WINTER 2015
President’s
INSIDER
FROM THE DESK OF GREGORY G. DELL’OMO, PH.D., PRESIDENT OF ROBERT MORRIS UNIVERSITY
I am sure you have heard of my recent decision to accept an offer to become the next president of Rider University in New Jersey at the end of this academic year. Let me say it was a deeply personal decision to return to my home state of New Jersey, and it will not be easy to leave all the wonderful friends that Polly and I have among you, not to mention the eager students and dedicated faculty and staff who have helped this university achieve such great things these past 10 years. But thanks to all their hard work, and the generosity of supporters like you, RMU has built a strong foundation upon which to build even greater things. Robert Morris University’s best days are yet to come. As many of you know, the Gallup Organization recently partnered with Purdue University to survey 30,000 college graduates nationwide to identify those undergraduate experiences that correlate most strongly with professional success and personal fulfillment. This year, RMU became one of only 12 institutions in the nation to pose that survey to its own alumni, and we are incorporating this instrument into our new strategic plan. I am happy to report that preliminary findings indicate that RMU graduates are enjoying a higher level of engagement and success in their workplace at a higher proportion than the national average of those 30,000 graduates surveyed by Gallup — and those graduates represented a variety of institutions, ranging from Ivy Leagues to large public universities to small liberal arts colleges. In addition, RMU graduates said they felt more prepared for life after college than the national average, and report higher levels of personal well-being: a holistic blend of purposeful living,
social, community, physical, and financial factors. We will be receiving a more detailed report from our partners at Gallup with more insights to come in the weeks and months ahead. Harvard President Drew Faust said that college “will take you to places you’ve never been before” and “discover dreams you’ve never dreamed before.” I think of students like Sarah Robb, who graduated in May from our integrated B.S./M.S. in engineering program. She traveled with our nursing students to Nicaragua to study, from an engineering perspective, the problems faced by the poor families to whom our students provide health care. Sarah developed simple health kits nursing students can distribute on future trips to Nicaragua. The founding member of RMU’s chapter of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Sarah is now earning a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. If we do our jobs right, every student will have an experience like Sarah’s that changes their lives, and every student will be able to point to a professor or a staff member and say, “That’s the person who made it happen.” What a great feeling to be that person! Thank you for your generosity to RMU, as well as the kindness and friendship that you have shown to Polly and me and our entire family. I am proud of being the president of Robert Morris University, not because of what I achieved but because of what we have achieved together. I urge you to continue to support RMU in its great mission, because its best days are indeed yet to come.
Gregory G. Dell’Omo, Ph.D.