RPInsider

We’re going on week 5 of the semester (6 for you freshmen), and as I was going through my email archives, found a “Welcome back to campus” email from Dr. Jackson sent at the beginning of last fall. For those freshmen who weren’t privy to this email last year, I have included it below, with a few updates.

TO: The Rensselaer Community
FROM: Shirley Ann Jackson, Ph.D.
President and Professor of Physics
DATE: September 2, 2008 September 28, 2008
SUBJECT: Welcome

With several red and yellow leaves already appearing in our trees, and students moving to and from classrooms and residence halls, clearly autumn is coming quickly and the campus once again feels alive and whole. We are ready to begin what will truly be an historic academic year for Rensselaer.

First, it is a pleasure to welcome the Class of 2012 2013 to the Rensselaer family. As with the classes before them, they are among the brightest students to be found anywhere. We are delighted to have them here, knowing that their talents and ideas will add much to the vitality of our university.

I extend a warm welcome to our new faculty, who arrive with energy, enthusiasm and new ideas and intellectual thrusts, which will only strengthen our teaching and researching and continue the enhancement of our reputation.

I also would like to welcome the rest of our faculty and our upperclass students and graduate students back for the start of the 2008-09 2009-10 academic year. We look to you to guide our new students and to provide the foundation of academic excellence and innovation that has received increasing recognition each year. Rensselaer rose slid a bit in the rankings among national universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report list of “America’s Best Colleges,” weighing in at 41st 42nd, up from 44th down from 41st last year. Each of you played an important role in making this possible, but rankings cannot begin to express the quality of the work that you do. I look forward to another successful year with the help and diligence of each of you. Each and every one of you is special, and no doubt very smart. Rankings don’t matter anyway.

I would also like to thank our staff and members of the administration who continued to work hard over the course of the summer to prepare the Institute for the arrival of students, especially with vacancy management still in place and for some of the major changes that will take place this year.

The changes can be felt and seen throughout the campus. First, this year marks the opening of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, or EMPAC. East Campus Athletic Village, or ECAV. We have built one of the most remarkable creative, performance, and research spaces Division III athletic complexes in the world. No one yet knows what the convergence of our research, performance, modeling, architectural, computational, mathematical, graphics, and artistic prowess world-class facilities and the potential of our athletics will unleash.

Each of you will be invited to join in during the grand opening events in October. There will be tours, concerts, faculty research presentations, movie screenings, and performances from artists from around the globe and athletic events in this incredible space. Go to http://empac.rpi.edu/ http://www.rpiathletics.com/ for the list of our athletic events. The finishing touches are being put on the 220,000-square-foot facility, and the building will go from a massive construction site to an amazing platform that will provide new opportunities for the entire Rensselaer community.

We begin the new year with major renovations to living and academic facilities, and with essentially a new student dining area in Russell Sage Dining Hall. This year also marks the departure of the first second class of students traveling abroad as part of the Rensselaer Engineering Education Across Cultural Horizons program, or REACH. This year a number of our junior engineering students will travel to Denmark and Singapore as part of the international educational exchange program that will change the way our students learn, and will be phased in to become the standard for all undergraduate students at Rensselaer.

Another wide-reaching change that begins this year is in student life. We will be beginning the CLASS Initiative, which stands for Clustered Learning, Advocacy, and Support for Students. This initiative will enhance support for our students and engage the broader Rensselaer community on their paths to success. Throughout students’ entire time at Rensselaer, each class will be supported by a team of professionals and faculty, led by a class dean. This will ensure that every student knows where to turn for help, and receives the best individual experience that Rensselaer has to offer. There also will be residential cluster deans, and similar positions for Greek Life and off-campus living, who will expand programming for living/learning experiences, while providing more counseling and support, wherever a student may live.

There are many other outstanding accomplishments of our people, and of the university as a whole, of which we should be proud. I look forward to working with the students, the faculty, and the administration and staff this academic year toward our goal of continuing the progress of Rensselaer as a leading technological research university. We have many noteworthy successes behind us, and many exciting challenges before us.

Best wishes for a productive and rewarding year ahead.

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