From the President’s Desk The world we experience today is palpably different from the world in which we lived last winter. It presents us with many challenges. As a part of the larger society, higher education — and particularly liberal arts education — faces challenges today as well. They compel our attention and response. One of the many virtues of small colleges and universities like ours is that they can be nimble and responsive. They change. Illinois Wesleyan has changed many times over our almost two centuries of teaching and learning. Over those centuries, we have had a graduate program, a law school, a college of oratory and a domestic science program, among others. We do not have them today. Today, we have programs in data science, environmental studies and neuroscience that could not have been anticipated in other eras. Through all of those changes, we have adapted while remaining committed to the liberal arts at our core, and we will continue to do so. This year has been a year of change for the University, not only because of the pandemic that has affected us and the renewed attention to inequity that has engaged us, but also because we embarked on a process of self-reflection, reviewing all of our academic programs. This kind of evaluation is being carried out across higher education today as institutions adapt to changing circumstances. Our process has been unusual for its degree of faculty involvement and its open communication to all constituencies. It has included multiple steps of review and discussion. The Trustees plan to make determinations about future programming in mid-July, based on this evaluation process. To maintain our commitment to the liberal arts, I believe those decisions about the future of IWU must explore the full power of marrying the humanities, arts, social sciences and natural sciences with the professional studies that so many of our students pursue. A number of alumni have expressed the view that I myself could not hold more strongly: we need doctors and nurses who have studied our society and the societies of others; we need business professionals who have wrestled with the complexity of ethics and the wisdom in literature; we need artists to be prepared also as entrepreneurs. Bridging differing realms and modes of thought is, in part, what it means to be liberally educated — today more than ever, when the complex issues we face defy simple analysis. This is the time to reaffirm the centrality of human values to our enterprise: to revitalize opportunities for studies of race and ethnicity, equity and inequity, and how to fully live out our social justice mission. In recent decades, the areas of greatest intellectual excitement have tended to arise at the intersections of traditional disciplines, to be cross-disciplinary. Often, here and elsewhere, those new fields of study don’t fit neatly into our historical academic structures. New ways of thinking may call for new ways of organizing our work. Here at Illinois Wesleyan, we have an additional opportunity to cross traditional boundaries. Our University’s excellence in both liberal arts and professional studies provides a unique opportunity to build intellectual bridges with wider spans and greater strength than would be possible in a university devoted solely to one or the other. Continuing to offer students a broad array of the learning opportunities they want and need to be productive citizens in our ever-changing world calls upon us to identify possibilities for change that will make us a stronger university. Change is challenging. But I am confident that, with all of the Illinois Wesleyan family working together, we will rise to this challenge. That’s what Titans do. I look forward with excitement to moving forward, together with you.
S. Georgia Nugent Illinois Wesleyan University President 4
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