I am humbled and energized to write to you as I begin my service as chancellor of our Indiana University Bloomington campus.
I am mindful that a decade has passed since I last worked on this campus. No doubt much has changed in that time. With that in mind, I will be on a “listening tour” over the next several months, reconnecting with the IU Bloomington community to learn more about the campus and its people in 2025. We will be creating multiple opportunities for me to connect with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the Bloomington community; I expect many robust conversations to come.
The IU Bloomington campus is glorious this time of year and every bit as spectacular as I remember it, bringing back great memories of my time here as I walk across campus. But life is meant to be lived forward. Our shared task today is to move this campus to new heights, reaching for ever greater levels of excellence from IU Bloomington as a premier American research university.
With that in mind, we must once more turn our focus to elevating Indiana University Bloomington as an intellectual beacon—as our seal says, a place of light and truth. Central to this effort, we will:
- Embrace our core missions as a modern research university dedicated to discovery, learning, and engagement, where we celebrate and nurture our different points of view and creative solutions without yielding to division.
- Fulfill our obligation as a public institution by paying special attention to the state that gives us our name, serving the people of Indiana and its south-central region.
- Renew our commitment to civility, decorum, and professionalism, recognizing that our students are learning during every moment of their IU Bloomington experience and in every moment, we are their teachers.
- Leverage our talents to invigorate the historic academic strengths of IU Bloomington and develop new avenues of scholarship to flourish in our technology-driven times.
We are a diverse community at IU Bloomington, and a passionate one. Our strength as a community of scholars comes from our shared core belief in excellence and commitment to the dissemination of ideas in the classroom and beyond. When we challenge one another respectfully and thoughtfully, we position ourselves to push beyond where we might otherwise go. With that in mind, I’m energized about what I know is possible when we draw on the best of one another, listen to the “better angels of our nature,” and come together to create an exceptional future for this campus, Indiana University, and the state of Indiana.