Summer 2004
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Summer 2004 |
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Dear alumni and friends of Rose-Hulman, Our new Class of 2008 has just arrived, and the campus is alive with the energy that students and their families bring. You can be very proud of the new class, which includes 476 new freshmen. The Class of 2008 is a well qualified and fairly diverse group, with median SAT scores of 1300 – in fact, 24 new students earned perfect scores on the math SAT or ACT – and the class comes from 38 states and 7 other countries. The new class includes 111 women and 15 black students, so the Rose- Hulman student body continues to look more like the engineering workforce that most of our graduates will join. Chuck Howard and his admissions team did their customary fine job of recruiting these fine young people. The summer months gave me a good opportunity to begin the process of getting acquainted with our Rose-Hulman community, including our 11,000 living alumni, staff, faculty, students, trustees and supporters around the world. In the months ahead, I plan to continue this process of listening carefully, to understand the hopes and dreams that we all have for the future of our great Institute. I’ve already been able to meet with alumni and friends of the Institute in Detroit, Cincinnati, Columbus, Indianapolis and the Terre Haute area, and thanks to the efforts of our alumni leaders, I’ll visit about 20 cities nationwide over the next months. As we begin the conversation about the future vision and directions for Rose-Hulman, it seems especially important for me to understand how the Rose-Hulman experience has shaped the lives of our graduates, how we are seen by the many different types of organizations that employ our graduates, and the key requirements and opportunities for our future. These first few visits produced some very clear messages. Rose-Hulman is a life-changing experience, because of the practice-ready reputation that our graduates enjoy, and because of the friendships they build here. Our graduates are proud of the Rose-Hulman degree, and their employers are too! The institution’s focus on undergraduate professional preparation – Rose-Hulman’s hallmark since it opened in 1883 – is viewed as our bedrock. Many of our alumni are engaged in cross-disciplinary activities, and immersed in technologies that did not exist when they were students. These alumni would like to see our new graduates better prepared with the project management, communication and continuous learning skills that support a fast-moving engineering profession. I learned that you expect us to do better at building a diverse community, because you see cross-cultural experience as vital to professional success. You have asked if we can create stronger links between the Institute and the engineering organizations that hire our graduates. You expect us to become more attuned to the global environment that characterizes much of today’s engineering practice. You would like to see more opportunities for involvement in Rose-Hulman’s governance by younger alumni, and by alumni living outside Indiana. And you expect us to do better at cost control and financial aid, to keep the Rose-Hulman experience accessible. Perhaps the most consistent message was that the Rose-Hulman culture of staying focused on our students, and maintaining a family-like environment, must remain strong. The view that each of us on campus – faculty, staff, administrators – is an engineering educator really is a special quality of Rose-Hulman, and this quality is important to our alumni. I will be devoting significant time to the process of listening and learning from our alumni and the entire Rose-Hulman community. Ellen and I are very proud to be part of Rose-Hulman, and as we all look forward to building upon the institution’s success I want you to know that I need and value your ideas, advice and criticism, and I am making an active effort to meet you where you live and work. I look forward to getting acquainted and to hearing your thoughts about our heritage and our future. All good wishes, John J. Midgley
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