Dear Members of the University Community:
I want to wish you success as we begin the 2026–27 academic year.
To our new students, faculty, and staff, welcome to the University. I am confident that Rochester will help shape your journey in positive ways as you pursue your academic, professional, and personal goals. For those who have already found your academic home here, thank you for the many ways in which you contribute to our communities.
For all of us, this is a time to celebrate why we have chosen to be at the University: to advance and share knowledge, to treat and care for those who need our attention, to bring music and the arts to life, and to explore ideas through thoughtful and respectful conversation.
I want to thank our students, staff, and faculty members who helped welcome our newest class of students to campus, as we marked the start of the academic year at the 21st Annual Dr. Robert L. and Lillian H. Brent White Coat Ceremony, University Convocation, Candlelight Ceremony, and other events and activities.
As we embark on a new year, we have many reasons to be optimistic: pursuing new discoveries, making friends and renewing conversations with colleagues, developing performances and exhibitions, engaging with patients, and figuring out where our interests will take us next. Research universities like Rochester are special places, where the pursuit of ideas with people from all walks of life and with all kinds of perspectives helps us grow as scholars, citizens, and human beings.
Our spirit of optimism and teamwork, tempered by perseverance and resilience, has helped us achieve several recent milestones. Our Boundless Possibility strategic plan — marking its midway point this year — has given us a headstart in building on our academic, research, and clinical strengths while fine-tuning our business operations in ways that help us invest in our people and programs.
Over the summer, the National Science Foundation selected a University-led project as one of NSF’s newest national Research Engines. Our project, named STELLAR, leverages our institutional and regional strength in optics and laser science to advance research and enhance workforce development. Similarly, we marked the 20th anniversary of funding from the National Institutes of Health for our Clinical and Translational Science Institute. Both are remarkable milestones and serve as the latest demonstrations of our research leadership and the high regard with which the University is held among policymakers and peers.
On campus, we are adding strategically aligned buildings and facilities. In April, we opened the Joseph P. Mack Catholic Center, part of an initiative to provide more space and facilities to support the social and spiritual life of our students. This month, work began on a multifaceted student life building to support student-oriented activities and programming, as well as be the future home to the Greenbaum Center for Jewish Life.
We are exploring plans for a new research building focused on the interdisciplinary study of science and engineering. While the building, tentatively named the Transformational Science and Engineering Building, remains in the future, the ideas behind it exemplify our ambition to be at the forefront of transdisciplinary discovery and innovation.
At the Eastman School of Music, we have launched a new major, Music Creation and Technology, that fosters both artistic and technical fluency in ways that only Rochester can bring together. The major is part of our new Department of Sound Arts and Engineering, an interdisciplinary partnership between Eastman and the Hajim School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Also at Eastman, the school’s world-class faculty artists have a full slate of performances lined up for the fall.
As we turn to the fall, I want to congratulate the first cohort of undergraduates who took part in our new Hire Rochester program over the summer. Part of the For Ever Better campaign, the program provides support for career-building internships for students and is made possible through alumni, community partners, and donor support.
And at the Memorial Art Gallery, last weekend’s annual M&T Pank Clothesline Art and Fine Craft Festival was, as always, an inspiring, late-summer way to showcase the museum and its role as a center for creativity throughout the community and region.
Next spring, we expect to open the first phase of the Strong Memorial Expansion Project. Currently the largest construction project in the University’s history, the expansion will transform the clinical and emergency care that we can make available to the Greater Rochester community and provide for our health professionals the kind of facilities and resources they deserve.
Also from the Health Sciences Campus, we will share historic news this fall involving our programs in dentistry and an important update for the School of Nursing. The news reflects the vision of our leadership team at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, the School of Nursing, and Strong Memorial Hospital as we position our health care enterprise to build on the innovative history of its first 100 years.
Across the institution, we are examining University-wide operations through forums like the AI Council, and we have revamped the Ombuds office to help strengthen our interpersonal and workplace culture and appointed a chief compliance executive to help ensure that our academic and administrative policies are in sync with our expectations as a community and with regulatory guidelines.
We are seeing incredible support for our For Ever Better campaign, the most ambitious comprehensive fundraising and engagement effort in our history. We surpassed the $1 billion mark earlier this year, and we finished the 2026–27 year with back-to-back records in commitments and total giving. The momentum is a testament to the enthusiasm that volunteer leaders and our campus and alumni communities have for the University’s future.
Our success comes at a time when all institutions of higher education and academic medicine are facing challenges. New federal orders and policies have disrupted how we recruit and support international students and scholars, have affected our research and grant funding from federal agencies, and may alter how we are reimbursed for clinical care through Medicaid and other programs. In addition, we face enrollment pressures from changing demographics across the Northeast and the country.
We will succeed by staying true to our legacy as a leading research university that has a global impact while valuing our roots in the Greater Rochester and the Finger Lakes regions. For more than 175 years, we have remained committed to our mission and to supporting one another. That spirit of working together to accomplish goals that are beyond the scope of any single one of us has served us well and will continue to see us through whatever challenges we may face.
We are a community of outstanding people, driven to serve a greater good. We have an innovative strategic plan that has proven prescient in helping us prepare for the moment in which we find ourselves. We have the enthusiasm of our alumni, volunteer leaders, and the Rochester community to lift us. And we have our Meliora Values, which see in each of us the capacity to contribute to the success of others.
All of this gives me confidence that the new academic year will be filled with the kind of success and accomplishment that have been the hallmarks of our history.
I want to thank everyone for being part of our University community. Best wishes for the 2026–27 year.
Sarah C. Mangelsdorf
President and
G. Robert Witmer, Jr. University Professor