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February 9, 2024

Dear friends,

First, I want to acknowledge the difficult and painful times we are living through.  The many conflicts taking place around the world right now affect us all, even as we share our common humanity. In our different ways, we are all vulnerable. Mutual support is the best way we know to help one another endure, and I am grateful to you for giving that to one another so thoughtfully and patiently.

Still, as we negotiate this complexity, life continues. It was a busy and bustling week on the William & Mary campus. We celebrated colleagues and students receiving the Jefferson Awards, Monroe Prize, and Plumeri Awards, the Board of Visitors met, and we celebrated our 331^st birthday.

Please peruse the important updates below and then you must decide: to leap across the line, or not?

• The Dean Team had a wonderful time celebrating Charter Day, and I would like to recognize the hard work of the Charter Day planning committee and the University Events team for a wonderful celebration. In fact, the celebrations will continue. I also appreciated those of you who made the effort to attend. We are pleased to welcome top Arts & Sciences supporters and leaders back to campus, and we look forward to spending time with them throughout the weekend. It’s always rewarding to connect with people who are passionate about furthering the liberal arts and sciences and we remain grateful for their support, energy and ideas.
• The Board meeting concluded this morning after two days of committee meetings, discussions and presentations. One relevant highlight was preliminary discussion of a retirement incentive program, which has also been the subject of conversation with Faculty Assembly. 
• After much anticipation, we were joined this week by Tarikul Islam, our wonderful new senior associate dean of finance & administration. Tarikul’s energy and perspective are already a wonderful addition to our team and we look forward to his partnership on the Dean Team.
• I know many of you have been hoping for an opportunity to thoughtfully engage around the topic of events occurring in the Middle East and wondering if there would be such an opportunity. Arts & Sciences and the Reves Center are pleased to support Scholarly Perspectives: A Spring 2024 Series on the Middle East, planned and organized by faculty members and intended to foster informed conversations among William & Mary students, faculty, and staff about Gaza, Israel, Palestine and the wider Middle East.
• On Tuesday, the Faculty of Arts & Sciences voted to approve updated merit guidelines, which will be added to the A&S Faculty Manual. Your Chairs and Directors will receive detailed guidance about next steps soon.
• The Future of Arts & Sciences committee is hard at work structuring the way in which it will conduct its outreach and feedback gathering this semester. Please be prepared to share your thoughts with the committee as it begins outreach in the coming weeks. 
• And another way in which we hope to garner your feedback: partners from W&M’s Office of Internal Audit are coming to meet with many of you in A&S to gather feedback on the efficiency (or not) of various processes and procedures. They already have appointments with some departments and programs scheduled for next week. While there are many university-wide processes and procedures over which we do not have direct control, we hope to assess those specific to Arts & Sciences and identify ways we can improve efficiency and hopefully simplify processes.
• I am constantly in awe of the quality, talent, dedication and passion of the arts faculty on our campus, and the students who take part in the arts. The spring semester brings a continued, exciting slate of Year of the Arts events and I encourage you to check the calendar and make plans to attend and engage. 

I’d like to close with a note on being present for our students and each other. Since the pandemic, the advent of the possibility of remote work has provided many benefits, including increased productivity, administrative efficiencies, and work/life balance. As with any major shift, there are challenges, too. I encourage us all to simply be thoughtful, mindful and measured in the way we approach the option of remote work, remembering that connections and relationships are built face-to-face. I want to reiterate the irreplaceable benefit of connection that we offer to our students, who deserve the absolute best we have to offer, and to each other, who deserve the same, especially now. Events like Charter Day fill us with the spirit of something special – and it’s because we are together.

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Now, on a totally different note. Thank you to everyone who responded to the finance and accounting quiz. Only Tarikul Islam, our new Senior Associate Dean for Finance & Administration, got every answer right, which was really a great relief (see line 6). It might have been cause for concern if he had not. But I had every confidence in him and with hindsight, I should have forbidden his participation, because of course he won. On Monday, he will receive a very special gift. Also, Mackenzie Israel-Trummel (GOVT) got all but one right (and I have a feeling she knew the right answer for the one she got wrong). Mackenzie will also receive a very special gift delivered to her mailbox early next week.  I must also mention that two economists wickedly answered in spite of my banning them from doing so. Luckily, they both got every single one wrong (intentionally so, I feel compelled to add).

It was too difficult – and I felt in the end, unfair – to select only one funny response. What I think is funny might not seem so funny to someone else, and vice versa. I’m attaching a spreadsheet (pdf) with all responses, anonymized, except for a few that I just could not send over email. But believe me – they made me laugh.

Have a good weekend, everyone.