Dear AeroAstro Community,

We are in the home stretch with our strategic planning process — the printed, "glossy" version will be available to pick up and take with you in the coming weeks. The strategic planning committee has put together an implementation plan that identifies an initial set of actions and clearly defines resource and communications needs required to execute each of our seven strategic thrusts. Next, we will form an implementation council that will undertake these efforts to put our ambitious vision into cohesive action, guided by this plan. I would like to extend another special thanks to the staff and faculty members on the committee for all of their hard work as we continue to look towards our future.

If you have not yet done so, I want to encourage you to complete the MIT Quality of Life survey, which asks about the work you do and the resources available to you, the climate of your department, lab, or center, and the ways in which life outside MIT integrates with your work responsibilities. You should have received an invitation to participate via email. Your individual responses are kept confidential, and the aggregated data will inform policies and practices both Institute‐wide and at the departmental level. The data we receive is immensely important because it also it allows us to measure the impact of our efforts to improve the culture here in the Department.

Lastly, in honor of Black History Month, I wanted to reiterate a personal reflection I shared with you a few weeks ago. As we celebrate the important contributions of African-Americans, we should be inspired to continue to champion diverse perspectives in aerospace. This aligns with the values we outlined in our strategic plan: to lead through excellence in research and education; to succeed together; and to create an open, diverse, inclusive, and supportive community — and to do these things with ethics and integrity at heart of all our actions and intentions. Together, we can have a positive, lasting impact on the field.