Dear Parents and Families,
I hope that you all had a pleasant and restorative summer. I am happy to welcome parents of the Class of 2022 to the ranks of alumni parents! If it feels strange to not have dropped your student off in Northfield last week, I hope that this newsletter will help you to adjust to the transition 🙂
We have just finished our first week of fall term here on campus, and it is wonderful to have everybody back. This year feels very different from last year! In part, that may be because I am no longer a “new” president, but I think the biggest change is that people are more comfortable being together, and more confident in the year ahead. It has been wonderful to feel so much positive energy. We held multiple Reunions this summer, and had a wonderful graduation celebration with the amazing Class of 2020. I think that helped us all to feel some sense of the world getting back into alignment.
A major accomplishment of last year was the completion of the Community Plan for Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity. We are already moving forward with many of its recommendations, including undertaking a search for a chief diversity officer, a Vice President for Inclusion, Equity, and Community. But we are not done planning for an even stronger Carleton. On the contrary, we are getting ready to formally launch a strategic planning process that will incorporate the IDE Plan as a major component of a comprehensive look at where Carleton will be headed in the coming decade. We will be sharing more about this exciting process in the coming weeks and months, and I hope that you will be interested in hearing more, and perhaps sharing some input from your perspective and experience. We will be planning multiple ways to engage the Carleton community, near and far.
In the meantime, I hope you’ll enjoy hearing these updates from campus. Thanks for staying in touch.
Warm regards,
