To the Lesley Community,
By now you have read the letter from the Chair of Lesley’s Board, Hans Strauch, noting my stepping down as president at the end of the summer due to personal health reasons. I am grateful to him and to our entire Board for their support of Lesley, their commitment to our success, and their close partnership with me. I share this news with a heavy heart, and the following with deep appreciation and admiration for each of you.
Over the almost two and half years since my selection as the sixth president of Lesley, Gerri and I have grown to love our community: our people, our work, and our mission. I have had the opportunity to work every day with inspiring and dedicated colleagues across our faculty, staff, students, alumni, friends of Lesley, and partners to Lesley to build on what makes us great and to grow and strengthen us for the future. What we at Lesley do for students, for critical fields and professions, and for the world around us is more important today than ever, and it has been an honor to work with you to help inspire, develop, and educate our future leaders.
I am very proud of what we as a community have accomplished together over the past two years. I am excited by:
- a renewed sense of collaboration and interdisciplinary work across the university
- a developing discipline of deep innovation combined with business planning and data-driven decision-making
- the substantial progress made, and exciting work yet to be done, in developing our Lesley 2030 vision and strategic plan
- the number of new programs launched, others strengthened, and new ones being developed across our four schools and the Threshold Program
- the promise of what can be achieved, especially working in conjunction with so many of our other existing disciplines, by new programs in Social Work, a developing leadership program and a stackable Master of Science in Business Management, new certificate programs in key areas like restorative justice, our design expertise, our mindfulness teaching, and exciting teaching and research partnerships like ours with Mount Auburn Cemetery, to simply name a few
- the tremendous power in providing our students with a combination of professional, liberal arts, and leadership knowledge and skills
- the broadening of our very important community college partnerships and what we have put into place to make it easier for great students to transfer into Lesley
- the success and growth of our Urban Scholars Initiative
- the planning begun to substantially grow our work with non-traditional/adult students; our thinking about “Lesley for Life,” as our graduates aim to do anything from deepening their professional knowledge and skill, to developing a specialization, to considering changing careers; and our exploration of where and how best to provide a great deal more professional and continuing education ourselves and with partners
- substantial new strategies being developed and tested to increase enrollment, improve retention, and strengthen student success; plans to strengthen our Honors Program and to expose all of our undergraduates, through our emerging general education requirements, to a robust and exciting set of literacies critical for success in today’s world; and new programs, certificates, and partnerships being developed across our graduate programs
- far broadened, deepened, and engaged Inclusive Excellence work, with a lifetime of ongoing work ahead of us
- an integrated approach to, and focused education on, sexual assault prevention
- work kicked off this past year to better embrace and support our commuter students
- the launch of our Managers Training Academy and ongoing work on bringing to life the “high-performance culture” we’ve collectively set out to develop, enable, and enact
- Margaret Everett’s joining us as our new Provost starting in July; Amarildo “Lilu” Barbosa becoming Lesley’s Chief Diversity Officer starting in September; the capability our Advancement team is building under the leadership of Tim Cross; the substantial advancements our Communications team has made and the level of thought and community engagement going into the development of our strategy led by MaryPat Lohse; and some truly terrific examples of what can be achieved when faculty, staff, and administrative leaders work together
- new construction projects underway (including, our exciting new animation wing and its enablement of building what will soon be the most advanced Visual Effects program in the region) and campus expansion being explored
- the ongoing production of leading-edge research; inspiring applied work; world-class writing and art; and projects with far-reaching impact focused on tackling critical real-word problems through the power of bringing together faculty, students and staff from a wide array of fields and with a broad range of expertise
- and, across our global community – including our 90,000 alumni who every day demonstrate the power and impact of a Lesley education – how we effect and extend our social justice mission through what we teach, research, and do
Our future is very bright, and I have great confidence in my colleague and friend, Rich Hansen, and in our entire community to build on the above and lead us forward. Gerri and I each very much look forward to staying connected with, and being helpful to, Lesley long-term.
Over the next two and half months, I will be working closely with leaders across the university on numerous projects and various transitions, and, through the fall and beyond, Rich knows I am available anytime as a resource.
I look forward to seeing many of you in the weeks ahead. For now, however, let me simply reiterate what I shared in my remarks during the year-end barbecue. Success ahead will take real collective leadership across our community, deep collaboration, passion and innovation, and the discipline to make tough choices about where we invest our expertise, time, and resources. It will take fully harnessing the power of the incredible and varied skill of our extended Lesley community. And, it will take keeping a clear and collective focus on our critical calling – developing the next generations of professionals, leaders, knowledge and practice that make the world a more equitable one, a more just one, and a more peaceful and fulfilling one for all people.
With deep appreciation,
Jeff