Dear Colleagues,

The start of the year is a traditional time for pausing to reflect on past achievements and resolving to make further progress toward aspirational goals. This particular new year has had a rocky start. Not only are we experiencing a tremendous surge in the spread of COVID-19, but we have also just witnessed a violent attempt to overthrow our democracy. The need for a pause and reflection is clear; it will take time to come to terms with the impacts of these events.

Yet the need for resolution and aspiration remains strong as well. We should resolve to keep doing our parts to bring about the end of the pandemic. And we should aspire to make significant progress in removing the societal inequities that the events of the past year have thrown into such sharp relief.

Last week, I wrote to invite you to join me in“Erasing Opportunity Gaps via Collective Impact,” an initiative aiming to achieve a truly inclusive experience for all of our students, staff, and faculty at UC San Diego.  Together, we can coordinate and leverage the many excellent programs that already exist on our campus, to ensure that every member of the university feels informed, mentored, valued, heeded, and enabled to do their best work.

Today, I invite you to visit a new website that provides more context and materials about the initiative, so that you can envision how your existing efforts might relate to it, or how some project you’ve been contemplating might align with it.  

In the coming weeks, we’ll provide you with additional information about ongoing elements of the initiative and ask you to be in touch to learn more about connecting your work with that of colleagues through a collective impact framework.

For now, let me just say that I appreciate how generously you have been working to support one another and to keep our classes, scholarship, and community work going, despite the many challenges you are facing.  

With best regards and best wishes for the rest of 2021,

Elizabeth H. Simmons