Dear Saybrook Community,
I want to first welcome and thank you for the opportunity to serve as your president. Our time together will offer us many opportunities to engage, dream, and deliver on the many opportunities that lie in front of us.
Saybrook University is unique in that across all our schools and departments, there exists a passionate dedication to our mission. In point of fact, one of the key reasons I was drawn to the institution like so many of you, was the obvious commitment to SU’s mission and goals, all rooted in humanistic inquiry, personal and social transformation. Furthermore, in my mind what sets us apart in the higher education landscape is that our students, faculty, and staff all have a deep desire to make a sincere, positive difference both in ourselves and the communities we serve.
Engagement will be a key ingredient as we seek to position Saybrook as a truly excellent place to learn and work. As such, this year, I will be challenging all of us to open channels of communication among alumni, faculty, students and staff; to work within our communities in which we strive for even deeper discussion and action as it relates to both transformative scholarship and application; and, delivering first-rate academic services to our students, services that demonstrate to you – our primary constituents – that we are truly dedicated to you.
Over the course of this academic year, we will also be dreaming about our future – what is and what can be over the coming years. In a day and age in which higher education is faced with myriad challenges both internally and externally, Saybrook’s approach to progressive research and scholarly application is even more relevant than it was 42 years ago. Your input and expertise will be enlisted to help Saybrook in this process of further refining our focus, providing clarity on who we are and where want to go, and collaboratively settling on a destination point for the university. I urge each and every one of us to take part in this process as it will set the stage for how we move forward into 2020.
Most importantly, over the next year our university will be fully dedicated to delivering on the promises made to our teaching and learning community. Through heightened communication, a spirit of collaboration, and a fierce commitment to our mission, we will be refining and improving the services necessary to help you learn, enhancing the overall teaching-learning experience, and executing on necessary strategies that will position Saybrook University for generations to come.
Thank you and best wishes for a productive academic year.
Sincerely,
Nathan Long, Ed.D.
President