Dear Colleagues,

I want to update you on our ongoing strategic planning process and ask for your continued help. 

Thank you for the broad participation and feedback that so many of you provided this fall during the first phase of this process, both online and in conversation groups held after the State of the University. This process will succeed only with your ideas and your guidance. 

At the State of the University, I began to present a vision for our future based on a year of deep listening to our community. You have taught me about Fordham’s strengths and challenges, our particular culture and history. Most of all, I have heard a deep yearning to heal a broken world, to harness Fordham’s power to matter ever more. As we face a challenging landscape of American higher education, we succeed by doubling down on our mission, by earning credibility with a generation eager to choose institutions worthy of their trust.

Together, we have begun to focus on the ways Fordham matters most: (1) who we educate and the opportunity we create, (2) the way we transform our students’ lives, both inside and outside the classroom, and (3) research and scholarship that helps solve the world’s most urgent problems. Opportunity, Transformational Learning, Research. And there is a fourth pillar that many of you have been working hard for years to achieve, making Fordham more functional, nimble, and efficient. 

Our most powerful Jesuit tradition is that of discernment, which requires deep listening, curiosity, and gathering of information. We continue that process this spring with a more structured collection of data and your insights. To help us in that work, I have appointed a steering committee co-chaired by Provost Dennis Jacobs and Faculty Senate President Falguni Sen (membership listed below), to guide the process. Throughout the spring semester, you will receive separate and targeted outreach from the steering committee about how you can participate in and contribute your voice to the information-gathering process. We need your information, ideas, and perspectives. 

This spring, we ask deep questions and continue to learn. We look at the overlap between the Jesuit mission and the research on Gen Z. We launch our own market research on prospective students and their parents. Through our accreditation process, we dig deeply into our data on learning outcomes and retention. And through the Mission Priority Examen process (launching soon), we measure our commitment to mission and whether we deliver to students what we promise. 

This summer, we will write an initial draft of the plan to discuss with you in the fall, to get your feedback and continued help in making it better. 

We are blessed with a community full of brilliance, passionate commitment, and deep loyalty. Together, we will blaze a path forward. I cannot thank you enough for your help.

All my best,

Tania Tetlow
President

Members of the Steering Committee
Co-Chair: Dennis C. Jacobs, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost
Co-Chair: Falguni Sen, Professor of Strategy and Statistics and Faculty Senate President

Laura Auricchio, Dean of Fordham College at Lincoln Center
Justin M. Bell, Vice President for Marketing and Communications
Michele C. Burris, Vice President for Student Affairs
Julie L. Gafney, Assistant Vice President, Strategic Mission Initiatives and Executive Director, Center for Community Engaged Learning
Dawn Lerman, Professor of Marketing and Special Advisor to the Provost for Strategy
Tokumbo Shobowale, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer
Michael R. Trerotola, Chief of Staff