March 28, 2023

State of the University Address

Good afternoon! What a thrill it is to be with you today! Thank you all for joining us for this State of the University update.

Thank you, Laurie, for your kind introduction. I appreciate all that you do for CMU as a senior faculty member in our Tepper School and as Vice Chair of the Faculty Senate.

For those of you that don’t know, Laurie and several colleagues at CMU and Pitt recently published The No Club, a guide for bringing gender equity to the workplace. The book has received national attention. Congratulations and thank you again, Laurie!

I want to take a moment to acknowledge CMU’s academic and administrative leadership for all that they contribute to this institution. I would also like to recognize the Carnegie Mellon Board of Trustees for their leadership, guidance and support of our community.

I am delighted to have this opportunity to share updates from across the university and a vision for our continued leadership and impact on society in the coming decades.

While our momentum never faltered during the pandemic, I do want to underscore how thrilled I am to have our community back together for in-person activities, especially after the unpredictable nature of the past few years.

Our campus is absolutely buzzing with a sense of excitement and a feeling of community. It’s great to see your faces!

I will start my presentation with some quick updates on the university’s enrollment, admissions, finances and our incredible people.

Then, I will pivot to share my vision for CMU’s future across four pillars, including how we are fueling this vision through our Make Possible campaign.

Let’s start with an overview of our student enrollment.

Enrollment of undergraduate and graduate students remained very strong at 16,779 across all campuses.

The university welcomed 1,716 students to Pittsburgh as part of our undergraduate first-year class.

We also welcomed a total of 3,289 new graduate students across all CMU locations.

This includes 2,932 Masters students and 357 doctoral students; 82% of those are enrolled in Pittsburgh.

I’d like to point out that this fall, we saw higher than normal enrollment of new graduate students. This increase reflects the students who had deferred admission during the pandemic.

Our first-year class of more than 1,700 students enrolled at CMU from over 34,000 applicants — a new record for CMU!

Over the past few years, applications to CMU have soared. In fact, compared to four years ago, we are up 67%, with increases across all our schools and colleges. Truly amazing.

In addition, 12% are first-generation college students and 17% are Pell-eligible, meaning they are from households whose incomes qualify for the highest level of grants awarded by the federal government.

And for the fifth year in a row, the class is made up of about 50% women.

These incredibly talented students are drawn to CMU from around the world by the transformative education and experience that you help us offer.

This chart (slide 7) shows you the incredible demand for a CMU education.

Due to unprecedented growth in applicants over the past 10 years, our selectivity rate — or the percentage of students we admit — has fallen dramatically.

We used to admit more than 30% of applicants in 2010. This past admissions cycle, our admit rate was 11% — the lowest it’s ever been.

We have also seen significant growth in our yield — which is the percentage of admitted students who choose to come to CMU.

This past year, it was a record over 44% - up from 29% just 10 years ago.

This is especially noteworthy when you consider that our admitted students are among the brightest in the world — with many other choices at top schools.

This really speaks to our momentum and the halo effect around CMU.

As faculty and staff, you contribute so much to developing the potential of our students and elevating Carnegie Mellon’s research, creativity and impact.

So, attracting and retaining the best and brightest faculty and staff is a key priority for CMU.

Let me turn now to how we are investing in our people.

We have added outstanding talent in senior academic and administrative leadership positions during the current academic year, and this slide (slide 9) highlights a few.

We have fantastic new heads in the School of Music and the School of Drama, as well as new leaders for the Institute for Politics and Strategy and the Block Center for Technology and Society.

In administrative leadership positions, we are delighted to have Theresa Mayer as our new Vice President for Research, bringing significant expertise and leadership to our research enterprise.

And later this summer, Kristina Wong Davis will join the CMU team as Vice Provost for Enrollment Management.

Kris will build on the incredible legacy of our current Dean of Admissions Mike Steidel, who is retiring after 45 years at CMU. Mike, thank you for all you have done for CMU.

When it comes to our faculty colleagues, I am pleased to share that 195 new faculty started at CMU in 2022, including:

• 58 tenure-track faculty;
• 21 teaching track;
• 3 research track;
• 7 librarian track; and
• 106 special faculty, which includes post-docs, instructors and lecturers.

We continue to make significant progress in recruiting outstanding and diverse scholars to our faculty.

For example, from 2018 to 2022, we have increased Black or African American tenure-track faculty from 11 to 28.

If we just look at tenure-track faculty, the percentage of women is about 30% which is up from 22% in Fall 2014.

The percentage of women in academic leadership positions has been steadily increasing. Fifty-seven women faculty and staff serve in academic leadership positions as of this academic year, which represents 44% of all leaders in this category.

When I joined CMU in 2014, CMU had no women academic deans. Today, we have three outstanding deans.

We know the work is not done. We are committed to making progress to support the recruitment, retention and development of outstanding scholars who represent the composition of our great country — as well as investing in cross-departmental hires.

Our faculty have received significant recognition this academic year.

This slide (slide 11) represents just a sampling of recent achievements. Several colleagues have been named to national academies, elected as fellows to professional societies like AAAS, or otherwise have received accolades.

There are far more examples that we couldn’t fit on one slide, but the recognition you are receiving is truly outstanding.

Congratulations to our faculty colleagues!

With more than 4,500 staff working across CMU, this community is so integral to our success.

We continue to focus on recruiting outstanding and diverse staff and ensuring we retain and develop our people so they can thrive here.

I am pleased to welcome the new staff who have joined our community in 2022 as well as in the first quarter of 2023.

I do want to point out that a significant percentage of our staff are new to CMU. I would especially like to welcome the new staff and faculty who have joined our community since start of the pandemic. In fact, over a third of CMU’s staff were hired since March 2020 and about 50 percent were hired in the last four years, primarily due to retirements and vacancies being filled.

May I ask all staff and faculty who are new to CMU since 2020 to please stand?

We are DELIGHTED to have these new staff and faculty members as part of the Tartan family.

We could not be prouder of the standard of excellence you bring to our campus every day.

Over the past few years, we have significantly expanded our support for staff and faculty.

Through the leadership of Michelle Piekutowski and her team in HR, we have advanced important efforts. A few examples…

• We are adding over 100 new slots to the Cyert Center through an upcoming expansion, thus creating a lot more capacity and hopefully less stress for new faculty and staff parents.
• Human Resources launched Employee Resource Groups, which help to foster a sense of belonging.
• We are enhancing our Employee Assistance Program, which provides services and programs to help manage personal and work-life issues.
• We have significantly expanded professional and leadership development opportunities through programs like Leadership Pittsburgh, Lean Six Sigma, the Women’s Leadership Academy and CMULead.
• We instituted a COVID-19 Time Off policy that provides up to 10 days of time off at 100% pay, without first exhausting either PTO or Emergency Time Off.
• We continue to create opportunities to bring our community together. One of my favorite traditions is coming up: the Staff Picnic, which is set for May 17. I hope you will save the date!
• And finally, we are committed to supporting staff compensation through a merit pool. We received some questions in advance about this topic. The Provost and I are pleased to share that, after meeting with our Deans and Vice Presidents, we allocated a larger merit pool for salary increases this year, compared to last year.

We acknowledge that inflationary pressures and cost of living increases continue to have an impact, so in recognition of this environment and in addition to performance-based increases, we will once again provide a one-time payment of $1,500 to all eligible staff and faculty, in the same way that these payments were made last year.

We know the past couple of years have been challenging, and the leadership team continues to look for ways to support our staff and faculty holistically.

Before I turn to our vision for the future, I’d like to provide an update on the state of the university’s finances, as this is critical to achieving our mission.

I’m thrilled to report our finances have remained strong and has continued on a positive trend as we’ve transitioned out of the pandemic.

For the current fiscal year, we forecast favorable financial results, thanks to strong enrollment, market-driven investment income and thoughtful management of expenses by academic and administrative units.

The university’s creditworthiness is rated by the agency Standard & Poor’s, and was recently raised to “AA,” a very strong rating.

Spending on capital projects is in line with our expectations, even considering challenges with supply chains and inflation.

We are projecting a healthy operating margin for FY23. This will allow us to invest in a larger merit pool, and it also provides some flexibility to pursue strategic priorities, including student health and wellness, financial aid and improvements to our classrooms and learning spaces.

Moving on to what’s on the horizon, there are a number of opportunities to grow our impact.

We have new Online Masters Programs launching next academic year, and there are exciting developments in the areas of executive education and certificate programs.

I’d also like to point out that we are contributing to our local economy with our spending. Currently, over 40% of our spending supports businesses and local suppliers in the region.

And we are also keeping our eye on some headwinds, including
inflation as well as concern about rising tuition across higher ed.

This slide depicts our revenue sources. As you will see, tuition and fees account for almost 50% of our revenue.

Sponsored projects contribute about 32%.

Gifts, revenue from auxiliary services, such as housing and dining, and investment income represent smaller categories.

But as you see most of our revenue continues to come directly from tuition and fees.

For another measure of our financial health, let’s take a look at our research expenditures.

This is a critical measure of the impact and overall strength of our research enterprise, and I am pleased to share that research expenditures are strong and growing.

In fact, we saw increases in funding throughout COVID, with total research expenditures for FY22 reaching $466M.

This is up from $449M in FY21.

By the way, we believe these figures do not fully capture the funding we receive for research through gifts to the university as well as internal resources such as endowment returns that are designated for research.

Those are just a few snapshots of the university overall.

The topline message is that Carnegie Mellon is in a significant leadership position because of our incredible talent — all of you — and we are on firm financial footing.

At this point in the presentation, I want to pivot to share with you my vision for CMU’s future through four key areas where CMU is taking a leading role in society.

Our strategic priorities are focused on elevating Carnegie Mellon’s role in:

• Driving the Future of Education;
• Enhancing the CMU Experience for All;
• Leading at the Nexus of Science, Technology and Society; and
• Broadening Our Societal, Cultural and Economic Impact.

Let’s start with our primary mission — educating the next generation.

In a world of constant change, CMU is driving the future of higher education.

There is growing recognition that universities today are preparing students for careers that have not yet been invented.

As faculty and staff at the forefront of our mission with students, you are a critical part of our leadership in preparing the next generation for this future.

Together, we are embracing new innovations in teaching and learning, and reinventing the university experience — in our own distinctive way — from top to bottom.

There is no doubt that the pandemic has had a transformative effect on higher education, accelerating trends we already knew were reshaping our industry.

Because of our seminal work in the science of learning, we were uniquely prepared for the rise of new modalities in which learning is much more personalized, flexible and adaptive.

While previous conventional wisdom held that technology was simply an educational tool, CMU has ALWAYS known that technology can be a key driver of pedagogy and that the melding of virtual and in-person interactions can measurably improve learning outcomes.

Now, we are focused on leveraging what we have learned to carve out a deliberate path for Carnegie Mellon in the post-COVID era, especially given how quickly the future of work is evolving.

For example, while digital competency is obvious, 21st century students ALSO need to learn how to engage in complex problem-solving and communication, how to cultivate and draw on creativity and collaboration and how to apply critical thinking informed by a deep understanding of human nature.

These “human” skills will only increase in value as automation pervades more and more tasks.

The future of work impacts not just what we teach students but also how we teach them, and our disciplinary structures as well.

To complement these efforts, we are also evolving our academic infrastructure to facilitate hands-on, high-impact and interdisciplinary learning.

Since the completion of the Tepper Quad in 2018, we have invested about $200M in academic infrastructure to support our education and research missions, with an additional $600M to help us complete our ongoing capital projects in these areas.

We are building a brand new Scaife Hall which will open this fall! It will serve as the updated home for Mechanical Engineering and will complement Scott Hall and ANSYS Hall.

We opened TCS Hall during the pandemic, where the Software and Societal Systems department and the Computational Finance program are the main occupants.

We have created new space for the College of Fine Arts in Posner Hall, including space for our fabulous Master of Fine Arts program and our School of Music.

We also completed our multi-year $25 million Classroom and Learning Spaces Renovation that impacted 4,000 seats.

Three of these projects have been made possible by lead gifts from our campaign.

Of course, CMU’s leadership in high-impact education is not bound by our location in Pittsburgh.

With more than a dozen research and degree-granting partnerships, AND our three campuses in Doha, Kigali and Silicon Valley, Carnegie Mellon has an international identity.

In fact, one of the most exciting developments of the past academic year was the announcement of our expanded partnership with the Mastercard Foundation to grow our programs at CMU-Africa.

This $275.7 million investment — the single largest gift in CMU’s history — will perpetually endow the CMU-Africa program, increasing the number of students who can access a life-changing CMU education, and enriching the connections between our Pittsburgh and Kigali campuses.

It will also strengthen Africa’s research, entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem by establishing a new Center for the Inclusive Digital Transformation of Africa.

I’d like to acknowledge Provost Garrett, Dean Bill Sanders of the College of Engineering, and Allen Robinson, current director of the CMU-Africa program, for their leadership in advancing this partnership.

Our second pillar pertains to our commitment to enhance the CMU Experience, which remains a core strategic priority.

In 2016, we launched a university-wide initiative focused on the CMU experience and have continued to prioritize a holistic approach to student success and well-being.

This work continues to benefit from the leadership of Gina Casalegno, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, and Provost Jim Garrett.

Over the past few years, as part of this work, we have significantly expanded support services and resources for students that are meant to foster their success and enhance their experience.

• We are ensuring all students have the tools they need to thrive academically.
• We are advancing a sophisticated and proactive approach to their health and well-being;
• We are committed to cultivating a community that values diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging on our campus;
• And we are committed to providing an exceptional, immersive and high-impact residential experience for our undergraduates.

As we see an increase in the pool of talent applying to CMU, we have been intentionally focused on access and affordability as core to the experience, as well.

Starting in 2017, CMU made a commitment to start meeting full financial need — meaning, every student we admit has a pathway to affording Carnegie Mellon.

Candidly, at that time, CMU was the only private school among our peers that did not meet full financial need.

We knew we had to double down on expanding access and opportunity. In fact, since 2016, we have increased spending on our annual undergraduate financial aid by 61%.

Now, some of this has been made possible by the growth in our endowment and the generosity of supporters. But a large part of this comes from a strategic review and re-prioritization of our operating budget.

As a result of these investments and through Provost Garrett’s leadership:

• The average grant recipient received just over $45,000 in need-based aid this past year, compared with $31,000 in FY16.
• Only 35% of our 2022 graduating class borrowed federal loans (compared to almost 60% in 2018).
• Our three-year federal loan default rate is just 0.1%.

Our aspiration for this institution is that every student who’s admitted can come to, and thrive at, CMU regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds.

Even when we take money out of the picture, many incredibly talented students from underserved communities are less likely to have had the educational experiences — for example, AP courses and tutoring — that students from more privileged backgrounds have.

In 2019, we launched the Tartan Scholars program with a mission to support students who are academically high achieving but come from under-resourced backgrounds.

We started with 46 scholars, and we’ve continued to grow the program. Today, we are supporting more than 400 Tartan Scholars on campus.

By creating bridge and orientation programs and continuously improving in academic and social support, we are helping EVERY student to thrive at CMU.

The impact has been extraordinary. Among Tartan Scholars, our first-year retention rate is 98.5% — compared to an already excellent CMU-wide retention rate of 97.4%.

In November 2021, through the generosity of the Posner Foundation of Pittsburgh, we were able to endow the Tartan Scholars program, so it can impact future generations of students at CMU.

We are now bringing a similar approach to our graduate education.

Just last month, we announced a transformational $150 million partnership with the Norman and Ruth Rales Foundation to establish the CMU Rales Fellows Program.

This program was born out of a need to confront a pressing societal issue.

Our nation faces a critical shortfall of students pursuing master’s and Ph.D. degrees in STEM fields — particularly among underrepresented and under-resourced individuals, including first generation college students and women. These students report that costs and debt are significant barriers to seeking these degrees.

The CMU Rales Fellows Program takes aim at addressing this gap.

By offering tuition-free education along with a generous stipend, the program will eliminate cost as a barrier, with a particular focus on master’s programs.

This is MUCH MORE than a fellowship.

It will provide a holistic personal and professional development ecosystem that will benefit the fellows throughout their careers.

We look forward to welcoming our first cohort of Rales Fellows in the fall of 2024.

Our commitment to holistic student success and development is also shaping the physical environment at Carnegie Mellon.

We are investing in a high-impact residential experience, opening our first new residence hall in 25 years at Fifth & Clyde just last year.

And the new Forbes and Beeler apartments will open in the fall.

On the other side of campus, the Highmark Center for Health, Wellness and Athletics stands as another physical testament to our commitment to a holistic student experience.

Made possible through a $35 million lead grant from Highmark Health as well as ongoing fundraising, this project will house services and resources for mental and physical health and will serve as the new home for our athletics programs.

Our next pillar focuses on CMU’s rapidly growing leadership at the nexus of science, technology and society.

At a time when CMU’s strengths in emerging technologies and cutting-edge science are aligned with the needs of society, we are working across disciplines to ensure scientific and technological innovation can positively shape our day-to-day lives, improve the human condition and expand our knowledge of the world.

There are so many areas I could tell you more about. But let’s take a moment to watch one example of exciting, cutting-edge CMU research.

As the physical and digital worlds become increasingly intertwined, NBC aired this segment last fall that shows how the Chris Harrison’s HCII research on haptics is at the forefront of the metaverse.

If you haven’t seen this segment before, you are in for a real treat!

Let’s take a look.

Wasn’t that AWESOME?!

As we embrace new paradigms in research and discovery, CMU has been successful in attracting several center-scale research awards funded by government, industry and foundations and in seeding emerging research areas.

Here are just a few examples:

As you see, there are a number of cross-cutting research areas that we’re building expertise in.

New ideas in these areas will have a broad impact on society — and our vision is for CMU to lead the way.

When it comes to CMU’s leadership in research and discovery, one of our major focus areas is advancing the future of science.

Especially over the last few years, the landscape for scientific discovery has rapidly changed — partially due to unprecedented availability of data, access to computational resources and scientists increasingly working across disciplinary boundaries.

These are exactly the areas where CMU excels, and our vision for science is to lead this revolution.

A few years ago, under the leadership of Dean Rebecca Doerge and support from all the deans and Provost Garrett, we launched a comprehensive future of science initiative to embrace these new paradigms, leapfrog our peers and define science for the coming decades.

We are strategically seeding interdisciplinary areas of scientific inquiry — such as neuroscience, materials science and cosmology, just to name a few.

We are also leveraging our strengths in data, computation and AI, including investing in automated science.

We have been making significant investments to realize our vision, including fellowships and scholarships, endowed professorships, and research infrastructure and seed funds.

But the cornerstone of this initiative has always been a cutting-edge science building that will bring together students, educators and researchers from the Mellon College of Science and the School of Computer Science.

Everything about this facility — which will rise on the corner of Forbes and Craig — is being designed to embrace this new era of science.

It is going to re-shape how science is done at CMU — and beyond.

Because CMU is all about the melding of disciplines, the Richard King Mellon Hall of Sciences will have a cultural component, too.

Thanks to a commitment from CMU Trustee Lea Simonds and the Hillman family foundations, our Miller Institute for Contemporary Art will expand and move into its own dedicated wing in the Hall of Sciences.

It will be immediately adjacent to the Carnegie Museums, where it will build on partnerships with our Oakland cultural institutions.

Together with Mary Ellen Poole, dean of the College of Fine Arts, and her team, we are all thrilled by the possibilities of this new home for the ICA.

Our final pillar illustrates our commitment to broadening our societal, cultural and economic impact.

There has never been a more exciting time for research universities to shape the future of innovation.

Here’s some context: Last year, Congress passed the landmark CHIPs and Science Act of 2022 — a historic commitment that together with other recent legislation — including the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Act — has funded or authorized over $200 billion for research and innovation.
Underlying these developments is a deep bipartisan consensus to put science and innovation at the very center of our national aspirations.

As a result, the U.S. is poised to unleash once-in-a-generation investments in innovation, workforce and education partnerships that bring the power of advanced technologies — including AI, robotics, clean energy and advanced manufacturing — to communities across the nation.

This is a moment tailored for Carnegie Mellon’s strengths and leadership. The science and technology priorities align with leadership that CMU faculty have forged over decades.

So, it is only natural that our faculty and leadership have been at the forefront of this moment — and have directly shaped these recent legislations.

Engagement with partners across society is a defining feature, and driver of CMU’s impact.

In fact, what has always set us apart is our willingness to engage in collaborative discussion, research and creative inquiry to shape society.

Consider our rich ecosystem for entrepreneurship.

Close to 500 start-ups have been launched from CMU over the past 10+ years and we continue to transfer knowledge to society through commercialization and tech transfer.

Last May, CMU was ranked the top university in the United States for technology transfer by Heartland Forward, a nonprofit that focuses on economic renewal.

CMU has always played a role in translating innovation to the economic benefit of our community and nation.

To maximize our societal impact, our approach to supporting this innovation ecosystem follows a “three-legged stool” model of entrepreneurship, business engagement, and technology transfer.

The three-legged stool works so successfully because of how intentional we are about how to bring these elements together to maximize our impact.

CMU’s research and our collaboration with the public and private sector has driven so much of the Pittsburgh region’s growth and development. Let me give you a couple examples.

Our National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) — an innovative model for academic-industry collaboration founded more than 25 years ago to catalyze robotics research — has created a dramatic transformation of the economy of Pittsburgh, the region, and the entire robotics industry.

Today, we are replicating this model at Mill 19 on the Hazelwood Green site, bringing a more intentional focus on inclusive development and workforce initiatives so that we can bring the power of advanced manufacturing and AI to more people.

This is a model that other regions are looking to replicate, especially given the new federal investments in science, technology and innovation.

In fact, this is precisely why President Biden chose CMU’s Mill 19 at Hazelwood Green as the site of his national address on the need to invest in U.S. innovation last year.

Earlier this year, Carnegie Mellon worked with more than 90 partners in the region to compete for — and win! — one of the administration’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge grants. We were one of only 21 regions awarded a grant out of 500+ applicants!

This grant brings more than $62 million to expand Pittsburgh's well-established robotics, AI and automation cluster to small and medium-sized manufacturers across Southwestern Pennsylvania.

But no conversation about CMU’s influence on society would be complete without highlighting our cultural impact.

We are so delighted to return to the Tony Awards as their exclusive higher education partner in June.

As part of that relationship, we annually award an Excellence in Theatre Education Award to an outstanding high school theater educator.

Over the years, our faculty and alumni have earned 142 Emmys, 52 Tonys, and 13 Academy Awards.

For example, if you watched the Oscars in 2022, you saw our alumna Shawn Hay-der took home the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for CODA, which she wrote and directed. The film ALSO won Best Picture.

If you need examples of the remarkable talent we are nurturing, look no further than the current students in our College of Fine Arts.

The graduating seniors in its School of Drama put on a production of Godspell this spring.

The recent CMU production, directed by Professor Tomé Cousin, was just sensational. Tomé, please stand to be recognized.

Originally conceived at Carnegie Mellon in 1970 and later completed with music by CMU graduate Stephen Schwartz, Godspell has become a cultural phenomenon and recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

It’s these Broadway-quality performances that remind me just what a crown jewel CFA is — and the joy of being back on this campus.

As we advance our vision across these four pillars, we know that leveraging these opportunities will require resources.

So, I wish to conclude my presentation by sharing exciting news from our Make Possible campaign.

Make Possible is the most ambitious fundraising campaign in the university’s history, and its aim is to secure the resources needed to accelerate CMU’s trajectory in the decades ahead.

The theme of the campaign reflects our broad impact.

You see, this campaign isn’t just about raising money; it’s about what the money enables our people to do.

Since we launched the campaign publicly in 2019, our supporters have made critical investments that have benefited every college, school, and every part of the university.

I’m pleased to report that we recently surpassed the $2 billion goal — more than 18 months ahead of schedule!

As of today, the university has received more than $2.1 billion in new commitments from more than 61,000 unique donors, including alumni, parents, faculty, staff and students.

It’s truly incredible. This is a result of the global CMU community coming together to make our university stronger than ever.

Supporters have established more than 50 new endowed professorships, including three headships and four deanships (for the College of Engineering, Dietrich College, the Mellon College, and University Libraries).

Supporters also have given more than $400 million in new support for scholarships and fellowships as well as signature student success programs and new facilities.

You are such a critical part of this success, and I want to just say thank you.

I’d especially like to thank the Chair of the campaign and of the Board of Trustees, David Coulter; the University Advancement team, under Scott Mory’s leadership; Provost Garrett and the deans and associate deans; our staff; faculty; and everyone who worked so hard to advance the goals of this campaign.

Of course, we are not done yet and with your help, we are excited to continue moving Carnegie Mellon forward.

This is an incredible time to be part of CMU.

There is so much exciting and relevant work taking place across the university that is impacting the future of our global society.

Our faculty and staff are at the heart of our growing leadership.

Once again, thank you for the passion you bring to your work every day and for your dedication to this institution.

It is truly inspiring to work alongside you, and I look forward to our continued collaboration in support of Carnegie Mellon’s bold aspirations for the future.

I wish to express my gratitude to everyone in this room and beyond.

By taking the time to be here, you are nurturing your role as a member of our Tartan community.

I hope you have a wonderful rest of the semester. I will see you around campus!

,

Farnam Jahanian
President
Henry L. Hillman’s President’s Chair