Ready for a Great Semester at Rutgers

January 18, 2022

Members of the Rutgers Community:

Hello and welcome back as we begin the Spring 2022 semester at Rutgers. I hope you had a restful and rewarding break, and I am eager to see the tremendous things we accomplish together. For those of you who are joining the Rutgers community this semester, I am so glad to welcome you!  For those who are completing their Rutgers degree this spring, I wish you an especially meaningful and rewarding final semester.

Classes and many administrative functions and activities are beginning the semester in a remote manner. This is because the Omicron variant of COVID-19 happens to be peaking now, and we need to help limit its spread to more vulnerable populations. But I am glad to say that I expect we will be back, in person, beginning January 31. We believe that this relatively short delay will be long enough to help our community move past the worst of Omicron safely without affecting the pace of the semester.

As we begin a new term, I want to re-emphasize the hallmarks of my presidency: that we strive to achieve the ideal of a beloved community, that we are committed to strategic institutional clarity, and that we remain in relentless pursuit of academic excellence. Foundational to these aspirations for our university is a firm commitment to academic freedom and free speech, which recognizes that a great university is a community of diverse ideas. Please take a moment this week to read our Statement on Academic Freedom and Free Speech, which is also linked from my home page.

The next few months promise to be busy and exciting all across Rutgers, and I look forward to again enjoying the buzz of activity I witnessed last fall. There’s nothing like a university campus for the energy of discovery, creativity, and achievement, and at a place as diverse on every level as we are, it’s awe-inspiring to see how, in so many different ways, this is what Excellence looks like.

Have a great semester!

Sincerely,

Jonathan Holloway
President and University Professor