Message from the President

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT

Counting the days—until a holiday, a wedding, a vacation. We sometimes celebrate the counting by placing large “X’s” on a posted calendar or by opening windows on an Advent calendar. While my mother always cautioned me against “wishing my life away,” I confess that this semester has been marked by an unusual count. “It’s Week 4, Day 2,” I announced to the Leadership Team. “It’s Week 10, Day 7,” I told the Board of Trustees. Each day in which our students, faculty and staff have worked together to maintain a safe residential campus with in-person teaching and learning has seemed worthy of celebration. I have been filled with pride and gratitude for the commitment of our campus community to such an important goal—to complete the academic year with students safely on campus.

Our term began two weeks earlier than normal, as was true for many colleges and universities in this region, designed to allow for students to complete final exams before Thanksgiving so they would not have to come back to campus after that break. Spring classes are set to resume on Jan. 19, and the spring term will end one week earlier than usual as no spring break is planned—again, so that students will not have to return to campus following extensive travels. The weeks without a major break are challenging and tiring, but maintaining the safety of the campus so that students can live, study, perform and compete during the term takes high priority.

We’ve also begun counting another important sequence of days: the second “1,000 days” of the College’s strategic plan. The first sequence, 2017-2020, offered opportunities for us to strengthen the ways in which we recruit and retain students and provide an engaging educational experience for them. We focused on ways to improve our campus facilities and technologies and sought to stabilize the College’s budget while engaging alumni and friends in financial support of the College. We’ve made significant progress in each of these areas, as you will discover as you read through this issue.

But we now look ahead, with a new 1,000 day plan for 2020-2023 endorsed by the Board of Trustees at its October meeting. We are building on the success of the new master’s in business administration and in clinical mental health counseling and expansion of our undergraduate recruitment and retention efforts to help advance progress toward an undergraduate and graduate student enrollment of 1,400. The recently awarded federal TRIO grant will provide funds to help support retention among key groups of students, including those who are the first in their families to attend college. Completing the final phase of the Hoyt Center renovation will provide space for new curricular development in our outstanding STEM fields, and renovations of two additional residence halls, Ferguson and Eichenauer, will improve student experiences on campus. The next Titan Corridor project will provide appropriate locker and office facilities for the lacrosse, soccer and tennis teams.

This year, accreditation reviews from the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education will demonstrate our compliance with professional standards. Our innovative faculty continue to explore new major programs while working with colleagues in Student Affairs to provide challenging cocurricular and extracurricular experiences for students, which will include expanded travel programs when it is safe for domestic and international travel to resume. Building on the College’s inclusive founding, a faculty, staff and student task force is already at work developing a renewed diversity, equity and inclusion plan that will be implemented in the coming months.

Finally, we continue to focus on replenishing the resources required to fulfill the College’s mission to graduate students with the “competencies, commitments and characteristics that have distinguished human beings at their best.” Those are qualities that can be counted on to promote lives of meaning, integrity, leadership and service to others, which is the vision of Westminster.

So, another countdown is under way as we mark progress toward the College’s strategic goals. Whether it is the days of the term or the days designated by planning, each day in which Titans work together to promote the wellbeing of our students, our community and the College marks an important day of progress. Even in a most unusual time, every day counts because every Titan counts. Together, we remain Titan Strong.

Gratefully, Dr. Kathy Brittain Richardson, President