Aug. 22, 2025

Dear all,

As we embark on the new academic year, I want to take a moment to thank you for your notes and outreach this summer as we begin our journey together to Becoming OneUD. This is a broad, community-wide opportunity for all of us to reflect, regroup and reaffirm collectively who we are, how we work and what we do.

Earlier this summer, I invited you to consider these defining elements, framed as follows:

By who we are, I mean thinking about our mission at UD and the culture we foster for everyone who is part of the UD community.

By how we work, I mean thinking about our efforts moving in a common direction, fueled by trust and respect, and engaged communication.

By what we do, I mean thinking about the ways in which we work together to fulfill our mission through integrated plans related to academics, access and affordability, student success, campus facilities and infrastructure, shared governance and service.

We will begin these conversations in a series of town halls in September: four on the Newark campus and one in southern Delaware. While some meetings are focused on a particular group, all meetings are open to all members of the UD community, so I hope you will attend a session that fits your schedule. Times and locations will be posted on the President’s webpage. At each town hall, I will take two to three minutes to kick off the conversation and then simply listen as we move through these three themes. We can also discuss these themes during our next Zoom-In on Sept. 22. Finally, please feel free to provide written comments using this form (requires UD login credentials).

Across all these venues, we will capture the ideas and the conversations, and I will share your input in my public remarks to the Board of Trustees at their retreat on Oct. 1. These themes will also serve as a basis for building the next University of Delaware strategic plan.

This Becoming OneUD initiative is tightly linked to our coming work on the co-creation of a new framework for Campus Culture and Engagement, connecting who we are, how we work and what we do to our identity and our mission. Thank you to all who have expressed an interest in being involved. José-Luis Riera, vice president for student life, and John Ernest, chair of the English department, are co-chairs of a task force leading this work. They are forming a steering committee and focus groups and setting up additional campus-wide conversations to define and implement this framework. You will hear from them soon with an update.  

We will also set forth an effort to implement the themes we unearth in the Becoming OneUD discussions within an operational context of budget allocations and the flow of resources. 

These conversations are exactly that ... conversations. We need your perspectives, your ideas, your feedback and your energy. I look forward to hearing from you as we chart our path forward to Becoming OneUD.

Yours in UD,