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Dear members of the Clarke Community,
For many, the end of the academic year feels like a race to the finish. Final papers, presentations, performances, and exams arrive alongside celebrations and ceremonies that mark the close of another year together. It is a season filled with accomplishment, exhaustion, gratitude, and transition, often all at once.
Of course, the culmination of these efforts for our seniors is Commencement. On May 9, we celebrated 259 graduates alongside their families, friends, faculty, and mentors. Commencement recognizes much more than the completion of academic requirements. It honors the persistence, growth, discipline, and resilience that carried our graduates to this moment. To our graduates: your Clarke community is proud not only that you’ve earned your degree, but of the mature, kind, and generous people you have become. We look forward to seeing the ways you will contribute to your professions, your communities, the wider world, and the common good in the years to come.
At the same time, many members of our community have experienced this season not simply as a time of celebration, but also as a period of real change and loss. Alongside the closure of academic programs, the University has also undertaken staff consolidations and organizational restructuring intended to align our operations with a smaller institutional footprint. Those changes, too, have affected valued colleagues and friends across the University community. We feel both gratitude for the contributions faculty and staff have made, and sadness at their departures. I want again to acknowledge the grace, professionalism, and care with which Clarke employees have navigated these changes, even amid uncertainty and loss. The institutional changes necessary to secure Clarke’s future require difficult decisions, and I know the weight of those decisions is carried by real people and relationships across this community.
While students are away for the summer, transition work will continue across campus. Interim Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs Jan Garfield concluded her service in this role on May 31. A national search for a Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs is underway and progressing. I am deeply grateful for Jan’s steady leadership during a period of significant institutional change. She brought wisdom, calm, and extraordinary generosity to difficult work, helping guide the University through a year that required both resilience and compassion. On June 1, we welcomed Dr. Steve Bellomy, longtime member of the Clarke Faculty, as Dean of Faculty, and we anticipate welcoming a new Dean of Student Affairs in the coming weeks. I look forward to sharing a fuller update on the Academic and Student Affairs team later this summer.
Other changes are also underway across campus. This summer will bring the relocation of several academic departments and offices across campus. These moves are intended to make better and more efficient use of shared space while improving the student experience and supporting the University’s evolving organizational structure. My thanks especially to our Facilities team, as well as to the faculty and staff involved in these transitions, for the tremendous work already underway to make these moves possible.
The institutional changes required to secure Clarke’s future would not be possible without the support and generosity of our alumni, donors, and friends. I am thrilled to share that, as of May 31, our supporters contributed nearly $8.3 million in philanthropic gifts during the 2025-26 fiscal year. Thanks to this remarkable generosity, we have successfully retired all of Clarke’s long-term debt, launched the new Exercise Science program, strengthened our endowment through new scholarship funding, and surpassed $1 million in unrestricted support for the University’s most pressing needs.
Change rarely happens all at once; more often, it unfolds gradually and asks patience, resilience, and trust of us along the way. That work will continue in the months ahead. My hope is that, even amid the challenges of transition, we continue to care well for one another and remain grounded in the values that define Clarke at its best.
As summer begins, I hope each of you is able to find moments of rest and renewal with family, friends, and colleagues. Those moments sustain us, especially during seasons of change.
With gratitude,
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