Dear Students, Faculty, and Staff Members,

Welcome to the start of a new academic year! I hope you had a great first week of classes. The annual return to campus brings renewed energy, excitement, and even some nervous anticipation. 

I’d like to begin by welcoming our newest community members, including a talented group of incoming first-year and transfer students, as well as new tenure-track and visiting faculty colleagues, and staff members who have joined the College over the past several months. Your classmates, colleagues, and friends — current and future — are here to support you as you transition to campus.

The theme of transition is particularly apt this year; the next several months will bring quite a bit of change. On Oct. 1, we will officially migrate our finance, human resources, and payroll systems from Banner to Workday, a modern cloud-based system trusted by colleges and universities nationwide. Soon after that launch, we will begin a similar process for student-facing systems. This is a massive undertaking that will affect everyone on campus in one way or another. Please review the Workday website for information on training, timelines, and other important details about the project. I want to thank the many individuals who have worked tirelessly on this project over the past year, particularly the teams in Finance, Human Resources, and Information Technology Services. They are doing all they can to help make this a smooth transition, and I know they will appreciate our patience and grace as we acclimate to the new system. 

Another notable transition is our move to a carbon-free campus; we are making great progress toward that goal. Fourteen campus buildings are now partially or fully connected to our geoexchange plant, which is a critical component of our To Zero By Thirty-Five energy plan. In addition, the solar plant that Swarthmore helped build, in collaboration with several other colleges and universities, recently came online, allowing us to offset all greenhouse gas emissions associated with the electricity we purchase. And as you’ve surely noticed, well-drilling across the heart of campus has concluded, nearly all fencing is down, and lawns are recovering. You can also find more information about this and other facilities-related work on the Campus Construction Highlights website. 

And, as many of you know, this is my last academic year as Swarthmore’s president. I’ll have more to say about that in the months ahead. The work to identify the College’s next president is well underway. You will receive a brief update on the search from Presidential Search Committee co-chairs Cindi Leive ’88 and Board Chair Gus Schwed ’84 this week. In the meantime, please know that I am fully and proudly invested in serving the College through the remainder of my time here. 

You’ll hear more about these and other important College initiatives — such as the ongoing implementation of Swarthmore Forward and our Get Out the Vote Committee’s good work to increase civic engagement on campus — later this semester. 

All of these efforts help support our shared mission to “provide learners of diverse backgrounds a transformative liberal arts education that empowers each of us to flourish and contribute to the common good.” To remain true to that mission, we must seek out new ideas and varied perspectives. A thriving intellectual community depends on engaging openly with those who hold different views, experiences, and identities. In doing so, we advance academic excellence, broaden our understanding of each other, and position ourselves and the College to contribute to a better world around us.

This work can sometimes lead to difficult subjects and conversations. I hope all of us approach those encounters with empathy and patience, give each other the benefit of the doubt, and assume good intentions even when we disagree. In doing so, we help foster a spirit of generosity, trust, and mutual respect necessary for our community to flourish.

As we move through the year together, let’s also remain mindful of our individual and collective health and well-being. In that spirit, I encourage you to notice and embrace moments of joy and inspiration with intention. Social worker and author Deb Dana calls such moments “glimmers.” Glimmers are the everyday experiences that bring smiles to our faces and give us a feeling of safety or hope, even if only for a moment. While brief (Dana refers to them as “a tiny spark”), glimmers are more than passing comforts. Over time, they can help regulate our mood, lift us up during difficult moments, and enrich our days.

My recent glimmers include the cooler morning air signaling that fall is near, and the friendly hellos I’ve exchanged with many of you as I walk my dog, Maxey, around campus. As we begin this new year, I encourage you to look for your own glimmers. Maybe you’ll find them in a familiar face you spot across Parrish Beach or the sound of the Clothier bells ringing across campus. I was thrilled to hear from a student who mentioned their own glimmer — a perfect mandarin orange from the Swarthmore CO-OP (“genuinely the best I've ever had,” they wrote). 

Please consider sharing your glimmers with me so I can, in turn, find opportunities to share them with our community. By doing so, we can create a chorus of voices that remind us to undertake our serious work with gratitude, wonder, and joy. If you’re so inclined, simply write a short note about the glimmers you experience and send it to glimmers@swarthmore.edu. I look forward to reading about what brings you delight.

I wish you the best for a wonderful and rewarding fall semester. I look forward to all that we will discover, create, and achieve together in the year ahead.

Sincerely, 

Valerie Smith
President
Roy J. and Linda G. Shanker Presidential Chair