Last week was busy! We celebrated our next class of changemakers who walked across the stage and into the next chapter of their lives. This group will face some challenges given the current state of global affairs, but they are a force of grit and perseverance that understand how to rise above. While some commencement speakers around the country were booed, graduates tolerated an almost constant rain to hear the UMD speaker, who received high marks for her ‘out of this world' perspective and wisdom. I found Dr. Epps’ remarks inspiring and full of encouragement for our graduates to face this next chapter with fearless optimism. Our college speaker, Jaysson Eicholtz, shared his inspirational journey with our students. The bottom line: success is rarely a straight path, but you can make the best of uncertainty and redirects.
Early last week, I spent the day with the college leadership team, a talented group of associate and assistant deans, department chairs, and directors across programmatic and operational units. As someone who misses the Windows NT operating system and dreads getting a new cell phone, I recognize my own resistance to change. But change happens. Our meeting purpose was to plan well into the future and drive change in ways that enhance our mission rather than react to change when it hits. We left with a big idea that we plan to bring to the college broadly for further discussion. I have a few action items to work on, including preparation for our next meeting in July. We will have many more brainstorming sessions that rely on collective wisdom to identify paths to success.
In the meantime, this abbreviated week is a much slower pace, yet focused on planning for the upcoming year. I am optimistic I can check off a few tasks from the list of things I have fallen behind on before travel gets busy for the remainder of the month.