Dear Faculty, Staff, Students and Alumni:

As we kick off the New Year and the Spring 2012 semester, I reflected on the Fall 2011 semester – my first at Stevens – and am highly impressed by the collective accomplishments of the Stevens community.

In this brief time, Stevens accepted the most academically talented freshman class in the history of the university. Our faculty, researchers and students produced unprecedented pioneering research in many areas, including energy-efficient housing, cell phone technology, artificial reef design, sensor data and social media. Our alumnus, Greg Gianforte, Class of 1983, sold his company to Oracle for $1.4 billion, and alumna, Laura Barito, Class of 2011, was named NCAA Woman of the Year. And my inauguration offered the opportunity to showcase the university’s proud legacy and enhance its image outside of the Castle Point campus.

This fall, we also launched numerous, long-term university-wide initiatives, including:

• • The President’s Initiative for Excellence to raise $30 million in three years;
• • A strategic planning process to chart the university’s ascent over the next decade;
• • A peer benchmarking study to help the administration to set specific goals for improvement in a number of important areas;
• • A Master Planning process for developing the university’s infrastructure;
• • A process to conduct a review of the Stevens academic entrepreneurship and enterprise development activities;
• • A plan of specific budgetary steps to put the university on a strong financial footing; and
• • Focused efforts to improve student recruitment, retention and graduation rates.
  

This is just a small part of the achievements of our community since the semester began and a sampling of the activities initiated in this short period, but even a glance demonstrates the obvious breadth and quality of the academic and research enterprise and athletic activities at Stevens. Learn more by viewing the Fall 2011 Semester Highlights Video.

I look forward to working with all of you in the upcoming semester to continue to advance Stevens to higher levels of accomplishment and distinction.

Sincerely,
Nariman Farvardin
President, Stevens Institute of Technology