The below message was sent to faculty, staff, and students on January 7, 2025.
Dear Bryn Mawr College Community,
A warm welcome to 2025 and to the familiar (and new) routines this year may bring. I hope the end of 2024 brought rest and you enjoyed yesterday’s snow day. I slept for much of the first few days of the break. Then there was time with family, too much sugar, a few days away, and a lot of reading, including TJ Klune’s new Somewhere Beyond the Sea and Eve Chung’s Daughter’s of Shandong. As we begin to come back together, I am excited about the meals we will share, the reading we will do, and the myriad ways we will convene and dream as a community this year.
If you were not able to attend the December Town Hall with results from the Start, Stop, Continue survey, please read about the results here and check out the graphic facilitator’s overview. We will engage in a similar exercise with students this spring. This process has been very helpful, and my team and I are piloting some new efforts this spring in response.
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With the aim of fully supporting our faculty and students, we will open the College’s first Testing Center on January 21st. Located on the second floor of Guild, the Testing Center will provide space for students with academic accommodations to complete tests. This is a pilot effort put together quickly over the last few months, and we appreciate your patience as we get things up and running through the spring semester. Additional information will come from the Undergraduate College Division and the Provost’s Office before the start of classes.
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The Current Topics in Higher Education sessions were a success and will continue this spring on January 28, February 19, and April 4 at 12 p.m. in the Great Hall. Topics are forthcoming.
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You told us through the survey that you value wellness, and we wholeheartedly agree. The Bern Schwartz Fitness and Athletic Center is expanding its offerings to help us all get moving in January with more classes available (for free to all community members) through the Fit Club and a pilot program starting January 21 to provide an earlier opening time (8 a.m.) at the Fitness Center for the campus community on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. If there is demand, we will add more days.
Also, as you return to campus know that more of the Park Science project has been completed. Three new classrooms (336, 337 and 338) are open for the spring semester and the Physics Department, and the Health Professions Advising Office moved into their new spaces in Park. The Communications Team shared our new institutional positioning guide in December (see here) and has resources available (new email signatures and business card templates) and to come (think Zoom backgrounds and PowerPoint templates!). You will also be receiving monthly updates about all facilities projects which will be posted here.
I will write again at the start of classes to share more about plans for the semester, including an update on our sustainability work, NAGPRA work, and thoughts about the strategic planning and campus master planning processes. Please plan now to join me in the reflections I will offer about my first semester at a Town Hall on Monday, January 27, 2025, at 4 p.m. in the Great Hall.
With gratitude and hope,
Wendy
p.s. for the planners among us organizing their calendars for the semester:
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Nekisha Durrett’s campus monument, Don’t Forget to Remember (Me), installed as part of the ARCH project will be dedicated on Thursday, April 24th
Wendy Cadge
President and Professor of Sociology
Bryn Mawr College
101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Pronouns: she/her
brynmawr.edu
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