Dear Southwestern Community,

It may be that in Texas, after weeks of temperatures in the triple digits, I could choose a better anthem to celebrate Southwestern than the Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun.” Yet as I look back over more than two years of pandemic planning and response, the line “it feels like years since it's been here,” really resonates. The sun has finally come out, shining ever brighter on Southwestern.

I attended two presidents’ conferences this summer, and while I listened to the struggles other institutions have faced and continue to face, I could not help but be gratified by the progress we’ve made not simply as an institution, but as a community. Much of this progress can be measured in hard data. We are clearly an outlier in that we opened the fall semester with one of our largest incoming classes in our long history, and one of our most selective. In August we celebrated an $80 million bond issuance, 30 years fixed at 4.25% interest, that will fund transformative projects across campus including two new residence halls and an athletics complex.

All of this is taking place in Georgetown, the fastest-growing city in America, quickly becoming the next Silicon Valley. Southwestern is poised to be a dynamic part of this future, as we are currently in the process of selecting a developer to partner with us in building a community on the 500 contiguous acres immediately east of our campus—a community that reflects the values and aspirations of a liberal arts education.

And yet as much as these markers of growth and institutional strength are encouraging, they are less important than the strength of our community and the vibrant commitment to our mission, which is as tangible a value as our expanding footprint.

A champion of those values and aspirations is our new chair of the Board of Trustees, Chris Cragg, a 1983 graduate and member of a three-generation SU family.

An essential goal for Chris has been increasing board diversity—he is now leading the most diverse board that has ever governed this institution with more women, more board members from BIPOC communities, and more members from previously under-represented groups. The Board of Southwestern today is more diverse than most boards in higher education, and Chris is committed to broadening that representation. We want a board that reflects our aspirations as much as the community in which we live.

Let me share with you a few of the signposts of our growth and of the new opportunities that are on the horizon.

The Office of Admission welcomed an incoming class of 439 students who are diverse and academically strong, with an average GPA over the past three years of 3.49. The Class of 2026 comes to us from 23 states and ten countries including Canada, Nepal, Ukraine, Mexico, the Netherlands, Mongolia, Vietnam, Belize, Germany, and Nigeria. We also have some new services to help all our students be successful during their years at SU.

Admission has partnered with EAB on a new initiative, College Greenlight, which helps support and recruit first-generation, lower-income, and historically underserved students. The College Greenlight seeks to develop a diverse pipeline of students who are more likely to apply, enroll, and succeed, and we will be part of a pilot program that will target seniors in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Houston, and Dallas. In recognition of our growing number of Hispanic/Latinx families, our financial aid office now employs a bilingual counselor, and this year we will also create a bilingual Admission website.

After a nationwide search, the Center for Career and Professional Development has welcomed Adrian Ramirez to lead our efforts in increasing partnerships and collaborations with area employers that help boost our students’ post-graduate success.

There is more very good news on that front: a recent polling of our 2021 graduating class told us that within a year after graduation 98.4 percent of our newest alumni are in graduate school or starting their first career. Our Five-Year Tactical Plan calls for us to get that number to 100 percent. The thriving business community that is growing all around us will only help in these efforts.

Rapid Progress on Tactical Plan

Just one year into the Five-Year Tactical Plan we have already made tremendous progress achieving 40 percent of our tactical funding priorities, 31 percent of our programmatic and policy priorities, and 60 percent of our staffing priorities, including adding these extraordinary faculty to our Southwestern community:

A new academic advising program that starts with first-year professional advisors and transitions to faculty/staff advisors welcomed Scott Brevard, Jennifer Frias, Hayley Harned, Natalie King, Isaac Pressnell, and Jenny Terry Roberts. We will be adding a seventh advisor next year who will provide advising to our Hispanic/Latinx students.

In fulfillment of our Tactical Plan, we have welcomed Malissa Ismaila as our new director of Student Inclusion and Diversity and our first full-time Title IX coordinator, Katie Rallojay.

Changes in Athletics

We will begin a new era in Southwestern athletics when Athletic Director Ken Ralph joins the Pirate faithful on September 15.

Ken has considerable experience and success in Division III, having previously served as director of athletics at Colorado College for 11 years and at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute for five years. Most recently, he served as director of athletics at the University of Maine with a D1 sports program. A unanimous choice of the search committee, Ken has been a long-time admirer of Southwestern and is looking forward to leading a program with a strong commitment to student-athletes.

We have also made some significant improvements in our athletic facilities, including a refurbished softball field and newly constructed dugouts, a new varsity field for soccer and lacrosse with shade covers for both players and fans, and a new surface on the Robertson Court that boldly displays our new look for SU Athletics.

Coming soon we will begin planning a two-story fieldhouse for our baseball and softball programs and an Athletics Complex that will bring football games back to campus. When it opens in the fall of 2025, it will mark 75 years since football was last played on our campus (for those of you who might be wondering, that last game was against Austin College and we won 27-7).

Student Life at SU

This year, we are saying farewell to one of our most beloved and longest-tenured staff members, Vice President for Student Life Jaime Woody, who recently announced her retirement effective October 3. Jaime and her team have made our campus a vibrant place for students to learn, discover, and grow, and we are grateful for the thirty-four years that Jaime has devoted to SU.

We know that making friends and forming friend groups early on is of the greatest importance to incoming students. After two pandemic years, the Student Life staff have added more opportunities to keep our students engaged in campus life.

Our new assistant director for outdoor recreation, Branndon Bargo, is organizing outdoor outings for students such as hiking, rock climbing, camping, kayaking, and stand-up paddleboarding. Students will also be offered excursions to Austin to visit art museums, botanical gardens, or take a lake cruise and do some bat watching. Our first-year students are invited to a “Captain’s Camp” at the world-famous John Newcombe ranch in New Braunfels, where they can enjoy outdoor activities while making new friends. We also plan to take students to the Houston Rodeo, where alumnus Jack Lyons ’75 served as president for three years.

On campus, monthly concerts are back, and there are weekly wellness activities including yoga and zumba, and new meeting spaces including the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Center, which supports the continued development of a positive campus climate. There are also new places to gather and recreate all over campus, including covered outdoor patios at Olin and the McCombs Center.

New and returning students to Mabee Residence Hall found a completely refurbished facility—with new interior finishes, furniture, a new HVAC system, and new LED lighting—it looks like a brand-new building. The area has been fully landscaped and, in response to student feedback, two outdoor ping-pong tables have been installed.

We also continue to offer new campus leadership opportunities for students. They are invited to plan and create campus gardens, serve on a residence hall construction committee, the Real Estate Development Committee, or the campus food committee.

Improved Food Services

Everyone is enjoying our new food service provider, Aramark. We have better food quality and variety—everything from vegan to paleo—and Aramark is providing 150 lunch coupons per semester to encourage faculty and staff to take students to lunch. Coupons will be available in the President’s Office, the Dean’s Office and Student Life on October 1. More details to come. Also, faculty, staff, and students are welcome to drop by the Commons on their birthday for a special treat—just bring your ID.

A new look and feel is coming to the Mabee Commons and The Cove, with new furniture arriving over the semester break. An exciting addition to the food scene is a mini-market already in operation—Provisions on Demand Express—open daily from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. stocked with all the things students crave throughout the day and during late-night study sessions. The Express is located right next to The Cove.

Aramark will be hosting surprise events and pop-ups all semester, and for the Georgetown community I am happy to announce that we are once again offering a weekend brunch Sundays from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Academic Life

Headlining academic life this fall will be a visit to campus September 20-21 by representatives from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). We also have new leadership positions in Academic Affairs, including newly appointed Associate Dean of the Faculty, Sergio Costola, and Director of Paideia and Undergraduate Research, Jess Hower.

We will also be conducting a number of faculty searches in the Departments of History, Political Science, English, Sociology, Kinesiology, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Feminist Studies and Environmental Studies with thematic hires in race, ethnicity and social justice in History, Political Science, English, Sociology and Feminist Studies.

Over the past two years SU has accepted memberships in a number of national and international organizations. Most recently, we’ve been invited to join Excelencia in Education which helps institutions accelerate Latino student success in higher education. Other recent memberships include:

Last year the Board of Trustees approved the Campus Master Plan which includes the long-awaited renovation of Mood-Bridwell—construction on that project will begin in May following Commencement, with an anticipated completion date of 2025.

In addition to Mood-Bridwell, our $80 million bond issue will enable us to address a number of much-needed capital improvements on campus, including:

These are just a few of the upcoming changes to our campus as we look to the future. A key strategic goal is the development of 500 acres contiguous to campus. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to enlarge the university’s presence, not just in terms of usage and economic resources, but in terms of visibility, mission, and vision. We are currently in discussion with three prospective development firms who are sharing their visions of how we can best develop this land to meet the needs of our university, its faculty, staff, and students, and the city of Georgetown.

I encourage everyone to take advantage of opportunities to get to know their faculty and staff colleagues at campus events. Beginning in September, I am starting “Breakfast with the President,” where staff from across campus will be invited to join me and a small group of colleagues to share a meal and some conversation.

We will celebrate our campus community with the return of SUnity Day on September 13, and the Captain’s Sweet Surprise returns this fall on the 21st of September.

Throughout the year we can celebrate our campus spirit at our many athletic events and fine arts performances, including the Theatre Department’s upcoming fall musical, How I Became a Pirate.

Closing thoughts:

After the devastating blizzard of 2021, it was painful to walk by the spots where hundred-year-old trees had stood; their stumps felt like the gravestones of old friends. But now, thanks to the work of Stephanie Krull, there is new life and new growth. Stephanie comes to us with a wealth of experience, and she’s developing a master landscape plan for campus. One of her early projects will be developing gardens with the help of our first-year students. And that’s just one of the bright spots on the horizon.

It’s impossible not to think of the future on a morning walk: the coming day, the coming weeks, and even the years ahead. In Walden, Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me…To be awake is to be alive.” That’s what I feel as I walk around the campus in 2022: Southwestern is vibrant and growing. We’ve taken off our masks—for the most part—and, to paraphrase George Harrison, a transcendentalist of a slightly different stripe, “the smile’s returning to our faces.” Here comes Southwestern.

Sincerely,

Laura Skandera Trombley
President, Southwestern University