our colleagues. Further information will be forthcoming about how you can apply for this fellowship.

With respect to students, we will require that all undergraduate students complete mandatory modules on AI as part of the First Year Seminar.

Michael Cripps, Director of the School of Arts and Humanities, is engaging with instructors in our first-year writing courses to ensure that students know how to write and think at a high-level in an age of AI. In addition, under the leadership of Dean Renfro, the College of Arts and Sciences is launching an initiative that will produce full courses touching on AI for Spring 2026 in multiple disciplines.

We will develop credentials, like badges, certificates, and/or minors, that capture and formalize our curricular work on AI.

Finally, we will continue deploying AI tools throughout our business operations to improve their efficiency, accuracy, and effectiveness. Indeed, under Senior Vice President Jim Irwin’s direction, we have already begun implementing such tools. For example, this summer we launched an AI virtual advisor to assist students with financial aid and student account related questions, and an AI-powered tool for Accounting, Institutional Advancement, and Student Financial Services for tracking and reporting of endowment funds. We are even exploring an AI-powered robotic cleaning tools for the Facilities team.

We must, of course, ensure that there is strong coordination, and where appropriate integration, between our academic and business uses of AI.

What I’ve outlined today is not a comprehensive list of AI-related initiatives underway, but rather a snapshot of key highlights. I’m very grateful to everyone who is already digging into this important work, as well as to those who will now do so.

AI and Sustainability

Now, I want to speak candidly about concerns I know many of us have regarding the environmental impacts of AI, particularly in terms of energy and water use. These concerns are real, and they deserve our attention. The current methods of training most large-scale AI models consume immense computing power, which in turn requires significant energy. Many models are trained in data centers that rely on water-intensive cooling systems. These are very real considerations for a community that prides itself on environmental stewardship.

Some headlines have understandably raised alarms, for example by comparing training a single large AI model with the lifetime carbon footprint of several cars. It is worth noting, however, that such analyses reflect the initial training phase of very large proprietary models. In contrast, using AI models, especially in their optimized and smaller forms, typically requires relatively little energy per task, comparable to many everyday digital activities like online searching or streaming.

Thankfully, the field is evolving quickly toward greater efficiency. And here's where the story becomes more hopeful: AI is not just part of the environmental challenge; it is also becoming part of the environmental solution. For example,

• AI is being used to optimize energy grids, reducing emissions and improving efficiency.
• It powers precision agriculture, allowing for smarter irrigation, fertilizer use, and crop management.
• In data centers themselves, AI is used to dynamically manage cooling systems, significantly reducing water consumption and power use.
• Researchers and AI companies are actively competing to develop green AI models, those designed from the start to minimize energy and water footprints without sacrificing capability.

At ��ݮ��Ƶ, we will approach AI with these kinds of considerations in mind. We will not only help students gain skills in using AI tools, we will encourage them to think critically, act responsibly, and innovate in ways that serve both society and the planet. This is one way we can bring ��ݮ��Ƶ’s values into the age of AI.

Branding and Marketing

To summarize thus far, ��ݮ��Ƶ must intentionally embrace a focus on fostering career readiness in three broad ways: by enhancing the traditional foundations of our educational model, particularly with respect to interdisciplinary and experiential education, by developing and deploying a robust professional network for our students and alumni, and by ensuring our students become fluent users of artificial intelligence. Each of these initiatives must not be executed in isolation but must be seamlessly coordinated into a unified whole.

But it’s not enough to put these programs in place; we must also market them aggressively and effectively. As the experts in our Center for Sales Excellence remind us, having a good product or service means nothing if no one knows about it. We must do a better job not just of building, but also of selling, the unique ��ݮ��Ƶ experience.

As I announced earlier this summer, we have reorganized our Admissions and Marketing operations, combining them into a single unit overseen by a new vice president. Meghan Haley joined ��ݮ��Ƶ last month as our interim vice president of Admissions and Marketing, while we continue our search for the permanent vice president. Scott Steinberg and Rika Judd are working with Meghan on undergraduate and graduate student admissions, respectively. This new organizational structure will eliminate redundancies and ensure that our marketing efforts, across all platforms and media, are tightly coordinated with our admissions work.

We are also updating ��ݮ��Ƶ’s brand with an exciting and compelling new message that reflects the unique educational model that I’ve described today: “Get Future Ready.” Variations on this “Future Ready” message reflect a call to action to students to partner with ��ݮ��Ƶ to develop the knowledge and skills that will lead to success as the world continues to evolve.

I encourage everyone in this room to familiarize yourself with our newly revised brand and marketing messages as they are rolled out in the coming weeks. It will take the collective efforts of us all to effectively promote ��ݮ��Ƶ. I hope each of you will join me in becoming an ambassador for our special community.

Call to Action

To realize this bold agenda, we will need everyone’s creativity, commitment, and collaboration. Here are six ways you can help us move forward together.

First, share any ideas you might have of how we can better emphasize each of these areas. The ideas I’ve outlined so far have their genesis in many places, including members of the faculty, the professional staff, and the senior leadership team. But there are inevitably other ideas we’ve yet to consider. Please share any thoughts with your dean or director so that together, we don’t leave any stone unturned as we embark on this journey.

Second, Provost Mahon has asked the deans to do a full academic portfolio review by critically assessing each of the academic programs in their respective colleges to determine if revisions are necessary to position them for excellence in our rapidly evolving world, if there are programs missing that should be opened, and if there are any that should be phased out. Please assist your dean, director, or department head as needed on this project.

Third, I ask that you continue to expand our efforts to work across disciplinary silos. I’ve been incredibly pleased with the progress we’ve made enacting true interdisciplinarity over the past few years. As just a couple of examples, the growth in partnerships between the traditional face-to-face colleges and the College of Professional Studies is remarkable. The new undergraduate curriculum, despite its flaws, is a step toward affording greater flexibility for students to design unique cross-disciplinary pathways that reflect their interests, talents, and goals. And Provost Mahon’s recent announcement of the broadening of our clinical interprofessional education and practice initiatives is another positive step forward in promoting genuine interdisciplinarity, as is her announcement of the new School of Public and Planetary Health. This new School establishes an inclusive and collaborative community for students, faculty, and professional staff across the University to work together to promote the health of people, communities, and our shared planet.

Fourth, I ask that you be even more intentional in fostering tried and true ways of enhancing our students’ career readiness. I encourage you to explicitly initiate discussions around career preparation in your mentorship conversations with students. Please work with the Office of Career Readiness and Workforce Development to enhance the academic-career connection and to develop more and better internship opportunities in your fields. And encourage students to engage in more experiential learning activities, such as study abroad.

Fifth, help us develop the Nor’easter Global Network, and strongly encourage students to make full use of it. Reach out to Assistant Director for Career Development Ashley Bigda with professional connections or to jumpstart your students’ participation in the mentoring process.

Finally, and very importantly, we must embrace artificial intelligence in our work. I encourage all of us to familiarize ourselves with AI tools, to attend the monthly lunch-and-learn events and workshops on AI offered by our CETL, to utilize the wealth of available online resources, and to experiment with AI tools. Under the guidance of the deans and provost, I also ask that faculty adjust your course-level learning objectives to incorporate the reality of AI.

We must move swiftly on each of these initiatives, overcoming inertia and embracing the urgency of the moment. We do not have the luxury of time to deeply contemplate the various nuances of this work before acting. We must act thoughtfully but expeditiously. And we must not let tradition or nostalgia forestall change.

I acknowledge that some wish things were different. It’s natural to long for simpler times, before AI agents and social media distractions. It’s understandable to long for a world in which the number of students pursuing higher education climbed each year, more-or-less ensuring robust enrollments. But that world is gone, and it won’t come back by wishing otherwise. We owe it to our students to boldly meet the emerging world as it is, with open eyes clearly focused on the future, laser-focused on preparing them for success. Their success, and ��ݮ��Ƶ’s very survival, depends on our doing so.

And although the disruptions we’re facing are unsettling, the new world is also full of promise and hope. Integrating new technological tools with human judgment and creativity, let’s embrace the moment. Let’s be part of building solutions to intractable, long-standing problems to make the world better for everyone.

If there were ever a group of individuals capable of embracing the changes and executing the vision I’ve outlined today, it’s the people assembled in this room. I look forward to working with you to make ��ݮ��Ƶ an even stronger force for improving the lives of our students, and by extension, of our entire world.

Thank you.