August 23, 2021
Dear William Paterson Faculty and Staff,
This is the week! I had the pleasure of meeting many of our students and their families yesterday as some of them moved in to the residence halls, and I could feel the heightened energy and excitement with the start of the semester, now just two days away. I hope you all enjoyed your summer and are now ready for a great semester as we welcome back the entire WP campus community for the first time since March 2020.
Speaking of the residence halls, where move-in continues today and tomorrow, we are currently at 74% occupancy, which equates to 1,312 student living on campus for the coming semester. Given the fluctuating circumstances around the pandemic, this is an encouraging sign for the quality of the residential experience this semester, as well as for the resulting revenue that helps sustain the University, as it is ahead of our budgeted goal. Thanks to Dean of Students Dr. Eileen Lubeck for her leadership of this important effort and to Director of Residence Life Becky Baird and her Residence Life staff, as well as other members of the Student Development staff, for smoothly managing Move-in.
It has been a busy summer, and we have a lot to talk about as a community, so I hope you can join me in the Shea Center for my fall semester State of the University address on Thursday, Sept. 2nd, from 12:30-1:30 p.m. The event will also be livestreamed with captioning for those who can’t be on campus. In the interests of greater transparency and inclusion, the livestream will also be made available to students. While students have always been able to read the text of these speeches, this is the first time they will have direct access to the live speech. Watch your email and the Daily Announcements for further details and reminders.
When you come to Shea, you will need to wear a mask as part of our ongoing efforts to prevent the spread of COVID and keep our community safe. Central to those efforts is our policy that everyone should be vaccinated, that all students and faculty wear masks in classrooms and all other areas where academic instruction is taking place and that everyone in the residence halls wear masks when in common areas. As you know, anyone with an approved exemption must be masked at all times while indoors on campus.
You may be wondering about those who aren’t yet vaccinated or exempt. Students in this group were deregistered on August 18th, and until they provide proof that they are at least partially vaccinated, they will be blocked from registering. Faculty and staff will face progressive discipline, where that is possible. I am hopeful that negotiations at the State level will soon allow us to also apply these measures to noncompliant members of all unions on campus. The seriousness of these consequences is in line with the importance of the vaccine requirement to the health and safety of our community. Fortunately, some of these students, faculty, and staff are, in fact, at least partially vaccinated, they just haven’t yet provided the necessary proof. I hope the steps mentioned above motivate them to do so.
This week’s WP: We are Proud – Congratulations to Francisco Díaz, associate vice president for student development, on receiving the 2021 Fred Turner Award for Outstanding Service to NASPA for Region II. NASPA is the professional organization for student affairs administrators in higher education. The award honors a NASPA member who has demonstrated outstanding achievement while serving in leadership roles at the state, regional, national, and/or international levels of NASPA for a sustained period of time. In addition to the regional recognition that accompanies this award, Francisco will now also be considered for the National NASPA Fred Turner Award. The busy series of orientations, new student welcome, and other start-of-the-semester events now underway provide ample evidence of Francisco’s dedication – and that of everyone in Student Affairs – to WP and our students. Congratulations, Francisco!
It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than three months since we graduated the Class of 2021 in a marathon series of Commencement ceremonies. I know that, in some ways, things haven’t slowed down much, so I want to thank everyone for their hard work over the summer preparing for all the great things to come this week, and throughout the semester.
