The below message was sent to faculty, staff, and students on October 2, 2024. A version was also sent to alumnae/i.
Dear Bryn Mawr College Community,
The first few weeks of the semester were a rush, and suddenly, it is October, with Fall Break just ahead. My days, like all of yours, have been full as I continue to learn from and about this passionate community. We had more than fifty people at the first “Current Topics in Higher Education” session and began to talk about the purpose of higher education. Our September programmed coffee hour on “What Bryn Mawr Did this Summer” was inspiring. I continue to love connecting with so many of you in offices, at club meetings, in dining halls, and as we walk through campus.
I am a systems thinker and have gotten clearer in the last month about how to approach this year. My most important task, as you all know, is to get to know the community as broadly and deeply as possible. As I get to know all of you, I am also prioritizing five other efforts outlined here in the spirit of collaboration.
First, I am getting to know the Board of Trustees by meeting with each of them individually (in person or by Zoom) and by preparing for my first Board of Trustees meeting at the end of October. The Board is responsible for the long-term health of the College, and one of their most important jobs is to hire the person responsible for leading it (i.e., the President). All Board members are volunteers who attend three in-person meetings on campus per year and donate innumerable hours to Board Committees that help to govern the College. I will send a full update about the October Board Meeting in the week after the meeting, and we are working on building the Board’s webpages to enable us to more fully understand each other and our roles as well as the institution’s governance.
Second, I am eager to understand how Bryn Mawr College is (and could be) known in the world outside of Bryn Mawr and am starting to travel for the College to meet leaders in politics, foundations, the academy, business, and other fields. I hope we will find ways to allow Bryn Mawr’s light to shine even brighter as we build strong strategic partnerships beyond our walls. My early sense is that the light in Bryn Mawr’s lantern has been unnecessarily hidden from the rest of the world and has the potential to shimmer beyond its current reach. In my lighter moments, I think we need a disco ball to cast the light in all (rainbowed) directions.
Third, we will be reading and thinking strategically about the College’s next step, what I am calling its next chapter. The reflections I offer early in 2025 will be based on the last two years of strategic thinking at the College, the start/stop/continue survey faculty and staff are completing, my now up to four notebooks of field notes from participant observation and conversations with all corners of the College community since July, and deep and ongoing conversations with many of you. Please mark your calendars for December 10th, 4-5 pm, to hear the findings from the start/stop/continue survey so we can begin to think about them in advance of my reflections in 2025.
Fourth, as you know, there are transitions in process among the senior staff as we work to move the College forward. Deep thanks to Janet Shapiro, Dean of the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research, who is chairing the search committee for the College’s next Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer (CFO/CAO). Other committee members are Brooke Jones, Shannon Kearns, Lisa Saltzman, Jonas Goldsmith, Shenika McAlister, Thabani Clemens Sinkula, Sally Bachofer, and Jim Mateo. Additional gratitude to Tim Harte, Provost and Professor of Russian and Dianna Xu, Professor and Chair of Computer Science, who are chairing the search for the College’s next Chief Information Officer & Constance A. Jones Director of Libraries (CIO). Representatives on this committee are Samara Sit, Shannon Kearns, Min Kyung Lee, Marc Schulz, Amy Berry, Amy Loftus, and Lori Perine. Members of the full campus community will be invited to short presentations by the finalists later this semester and early in 2025. The profiles for both searches are in the process of being finalized, and ads will be posted in the coming weeks.
Finally, all of the operational work of the College continues thanks in large part to our amazing staff and faculty. The Rebalancing Faculty Workload Committee (RFWC) is moving forward following additional discussion at the September Faculty Meeting. As the class dean model enters its second year of implementation, the Undergraduate College Division will continue to partner with the Office of Institutional Research, Planning, and Assessment to evaluate and assess the effectiveness of this model on student success. And, we hope to move forward with a collaborative learning process and conversation around the Academic Honor Code among students, faculty, and members of the Dean’s Office. The College also recently signed a contract to begin the implementation phase of Workday, which will launch Human Resources, Payroll, and Finance functions in January 2026.
I approach all of this – as I believe we all should - mindful of the complex and polarized contexts in which we live and rooted in my core belief that love is stronger than fear. Well-meaning people ask why I would want to be a college president in these times, and the answer is easy. What colleges do and the value of that work for all of us is too important not to do it, and it changes lives - not just for students and their families but for all of us. In the words of Yung Pueblo, in the book The Way Forward, which I have posted over my desk:
wisdom is not loud
nor does it whisper
it is a resonance
that realigns you with a better direction
it is a knowing that arises with undeniable clarity
it is an expansion that makes the mind lighter
wisdom is gradual,
often showing you the same truth
but from different angles,
until finally it clicks so deeply
that it becomes part of your being
as the wisdom within you matures,
it becomes easier to let go,
to stop fighting yourself,
and to move with nature instead of against it
Reflecting on these words, I am aware of the difficulty the coming days will bring to many in our community impacted by the past year of pain and suffering in the Middle East. As we approach the one-year mark, I invite us to do so with gentleness for ourselves and others. If extra support would be welcome, please seek support from these campus resources.
With gratitude and hope,
Wendy
P.S. Join us tomorrow at 9:30 am at Coffee Hour in the Great Hall (“Donut Forget to Vote”), where my friend and colleague Lia Howard, Fellows Director and Director of Political Empathy Lab at the SNF Paideia Program at the University of Pennsylvania, will talk about traveling around Pennsylvania this summer with students talking with voters through the Political Empathy Lab, and we will learn about on-campus efforts to promote voting.
P.P.S. Also, plan now for lunch on October 8th for the second “Current Topics in Higher Education” session focused on financial models in higher education and featuring Brooke Jones, Chief Investment Officer, Tijana Stefanovic, Interim Chief Financial Officer and Chief Administrative Officer, Bob Miller, Chief Alumnae Relations and Development Officer and Cheryl Lynn Horsey, Chief Enrollment Officer.
P.P.P.S.…ok enough! - Do plan to join us (bring your families and friends!) for Inauguration and Owls Fest on October 26th to celebrate all the College has been and can become. There will be a bouncy house!
**
President
Professor of Sociology
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr, PA
(Pronouns: she/her - why?)
