Pausing to Reflect and Celebrate

Dear Members of the CMU Community:

As we wind down from an exhilarating Commencement season, I remain inspired by all that we have achieved together, and by the sense of community that has defined the past academic year. 

With your support, we have continued to enhance our excellence and reputation across education, the CMU experience, research, and societal impact, even as we begin to turn the page on the pandemic. Despite the unprecedented and challenging times we are living in, this community continues to demonstrate its exceptionalism. I am so grateful for all that you have done to support one another and advance work that benefits our students, our communities, our nation, and the world. Thanks to your dedication, we stand at a unique moment in the history of Carnegie Mellon. Our future has never felt more exciting! 

It has truly been an extraordinary year, and this message contains just some of its highlights.

The Return of Cherished Traditions

This year marked the return of cherished traditions, including Spring Carnival and Reunion Weekend, and Commencement exercises in Doha and Pittsburgh, as well as a CMU-Africa graduation this coming weekend. Our main Commencement exercises featured the largest audience in our history, including the Classes of 2020, 2021 and 2022 and their families! This year, more than 5,300 graduates joined the Tartan alumni community, strengthening our global network. I invite you to view the main Commencement ceremonies on our website, including outstanding remarks from Dr. Manuel Heitor and Billy Porter (CFA 91)!

Sustained Momentum

CMU continues to drive the transformation of higher education to meet the needs of tomorrow’s leaders. This year, we made several important advances across our educational mission. 

• We completed an ambitious project to renovate over 100 learning spaces across campus, many of which involved state-of-the-art technology-enabled teaching facilities that support hands-on learning. The project impacted approximately 4,000 seats!
• We cut the ribbon on the JP Morgan Chase AI Maker Space, a hands-on learning environment open to ALL CMU students, and celebrated the opening of TCS Hall, a facility designed to drive collaboration and innovation within our community and with external partners.
• Several CMU students and postdocs were recognized with prestigious awards, including the Beinecke Scholarship, the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Goldwater Scholarship.
• 6,500 new students joined 150 new faculty and more than 700 new staff in beginning their CMU journeys. We also welcomed new deans and academic leaders to our campus. While the search for CMU’s next Vice President for Research continues, we hope to be able to announce an appointment in the coming months.

We also celebrated exciting milestones in our ongoing work to invest in holistic student success and well-being and ensure a transformative CMU experience for all Tartans. 

• A generous gift from the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh endowed the Tartan Scholars program, enhancing our ability to meet the unique needs of high-achieving students from limited resource backgrounds.
• After sustained collaboration from CMU’s leadership, the academic units and the Graduate Student Assembly (GSA), we expanded holistic support for doctoral students.
• We continued to make progress across our university-wide commitments to promote diversity and inclusion, a journey that has been fully supported by this community and championed by Staff Council, Faculty Senate and by all levels of Student Government.
• We dedicated the Fifth & Clyde Residence Hall – our first new residence hall in 20 years! This new building is one of our first major accomplishments in our effort to re-envision student housing through our Neighborhood Commons concept – and more is in store.
• We also broke ground on the Highmark Center for Health, Wellness and Athletics, a transformational facility that will unify support services and programs across these areas.

Your research and creative work accelerated CMU’s global leadership and impact, especially at the critical nexus of science, technology and society. 

• With a gift from blockchain entrepreneur Charles Hoskinson, we established the Hoskinson Center for Formal Mathematics to improve global access to mathematics and increase collaboration among mathematics educators, researchers and learners.
• CMU entered into a partnership with Emerald Cloud Lab to build the world’s first cloud lab in an academic setting, which is expected to be complete by the of the summer and promises to transform scientific discovery at CMU, and beyond. This investment will complement the new Richard King Mellon Science Hall that will soon rise on the corner of Forbes Avenue and Craig Street on our Pittsburgh campus.
• A CMU-designed satellite was launched into low-earth orbit as the world's first battery-less nanosatellite powered by orbital edge computing. This is just one example of CMU’s leadership in space exploration and related research!
• The College of Fine Arts received the largest gift in its history, $10 million from alumnus and emeritus faculty member Joseph Ballay to establish the Joseph Ballay Center for Design Fusion. The center will allow CMU to apply design thinking to solve complex problems while also respecting the aesthetic forces of human productivity.
• I invite you to explore the latest research stories from all corners of CMU – from AI, neuroscience and engineering to business, policy the humanities, and more.

Finally, CMU continued to broaden our societal, cultural and economic impact through our external partnerships and through the achievements of our faculty, students, staff, and alumni. 

• President Biden chose our Mill 19 facility at Hazelwood Green for his remarks about the future of American manufacturing. He also engaged with students and faculty, viewing demos in robotics and advanced manufacturing.
• CMU faculty have taken leadership positions at the highest levels of government and have been elected as fellows of the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and the National Academy of Engineering, in addition to prestigious honors from other professional organizations.
• Sian Heder (CFA 99) took home an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for CODA, which she also directed. (The film also won Best Picture!)
• Four CMU alumni were nominated for nine Tony Awards this season! As the exclusive higher education partner of the Tony Awards, CMU will award a joint CMU-Tony Excellence in Theatre Education Award during this year’s ceremony on June 12 – I hope you’ll tune in!

Progress in the Make Possible Campaign

I wish to conclude with an update on the exciting progress we have made in our Make Possible campaign, which was launched in 2019 with the purpose of securing the resources necessary to accelerate our community’s vital work. With two years still to go, I am delighted to report that we have secured $1.88 billion in new commitments from over 56,000 unique donors! The Campaign is about far more than just raising money, it is about what the money enables CMU to do for its own community, and for our region, our nation, and the world.

We have received nearly $160M to date in support of faculty, including 49 new named chairs and 4 named deanships, as well as $270M in support for students in the form of fellowships and scholarships. These resources will enable us to attract and retain the world-class talent that has always made CMU exceptional.

With more than $400M in new capital commitments, we are transforming our campus with key projects such as the Tepper Quad, ANSYS Hall, the new Scaife Hall, and the Robotics Innovation Center, just to name a few. And, lastly, we have received more than $185M to support our research with new centers and institutes, such as the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, the Center for Shared Prosperity, and the Neuroscience Institute. I look forward to reporting to you again about the many ways the Campaign is furthering CMU’s impact.

I have only scratched the surface of the achievements that have defined this past year! Our community has innumerable reasons to be optimistic about the future. This academic year proved that CMU can reach incredible heights, even under challenging circumstances.

I am very excited for all that lies ahead for CMU and for the start of the next academic year. In the meantime, I hope you have a chance to rest and recharge this summer with family, friends and loved ones.

Warm regards,

Farnam Jahanian
President
Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair