August 8, 2022
Dear William Paterson Faculty and Staff,
As we move further into the month of August, preparations for our new and returning students are ramping up. Classes start in less than four weeks, on Thursday, August 25th. The classrooms and residence halls are being readied and the newly renovated Wayne Dining Hall has opened for breakfast and lunch service. Soon, our student-athletes will return to campus for pre-season training. We are also looking forward to welcoming back our faculty.
We are currently working through our COVID-19 policies as the country, our State, and our University shift from a pandemic response to treating COVID-19 as more of an endemic disease. I will be reviewing recommendations from our COVID-19 Response Team and will inform the campus in the coming weeks of key changes. In the meantime, we continue to encourage everyone to have your vaccination up to date, whether with initial shots or boosters, before coming to campus. We believe the State of New Jersey will be requiring the vaccine in the very near future.
We are continuing to work to secure more funds from the State to deal with our enrollment challenges, which were heightened during the pandemic. I am grateful for the work the AFT is doing on this front. Please know that we will share with you what we can, when we are able to do so. It is a series of complex conversations that are ongoing, and we hope we will have more to share soon.
The Cabinet and I are continuing our work on the Strategic Plan by reviewing reports submitted by the various Working Groups. As the Cabinet and I have been tweaking, editing, and finalizing the plan, I have been meeting with the Chairs of the Working Groups to let them know how their drafts have changed. We will be positing drafts of the plan, which will ultimately be recommended to the Board of Trustees, on the President’s webpage toward the end of August for the community to review. We have some exciting and challenging work ahead of us, and we are close to a good roadmap for the next three years.
