Welcome to a New Academic Year at CMU!

Dear Members of the CMU Community,

Welcome to the new academic year!

Every August, an inspiring Carnegie Mellon community takes shape. It’s an extraordinary transformation set into motion by the arrival of more than 4,500 undergraduate and graduate students on our Pittsburgh campus and extending globally to our campuses in Africa, Qatar and Silicon Valley. These Tartans join a talented global network of nearly 11,400 returning students and 6,500 faculty and staff members who are focused on advancing Carnegie Mellon’s legacy of impact that’s based in relentless creativity, knowledge and research.

This work has never been more important — or more needed. Thanks to our record of success, demand for a CMU education has risen higher than ever, jumping 40% in the last five years. Our recent admissions cycle was no exception, with nearly 34,000 first-year applications received.

Today, Tartans around the world are uniquely positioned to excel at the intersections of science, technology and humanity. We are artists, innovators and explorers who have reinvented the future and continue to redefine what’s possible.

The built environment plays a significant role in our capacity to collaborate, create and innovate. This fall, I hope you will get a chance to check out some of our recent developments on this front, including:

• A state-of-the-art engineering and maker quad featuring the soon-to-open Scaife Hall;
• The Hall of the Arts, which is devoted to elevating our arts and humanities programs;
• New university housing at the corner of Forbes and Beeler, which follows the arrival of Fifth and Clyde. These are the first new residence halls on our Pittsburgh campus in nearly two decades;
• Our first and only on-campus grocery store: Scotty’s Market in the new Forbes Beeler Apartments, which serves the CMU community and general public seven days a week; and
• A number of technology-enhanced learning updates, including integrating cutting-edge enhancements into 100 classrooms across our Pittsburgh campus.

Against this inspiring backdrop and on behalf of the university’s leadership team: I wish you all an invigorating academic year. Here’s to seeing you on campus — and continuing to evolve as individuals and excel as a CMU community — in the days ahead.

Warm regards,

Farnam Jahanian
President
Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair