The University President, Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, periodically posts blogs and email messages to the University community and the public about important University relations, developments, and updates.
Read his most recent blogs below and subscribe to receive all updates.
Dear students,
The Fall 2020 semester begins Aug. 17, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you back.
We’ve used the past few months to prepare for your homecoming. Our extensive and careful planning reflects the unwavering priority we place on your health and safety.
Some of you will return physically to campus to take classes or to live in residence halls. Others have enrolled in remote and online courses that empower you to select what instruction option best fits your needs.
Dear faculty, students, staff members, alumni and friends,
Our University has a long and deliberate history of diversity and inclusion.
But we have, as a nation and as an institution, reached a moment in which simply pointing to the past without pledging ourselves to improving the future is insufficient. This history would be hollow if we failed to reaffirm our commitment to racial equity and social justice through meaningful action.
Dear members of the University family,
George Floyd. Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade.
Their tragic deaths – and those of countless others – are reminders that our nation has much work to do to address discrimination, intolerance and other inexcusable barriers to social justice that have burdened us for far too long.
Universities are a place where that work can occur. Indeed, they are a place where it must occur.
On Friday, the University graduated the largest and most diverse class in our 122-year history, capping an unprecedented semester in momentous fashion.
We conferred 1,905 degrees, an all-time high for a single semester. Women received 1,173 of those diplomas; that’s nearly 62 percent of the total graduating class and yet another record. Eighty-eight degrees were awarded to Hispanic graduates, the most ever.
