Editor’s note: Emory President Claire E. Sterk sent the following message to the university community on May 9.

Dear members of the Emory community:

Commencement is just a few days away. Our campus is breathtakingly beautiful. Students and faculty are eagerly anticipating the changes that come with the end of the semester. We are nearly there!

This academic year has been another remarkable one. As a community, we’ve learned and solved problems together, made discoveries, provided outstanding care, engaged in difficult conversations, supported each other through challenges and undertaken acts of service that make us proud to be part of Emory.

Annexation made us officially part of the City of Atlanta. We celebrated as our students received prestigious scholarships and as our faculty earned multiple awards. Emory received a record-breaking gift of $400 million that will create facilities for research, teaching and learning, and health care — all with the aim of contributing to the common good. And we earned high marks on Forbes’s 500 Best Places to Work list (Emory is 39th) and 250 Best Employers for Diversity list (Emory is 7th).

For those of you who will be away during the summer months, I wish you safe travels and a true respite — a chance to reflect. For those of us who are staying, let’s make sure to take some time to relax and reflect as well.  I thank all members of our community for your loyalty, your dedication, and your commitment to our shared mission.

This fall, we will dive into Emory’s ten-year aspirations for the next decade and associated strategic priorities. We will hear more about this plan in coming days from Dwight A. McBride, Emory’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. What makes our university especially unique — what shapes all our aspirations — is our shared identity, our collective sense of who we are as an intellectual community committed to our mission of creating, preserving, teaching and applying knowledge in the service of humankind. 

I look forward to working with the entire Emory community to make that shared vision a reality. Ten years from now, I believe that Emory will be even more widely recognized and more highly regarded — around the world — as a leading university. By this I mean a dynamic, creative community dedicated to academic excellence and to fostering world-class talent, so that we can innovate today and prepare engaged and compassionate leaders for our rapidly changing world.

Best wishes for a wonderful summer, wherever your journey takes you.

Sincerely,

Claire E. Sterk

President