I am very pleased to announce that Grammy Award winner Janis Ian has accepted my invitation to deliver the main address at our 2012 Commencement. The ceremony will be May 12 at 10 a.m. on Sunderland Lawn.

Today I informed the Board of Trustees that I’ll retire from Warren Wilson College in June 2012, a year from this June. At the time of my
retirement, I will have served six years as the sixth president of the College, and I feel very fortunate to have been part of this special community.

I’m starting this campus update on the first day of semester break (Saturday), after students have made it home and begun recovering from a busy semester. As I walked from home to office this morning, I again realized how still this place becomes during breaks. A few days of relative quiet are fine, but all of us living on campus prefer the buzz of activity when students return. In the meantime, here are some reflections on the semester just over and the one ahead.

To keep you informed about the progress of the 2010-2015 Strategic Plan, I would like to share with you the following information.

My thanks to all of you who worked so hard this summer on conferences, deferred maintenance, renovation, green walk-abouts, campus tours for students and parents, our fiscal audit, and many more activities that kept the College running. It was another successful summer, and I appreciate all you and your crews contributed to our success. I [...]

I am very pleased to announce that Richard Blomgren has been promoted to the position of Vice President for Advancement, Admission, and Marketing, effective July 1, 2010.

At Commencement we awarded degrees to about 200 graduates and heard a wonderful address by Tony Earley, an alumnus and award-winning author.

On February 12 the Board of Trustees approved the Strategic Plan as developed to date. This action was an important endorsement of the fine contributions so many of you have made in this endeavor.

The College remains in excellent shape as we close in on 2010. In large part, our success flows from daily decisions all of you make to live our mission and spread the word to others. Our shared sense of purpose creates a bond uncommon in any organization. We should cherish it, nourish it, and never take it for granted.

This week the Board of Trustees Planning Committee approved the latest draft of the Strategic Plan. The draft now goes to the full Board for review at its October 9-10 meeting. After that meeting we’ll make final changes before submission to the Board in December.