To: The Wellesley College Community
From: President Paula A. Johnson
Re: Welcome Back
Date: September 7, 2023
Welcome back, everyone! As we begin a new academic year full of potential and promise, I want to express my sincere thanks to everyone who works hard every day to further our mission. I am grateful to be part of this remarkable community.
This summer we saw a number of developments that have an impact on higher education, most notably the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to end race-conscious admissions, as well as continued attacks on the role and value of higher education and ongoing threats to academic freedom from state legislatures and others.
We will be navigating and addressing these challenges together in the year ahead, but I want to explain briefly how the College has responded to date.
First, as I hope you saw in my letter, we were well prepared to adapt in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, and we are deepening and expanding our recruitment efforts to ensure that a diverse and growing group of young women chooses to apply to the College. We remain committed to diversity and inclusive excellence, and I want to thank T. Peaches Valdes, dean of admission and financial aid, for her leadership and to commend her team for their hard work, flexibility, and creative problem solving, which enables Wellesley to move forward from a position of strength.
Second, we have made it a priority to rededicate ourselves to the civic purpose of higher education to prepare our students to be active citizens and leaders who can effectively engage across difference. As part of these efforts, as you may have read in the Boston Globe, Wellesley has joined a diverse group of colleges and universities convened by the Institute for Citizens & Scholars to advance the principles of critical inquiry, civil discourse, and free expression.
I spoke about the institute’s Campus Call for Free Expression in my convocation address on Tuesday, urging our students to reflect on their roles as citizens in a pluralistic society and to embrace how Wellesley prepares them for that responsibility in the classroom, the residence halls, and through the myriad opportunities the College offers to engage with the world.
Working together, I am hopeful that we can enhance our ability as individuals and as a community to engage in civil dialogue across difference and to embrace free expression—which is essential to achieve our goal of inclusive excellence.
Despite these and other challenges, this is an exciting time at Wellesley, and I’m glad to share a few highlights below.
Welcoming New Students, Faculty, and Staff
We are so pleased to welcome the yellow class of 2027, one of the most diverse in College history. Our first-years hail from 43 states, Washington, D.C., Guam, and 26 countries, and 14% are international students, some of whom are dual citizens. Almost 60% of the class are domestic students of color, and 25% are from underrepresented minority groups. Nearly a quarter will be the first generation in their families to attend a four-year college. More than half speak a language other than English in their homes. And nearly 60% of the class are receiving financial aid; about 22% are Pell Grant recipients. This breadth of diversity gives our students the opportunity to live and learn alongside people who are different from them—and we know this comes with great educational benefits for all.
We also welcome our new faculty, who are dedicated scholars and teachers, as well as faculty and staff who have joined the College in key leadership roles or taken on new ones. Stacie Goddard, Betty Freyhof Johnson ’44 Professor of Political Science, has been appointed to an important new position as associate provost for Wellesley in the World. Earlier this year, Crystal Daugherty joined us as our vice president for development, and more recently we welcomed a new director of accessibility and disability resources, Bridget Arrow. Todd Nordgren came on board as our new director of LGBTQ+ programs and services, joining our student life team. And just last month, Kenneth Walsh began as interim director of public safety. We have launched a national search for a permanent chief of public safety.
Last month we also finalized a new contract with our dining and facilities union employees, who are valued members of our community.
Strategic Planning
The past year our work to realize our ambitious strategic planning goals has gained momentum. Here are some highlights spanning all four priorities:
Building community
Over the summer we made impressive progress in our work to revitalize our campus. Many of our dedicated colleagues in Facilities Management and Planning spent the summer ensuring major building projects could be substantially completed on time and on budget, including the stunning renovations to Severance Hall, the first of our historic residence halls to be fully renovated. Our outstanding Facilities operations team also fanned out across campus to conduct important building and landscape repairs. I want to thank the project managers, tradespeople, custodians, grounds staff, and the team in Environmental Health and Safety. Their work will help us achieve the strategic priorities of the College and enrich the teaching and learning environment.
In addition to all of this work, I’m pleased to report that in 2022 the College exceeded the 2036 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target established in our strategic sustainability plan, with GHG emissions now just about half of what they were in 2010. We accomplished this remarkable reduction through the replacement of the central utility plant, implementation of energy conservation measures in campus buildings, and overall efforts to reduce energy use. This is news worth celebrating, and it is something we accomplished through the efforts of the whole community.
Also connected to our community building goals, and aided significantly by student engagement, we have finalized a clear code of student conduct that will augment our existing Honor Code. The Honor Code Council presented both the Honor Code and the new code of student conduct to first-years during orientation, inviting them to sign the Honor Code book, and they will continue to share this presentation to all students this fall. We hope this will enhance campus life and strengthen the community by providing greater clarity regarding expectations and consequences.
Transformative education
The work of recasting the Wellesley degree requirements will continue this fall. The proposal put forth by the Committee on Curriculum and Academic Policy at the end of the spring semester generated productive discussion in Academic Council. Faculty look forward to reaffirming the College’s commitment to the liberal arts while providing guidelines for students that reduce confusion and more explicitly contribute to a spirit of exploration.
Wellesley’s role in the world
Last April, the board of trustees approved our plan to launch the Hillary Rodham Clinton Center (HRC Center) for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy. Planning for the center is now well underway. We piloted one of its proposed elements, the Civic Action Lab, at the end of August: Around 30 rising sophomores spent three days studying and practicing how to listen and learn across difference and how to build an inclusive community. I want to thank Heidi Johnson, director of civic engagement, and Jen Pollard, associate provost and executive director of Career Education, for making the lab’s pilot a great success and for providing the first cohort of students with an inspirational experience. When the HRC Center is fully launched, we hope to make the lab available to all sophomores.
We will publicly launch the center April 6 with an inaugural campus summit, “Renewing Democracy: Women Leading the Way,” which Secretary Clinton plans to attend. Policymakers, scholars, and democracy advocates from across the globe will be invited to participate in this exciting event at Wellesley. The summit and the ongoing work for the HRC Center will be central to our ongoing partnership with the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, mentioned above.
We are also updating the College’s verbal and visual identity as part of the comprehensive website redesign and new intranet that will launch in early March. We will provide more information on our updated brand identity guidelines soon.
In addition to the HRC Center summit, I am looking forward to several important events in the year ahead. The annual Alumnae Achievement Awards ceremony on October 20 will celebrate Vanessa Ruiz ’72, appellate judge, Faith Vilas ’73, planetary science pioneer, and Cecilia A. Conrad ’76, philanthropic leader and educator.
Two spring semester events will bring the campus together around the idea of the power of the arts and humanities to drive social change. Groundbreaking visual artist Lorraine O’Grady ’55 will be a visiting artist in February, offering the campus community an opportunity to celebrate her achievements and learn from her legendary artwork and its powerful social commentary. I hope everyone will have a chance to see her exhibit Both/And at the Davis Museum, opening February 8. Also that month, celebrated composer Michael Abels will be a scholar in residence at the Newhouse Center and will give a series of lectures and workshops to students, faculty, and staff. Abels won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in music for the opera Omar, and he is well-known for his score for the 2017 film Get Out. More information will be coming soon.
As I shared with our class of 2027 last week, Wellesley is more than a college. The core of what we do—providing a transformational liberal arts education for women—makes us a force for progress and change in the world. Guided by our common purpose, I look forward to working with all of you in the year ahead.
