During the 2022-23 academic year, the 91³Ô¹ÏÍø community came together to review and ultimately revise the University’s Strategic Plan through a process known as the “Grand Challenges.”  I’m grateful for the ways this new Plan both affirms our core values and attempts to be responsive to the needs of students, to the needs of society today, and underscores our mission as an exemplar Catholic, Jesuit, and humanistic institution.
In the eight years since the original (2015) plan was approved, new academic, athletic, and residential facilities have been completed, financial resources for students have increased, and the years of the COVID-19 pandemic were successfully navigated.  We achieved significant progress in increasing access and broadening the diversity of our student body. We can be proud of the work of this community.
Our context has evolved in other important ways during this same period.  His Holiness Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pontiff, promulgated new encyclicals such as Laudato Sí, a call to action on climate change and the care of our common home.  In 2016, Father Arturo Sosa succeed Adolfo Nicolás as Superior General of the Society of Jesus and led the Society through the articulation of the Universal Apostolic Preferences that are to inform all the apostolic works of the Jesuits throughout the world. In addition, we have been living through a global economic crisis, global socio-political strife forcing mass migrations, and continued global changes to the climate. All these dynamics underscore the inequalities that afflict so many, and we are called to find ways to respond to them.
Father General Sosa’s 2018 speech, “The University as a Source of a Reconciled Life,” underscored that universities, as Jesuit apostolic works, are obligated to call students into greater, fulfilling relationships, into vocations that will lead social transformation in the world, and into a deeper relationship with their Creator. It is my hope that 91³Ô¹ÏÍø’s updated Strategic Plan continues to acknowledge this responsibility and successfully points the way for our students, the many communities we serve, and the Earth we inhabit.
Thayne M. McCulloh, D.Phil.
President