We’re excited about recently welcoming all of our new students to Saint Joseph’s College (275), our home away from home, and we’re hoping to see you shortly for Homecoming Weekend or Inauguration Week in October where we will celebrate the many talents of the members of our community.
As I wrap up my first six months on campus, I know that Saint Joseph’s College is anything but a typical college. Learning about our amazing history has taught me how very distinctive our College truly is, but I also know that our history cannot be the sole reason for our future distinctiveness. This letter is about being transparent, sharing my commitment to you, and calling you to action. Together, we are called upon to forge a future of greatness at Saint Joseph’s College.
While I trust you embrace and celebrate our history as I do, we must also moldour future as a higher education institution that truly prepares its students for today’s and tomorrow’s world. The challenges that we face at Saint Joseph’s College are real, and we must join together now to address these challenges. These challenges are not small, and include the need to significantly improve our campus wide infrastructure, increase our enrollment and accessibility to all students, address our debt, and enhance the quality of student life on campus. We must, therefore, commit ourselves and our collective resources to create an exciting and innovative learning environment at Saint Joseph’s College. By doing so, we can and will attract the types of students that call Saint Joseph’s College home today. But by failing to address these critical needs for our campus and our students, Saint Joseph’s College could easily slide into irrelevancy with the 21st century students for tomorrow.
We are already seeing the power of our engaged and motivated alumni. We are thrilled to have nearly one-fifth of the Class of 2019 consist of legacy students. This is a true testament to how strongly those who spent their undergraduate years on campus in our family-focused, value-based community environment feel about their experience with Saint Joe’s, and their subsequent eagerness to pass along that love of SJC. A few specific examples of how our past is connecting with our future are the recent gifts Saint Joe’s received from our distinguished alumni. Class of 1964 alumnus Joe Reilly and Pat, his wife of 35 years, generously gave $400,000 to fully fund a major technology upgrade in the Core building. And Mrs. Donna S. O'Reilly established the Thomas R. O'Reilly Endowed Scholarship in memory of her husband in the amount of one million dollars. Mr. Thomas R. O’Reilly was a graduate of SJC, class of 1973. These gifts, and others like them, will continue our transformative initiatives.
I want to personally reach out to you, one of our distinguished alumni, to ask for your help and commitment to ensure the future of our college. I ask that you make the commitment today to give back to the college that has played such a significant role in your personal, spiritual, and professional growth. You will be providing a legacy gift of knowledge, service, leadership, and family for students both today and in the future. We have 13,000 amazing alumni, and we need each one of you to participate in this transformation. Collectively, we will lead this college into the future starting today!
Saint Joseph’s College is and will continue to be a bastion of higher learning and critical thinking. By squarely facing our current challenges and enacting our strategic plans to successfully address these challenges, St. Joe’s will continue to attract and educate our future leaders - conscientious, compassionate, knowledgeable leaders actively engaged in making the world a better place. In just a few weeks, I will again be reaching out to you to discuss our strategic initiatives. We know these initiatives will successfully propel Saint Joseph’s College into the forefront of liberal arts institutions, and ensure our students of today and tomorrow have all they need to become truly productive members of our larger community. Together, we must do all we can to ensure that each current and future member of the SJC family is absolutely prepared to be Involved for Life.
Thank you for the privilege of serving as President of Saint Joseph’s College. I appreciate what you mean to our College and what our College means to you. I look forward to staying in touch with you through the new alumni electronic newsletters and the re-formation of alumni regional chapters. More importantly, please do come and visit me and your fellow Pumas on campus. We are doing great things here at Saint Joe’s, and with your support, even greater things are in store for us in the future.
We are Saint Joe’s!
Warmest regards,
Dr. Robert A. Pastoor
President
Saint Joseph’s College
P.S. Please send any updated contact information to ktaylor@saintjoe.edu.