Dear Friends,
What keywords would you select to capture your experience of 2020 and your aspirations for the year 2021? Here at Wagner College the words would include resilience, resourcefulness and renewal.
Through this pandemic year, it has been by the steadfastness of Wagner’s faculty and staff, the leadership of our board and senior team, the unprecedented support of our alumni and friends and the resilience — the remarkable resilience — of our students that Wagner has managed to sustain our learning mission while earning an A++ for the transparency of our data and testing regime.
We opened safely in August, sustained a most successful fall semester, launched an experimental virtual winter session and proceeded with plans to start our spring semester in mid-February with high hopes. We have embraced new technologies, enabling our faculty to reach students in new ways that will persist beyond the pandemic; new dining arrangements and options that students appreciate; new ways to connect with alumni across the country and world, even when we cannot meet in person. We have punched above our weight, gaining national renown, while retaining the special warmth that defines the Wagner College experience.
At the same time, we are planning for significant new strategic developments to enhance our campus experience, appeal to students and strengthen our financial basis. Innovative plans for the health sciences, business, arts and civic engagement — all calibrated to contemporary challenges in our region and nation — are advancing. The beauty and charm of our location remain unequaled. We are going to unlock its potential in the years ahead by renewing our physical plant and making the campus better known nationally and internationally. Fostering a culture of inclusion on campus, Wagner College will serve as a beacon of hope in a troubled world, much like the torch held by Lady Liberty in New York harbor.
Here at Wagner, we say “yes and.” Yes, the challenges presented by our times are real. And we are prepared to meet them. We will meet them with our crisis-proven resilience, scrappy resourcefulness, a planful approach to renewal and with ever-growing confidence and ever-deepening joy. We will emerge stronger together.
Jan and I have never been more proud to be members of the Wagner family, and we look forward to what our shared future will reveal on Grymes Hill, eager to do our part to usher it in.
We wish you and yours all the best. Go Seahawks!
Joel Martin
President
