January 27, 2025
To the Wagner community,
Welcome back to Grymes Hill. The year 2025 promises to be busy, with so many new opportunities and certainly some challenges. Together we are going to start to build a new chapter for Wagner — some of it as a response to the changing landscape of higher education, some of it to test our own innovative plans for campus life.
No matter the focus of our collective efforts, I am eager to rejoin you for what lies ahead.
We had a promising fall semester — my first here at Wagner. National ranking organizations placed us in the top tier of American universities. We admitted our largest first-year class in decades. Our Day of Giving outreach more than doubled its goal. We began a new approach to community discussions — with broad transparency and inclusive of more voices. We created new ways of communicating, such as the NEST. We tried new ideas, and we found more ways to engage in and with our campus and our community.
Dedicated faculty continued to put students first while helping the college chart its course forward. And staff have rededicated themselves to our highest and best purpose: making Wagner students successful.
More young people want to join our community to further their intellectual and personal journeys. While applications are still arriving, it appears the numbers are rising steadily, as word of our academic strengths, our vibrant student support services and indeed our beautiful campus reach more families across the region and the country.
As we enter into this new year, I wanted to take a moment to remind you that there are signs of a brighter future ahead if we continue to work as one.
Thank you for all you do for Wagner, our students and each other.
Jeffrey Doggett, President