Welcome Back

Dear colleagues,

The start of a new academic year brings a sense of possibility. We are welcoming new faculty to the FAS, greeting the Class of 2030, and watching Harvard Yard fill as students return to campus and classes begin.

This year, that sense of a new beginning follows an extraordinarily difficult time for our community. For many, work looks different than it did a few months ago. We are missing colleagues. New teams are taking shape, and we are all learning new ways of working together. This transition will continue as we prepare to begin operating fully in the new administrative model in mid-October.

Yet, amid all this change, what remains constant is the curiosity that motivates our work: the desire to understand more, to discover something new, and to find better ways of doing what we do.

Every day across the FAS, a student encounters an idea that changes how they see the world. A researcher follows an unexpected finding. A course head discovers a new way to bring a subject to life in the classroom. A staff member wonders why something has always been done a certain way and begins looking for a better approach. That spirit of curiosity—the belief that there is always more to understand and discover—is at the heart of what we do.

I want the FAS to be a place that leads with bold curiosity: where people with different ideas and expertise come together; where ambitious questions are encouraged; and where we have the courage to try, learn, and adapt. My responsibility is to help create the conditions for that work, removing barriers where I can and directing our resources and attention toward the teaching, learning, and discovery that bring us together.

That work feels especially important now. The pressures on higher education are real and urgent. We need to be clear about what matters most, while remaining ambitious about what is possible.

Our ability to meet this moment depends on all of us, which is why I begin this year, above all, with gratitude. The past year has asked a great deal of this community. Through it all, you continued to teach, test ideas, make discoveries, create, mentor, solve problems, and support one another. I have seen that commitment in countless ways, and I am deeply grateful for it.

As another academic year gets underway, I hope we can carry that spirit forward, making room for the curiosity and creativity that brought so many of us here and that continue to fuel our work.

Welcome back. I am very glad to begin another year with you.

With gratitude,

Hopi

P.S. Please also be sure to tune in to The FAS Current, our home for stories from across the FAS, along with its new weekly newsletter, Currently, through which we are opening our doors wider and showing the remarkable work happening here every day.

Hopi Hoekstra
Edgerley Family Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
C. Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Science
Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences