DePauw Stories

After two years of travel restrictions due to COVID I am now finally able to get out on the road to start more personally meeting with alumni and friends who are keenly interested in DePauw’s future and the DePauw Bold & Gold 2027 strategic plan, which sets out an exciting and very bold pathway to ensure our future as a model 21st-century liberal arts and sciences university.

 Of course, with an alumni base 36,000 strong, it will take a while for me to meet each of you! So we present in this summer issue and on our website a summary of the strategic plan that outlines the direction in which your alma mater is heading. I hope you will keep the magazine to remind you of our goals. Leave it on your coffee table, take it to your office or share it with friends to entice others – especially prospective students and their families – to learn more about DePauw. And visit the website to track our progress toward meeting our goals. Prospective students are already telling us they are excited about our strategic plan, particularly our new curricular initiatives.

Some alumni have asked me how they can best support DePauw and our future. I have responded that I hope they will give their time – volunteering on one of our many alumni committees, talking with prospective students and/or mentoring current students; their talents – contributing their expertise to areas of the plan where their career, professional and community experience will be most helpful; their treasure – investing financially in the plan’s initiatives and the university; and their testimony – telling classmates, friends and family about DePauw.

You may recall the theme of my inauguration last October was “And still I rise.” In my inaugural speech, I asked those in attendance how we can ensure that DePauw in its 200th year fulfills its mission of igniting an educational passion in its students and preparing them for lives of promise and uncommon success. I ventured that “the answer lies before me, in the hearts and in the spirit of those gathered.” Today I add that the answer also lies in the hearts and spirits of all of our alumni and friends who support DePauw and our plan for DePauw’s illustrious future. And, as I said that day and each day I have served as DePauw’s president, I have every faith that, working together, we will rise to even greater heights.