A call to lead

Presidential Address; Nov. 14, 2024

Good afternoon! Thank you, Saylor and Wyatt, for your opening comments and introduction. And thank you to the Demon Divas for that beautiful rendition of the alma mater! 

I also want to thank those who contributed to our donation drive for Western North Carolina; those volunteering time this weekend in our community day of action; and to so many others for the support and care you have shown for those who are in need. Thank you for “Showing Humanitate” in action. 

November is always such a busy and important time in the academic calendar. So many of our fall semester classes, research endeavors, and other projects are peaking in their intensity, or coming down the home stretch. So it is not lost on me that your presence here today demonstrates true engagement in the life of this university, and for that I am grateful. 

And, this November is also a momentous month in regards to our national, state, and local political landscape. I understand that the results from all the elections affect each of us in personal ways. I am so grateful for the incredible efforts of Deacs Decide in educating students about the democratic process, including a student-led effort that registered 915 students to vote in North Carolina. 

Also, our Center for the Advancement of Teaching led the way in ensuring our faculty have the resources necessary to teach about the democratic process, and the issues we are experiencing as a nation and in the world. In the days leading up to the election and afterward, departments all across campus created opportunities for engagement, reflection, and care. 

I appreciate everyone being so dedicated to guiding our students through this challenging time. It takes tremendous courage to support civil discourse, freedom of expression, and my deepest thanks to our faculty, staff and students. This care for one another is truly the core of who we are at Wake Forest. 

As I think of how we will continue navigating through this political and cultural moment in our country and in the world, I know that the road ahead will bring new challenges and new opportunities. This is why it is so important for universities to remain crucibles for dialogue, debate and learning. Universities at their best are forces for positive change through the power of education, research, and creative work. 

I believe that universities are the lifeblood of a civil society. They have existed across centuries. Through wars and political conflicts, through financial upheavals, through pandemics, universities persist. 

I have had the great opportunity, at different times, to visit sites of some of the first and some of the oldest. In Eastern Africa and the present-day Middle East, centers of Islamic learning launched as early as 859 AD – for example in Fez, Morocco. And the oldest continually operating university — the University of Bologna – was founded in 1088 AD. 

Great universities – those that continue to support society’s progress – don’t hide behind their walls and simply weather the changes that come with time – they respond. Their faculty, staff and students turn toward the challenges of the times and seek ways to learn, teach, and serve humanity through their academic missions. 

As I have said since I first arrived here, I believe Wake Forest is a great university. And therefore, we must continue upholding our central commitment to the pursuit of knowledge through academic freedom, and we must be especially attentive when our commitment to academic freedom comes into tension with other values we hold dear, including being a community of care.

We experienced this tension when the Provost and I decided to not allow a faculty-invited speaker to give a campus talk on October 7. This was a difficult decision, and not taken lightly. Although it is almost impossible in such moments for all on campus to be in consensus, I will always strive with my leadership team to make decisions that are in the best interest of our entire campus community.    

As a scholar who engaged in contentious debates with other scholars on scientific models, I hold fundamentally true the tenets of academic freedom – the opportunity to investigate, test and study topics with rigor. As president, I must also be devoted to ensuring that we remain as true as we possibly can to holding in balance our shared commitments to academic freedom and our ethic of care for our community. 

Academic freedom comes with critical responsibilities. We are responsible for the pursuit of truth with the creation of new knowledge, and we are responsible for our people, all our Wake Foresters. We will continue striving to improve our ability to learn and work within this tension – to make decisions that serve the critically important academic mission of the university and uphold our responsibility to have empathy for one another. 

I need your help in this. I need your thoughtful consideration of how to ensure we continue providing excellent and constructive teaching and learning environments. 

We must remember, especially now, that Wake Forest is called by our motto to have higher expectations for ourselves than what we might see around us; to remain a community where civil discourse, expression, ideas, and nuance can flourish. 

Wake Forest is distinctive in these ways because of you – our faculty, staff and students – and your dedication to creating and sustaining this culture. We are a strong, compassionate community of learners, inquirers, and collaborators. 

We at Wake Forest must see our current moment as an opportunity – an opportunity to boldly recommit to our purpose; an opportunity to understand this moment as a call to step forward and embrace our identity as leaders. 

Every single one of us has the ability to lead from where we are, to lead by example, and to demonstrate ethical leadership whether in formal roles or not. The power of our collective leadership grows when we are strengthening our academic mission, extending our collective ethic of care, and embodying our shared calling to Pro Humanitate.

At Wake Forest, we are called to lead with integrity. Leading with integrity means engaging thoughtfully – and with great empathy – with people from a variety of backgrounds and lived experiences, seeking common ground and collective good. Leading with integrity means practicing resilience in disagreement, taking responsibility for our words and our actions, and pursuing the better course forward. And leading with integrity means tackling head-on the complex issues of our time with as much compassion as critical thinking. 

The world needs the kind of leaders we strive to be today and the kind of leaders we at Wake Forest are developing for tomorrow, now more than ever before. 

I firmly believe we are at a pivotal moment in our university’s history. We have tremendous momentum. The transformative education and the path-breaking research that defines us will continue to inform our actions and our investments as we move toward our third century. 

Our motto — Pro Humanitate — has always called us to imagine, discuss, and shed light on how our fundamental mission of education helps individuals reach their full potential and catalyze more good for one another and their communities.

At each turn in our story, Wake Forest has faced choices and made decisions that enhanced our capacity to do more good:

• Where would we be if we had chosen only to teach young men?
• Where would we be if we had declined the invitation to move to Winston-Salem?
• Where would we be if we had not joined the ACC as a founding member?
• Where would we be if we had only focused on our regional identity at the expense of our national potential?

We now stand at another crossroads in the Wake Forest story. And history is calling us once again to lead – so our transformational education, research and creative work will have an even greater positive impact for our students and the world. 

But it’s not just history calling… So are you! 

In fact, my many conversations with you over the time I have been President inform how I think about this crossroads. I heard loud and clear during the University Strategic Framework process that you are ready for Wake Forest to more fully embody its motto at home and in the world; that you are ready to contribute to our shared goals, to be a community of learning, a community of inquiry, and a community of partnerships; and that you are eager to do even more good in a world that needs us. 

And here’s the great news: We are ready for this moment! 

I began this academic year sharing how this will be a year of actions and investments, capitalizing on our momentum. Momentum that positions us to continue competing at the highest levels — in our classrooms, laboratories, stages, and in the ever-changing world of college athletics

All the work we have done together – through our design of the University Strategic Framework, through the College, school- and unit-based frameworks completed and are underway – all that work lights the path for how all parts of the University, how all of you, can contribute to our goals and aspirations and reinforce the conclusion that it is time for us to act and to invest. 

And together, we have already begun to do just that. 

We acted together to invest in the University’s first sponsored child care center, Kindercare at WFU, which opened in September to Wake Forest families, to ensure we are supporting our outstanding teacher-scholars, staff and students and our ability to recruit with the benefit of having such a resource. I have already heard from new staff and faculty that having a University child care center was critically important to their decision to come to Wake Forest.  

We are also acting together to invest in areas of key academic distinction. We are creating new opportunities for research collaborations, teaching and mentoring, and ways to extend our leadership in important interdisciplinary areas out into the world. Today I’ll share some exciting examples of this work. 

We acted together to take big leaps forward in our use of technology for better outcomes for our students. We completed the implementation of WorkDay student thanks to the radical collaboration of staff and faculty across all parts of the University. This was a major accomplishment. Thank you!

We are acting together to invest in our shared conviction that Wake Forest should be a catalyst for good not just on our campuses but in our local communities. For example, we created a vision for the Grounds, a vibrant real estate development project in the Deacon Boulevard area, not just for our own benefit, but for our city, region and state. 

What I heard during our Strategic Framework process was the strong belief that universities have the power to be supportive, collaborative economic engines for the communities they call home. The Grounds will generate new economic development and new opportunities for the City of Winston-Salem, and make our city an even more engaging place to live, play and stay — including for our next generations of students, faculty, and staff.  

This project directly complements and accelerates our University comprehensive space planning. We will create approximately 30,000 square feet of academic space in the Reynolda Campus core with our plan to relocate some administrative departments into a leased office building in the Grounds. The Grounds will also leverage the venues for our highly competitive D-I athletics programs, including Allegacy Stadium, Couch Ballpark, the Joel Coliseum, and the tennis facilities — all powerful sites for the community to come together and to cheer on our student athletes. 

We will break ground on this project on December 7, just a few weeks from now, and begin the critical infrastructure work necessary to bring the concept to life.   

These are just a few examples. There is so much more we can and will do when we act together to invest in what matters; when we are creative, disciplined and intentional about our journey forward; and when we stay true to our mission and our why – our students. 

Our students are the heart of our mission at Wake Forest, and they are preparing to be the leaders with the character, courage and integrity that the world so urgently needs. Our responsibility is to teach them, to guide them, to mentor them, to learn with them and from them as they prepare to lead in our changing world. We are committed to graduating leaders across disciplines and professions, who embrace evidence-based debate, open dialogue and critical thinking.

We are doing this – and we will continue to do more – as we review and assess our curriculums, and recruit, hire and retain our outstanding faculty and staff. 

And we will act together to invest in our academic and student support spaces, in the scholarships and opportunities that open our doors wide to students from all backgrounds and experiences, and in strengthening our areas of academic distinction through interdisciplinary collaboration and greater opportunities for learning and discovery.  

Investing in Academic and Student Support Spaces 

Taken together, we continue to focus on educating the whole person – and embracing the practice of relationship building and holistic support that has long been the hallmark of our university. Because of this, Wake Forest will continue to lead in innovative residential education and experiential learning that prepares our graduates for the lives they will lead.

As many of you know, our first- and second-year undergraduate residential program – called “The Forest” — launched two years ago and aims to provide built-in layers of support for the undergraduate student experience. 

This program truly exemplifies that our entire campus is a classroom with learning taking place everywhere. Through deep engagement with faculty fellows, academic advisors, and resident advisors in the halls, we are meeting our students where they are to provide the resources, mentorship, and care that they need. 

Vice President Shea Kidd Brown and Dean Jackie Krasas are leading the charge through radical collaboration in “The Forest,” and this is all part of the work being done in all our schools, by all our faculty and staff, to provide comprehensive resources dedicated to students’ wellbeing and learning, dedicated to belonging and inclusion, so that all can thrive at Wake Forest. 

We are also acting together to invest in the spaces where learning happens. We have significant needs in our core academic buildings and student support spaces that we must meet to support excellence. The past three years of our work together positions us to launch the first phase of our near-term campus space strategy.

At the beginning of the semester, I announced that Alumni Hall is the first catalyst project to renew the academic core in the heart of the Reynolda campus. When its renovation is complete, in the summer 2026, Alumni Hall will house the departments of Philosophy, Education, and Computer Science, and the Entrepreneurship program. 

I’m excited about how these innovative spaces will provide opportunities for our students and teacher-scholars to collaborate in new ways. I also hope the proximity of these departments and programs to the Business and Law Schools and Health and Exercise Science department will encourage new engagement and partnerships. 

The renovation of Alumni Hall will decompress several College academic buildings, allowing us to consider the renewal of Benson University Center as a future academic building, as well as the construction of a new state-of-the-art student center.

And, just as we did this past summer with the extensive classroom updates to Green Hall, we will keep modernizing our learning spaces across campus. We have a bold vision for our spaces and places – inspired by all of you. 

I hope you will come to the next “How Wake Works” session on November 19 to hear more about this campus space planning work directly from Provost Michele Gillespie and EVP and CFO Jackie Travisano, who co-lead our space planning efforts. Thank you both for your leadership. 

By creating more and better spaces, we expand living and learning opportunities for our students and generate more opportunities for research, scholarship and creative engagements with faculty and staff. We also give you, our people, the state-of-the-art spaces we need to move forward into our third century.

Access and Opportunity – Scholarships

We must also continue to increase access to our distinctive education by expanding scholarships and financial aid.

At my inauguration, we launched For Humanity –– an expansive fundraising initiative. From March 2022 through the end of June 2024, we raised $88 million for scholarships. And just since July, we have raised an additional $24 million for a total of $112 million for scholarships and student aid. This total includes the very recent, unprecedented $10 million gift to the School of Divinity to expand access and support for students. 

I know from experience just how meaningful scholarships and grants can be. I would not be standing here on this stage today as your President if it were not for the scholarships and grants I received for my undergraduate and graduate education. Many of you have shared with me how scholarships and grants also made all the difference in your own educational journeys.

The success of our scholarship fundraising once again demonstrates the tremendous momentum we have right now at Wake Forest. That momentum is further demonstrated by the incredible demand for admission to our programs.

Just look at our undergraduate applications: With nearly 19,000 total applications for this year’s Class of 2028, up from just under 12,000 only five falls ago. 

You, our outstanding faculty and staff, as well as the accomplishments of our alumni, are the reason students want to come to Wake Forest. Students want to be here to learn from you, to be mentored by you, and to receive a truly outstanding, immersive educational experience. 

Those application numbers are a reflection of excellence and the academic culture you’ve created here. I thank you for all you do to make Wake Forest so special. 

If Wake Forest is called to lead, and called to graduate the leaders our world needs, we must ensure that more qualified students, no matter their financial means, can join us here. And because of our collective efforts in this endeavor – because you all care about this so deeply, just like I do – we are making huge progress.

Investing in Our Areas of Academic Distinction 

Our Strategic Framework established our shared desire to be even further recognized as a national model for academic excellence in promising new frontiers for teaching and learning, research and collaboration – areas where faculty and students are co-creators of new knowledge – and we are making great strides to do just that.  

Let me give you just three examples of our actions and investments. 

Environment and Sustainability 

Last year, we announced a generous $5 million gift from the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation to extend our impact in environment and sustainability. And this October, the Andrew Sabin Family Center for Environment and Sustainability hosted its first conference, bringing together leaders from academia, government, NGOs  and the private sector in search of innovative solutions to our most urgent climate concerns. 

Now, and into the future, there is a critical need for ethical leadership in the field of sustainability – and with our continued action and investment in this field, Wake Forest will be an even more impactful leader. 

Not only will we be more visible – with more influential leaders in Environment and Sustainability – we will also continue to be at the forefront of developing ethical leaders of character across our Schools and departments. 

Leadership, Character and Integrity 

Our Program for Leadership and Character has received a total of more than $40 million from the Lilly Endowment in just the past two years; and the Kern Foundation has provided grants totaling nearly $10 million to date. This funding recognizes Wake Forest’s Program as the model for how to educate character and integrity in higher education – for undergraduates and graduate and professional school students. 

In fact, many say that we are doing the impossible! 

Educating character through curriculum, including in preparation for the professions, is something that has long been assumed too difficult – perhaps even impossible – teaching character to undergraduates? in medical school? In law school? Some would say it can’t be done!  

But we are doing it here and sharing our best practices and discoveries with colleges and universities across the country and around the world. 

Health Medicine and Humanity 

We are also making incredible strides forward in the area of Health, Medicine and Humanity. A powerful example is evident in a historic milestone: the opening of our second medical campus in Charlotte in summer 2025. 

Because of this expansion, more students will learn how to find new cures, invent new medicines and medical devices, treat more patients, and lead with empathy, integrity, and compassion. 

Indeed, all of our deans, faculty and staff are working to collaborate and partner across disciplines with new academic programming that will advance health and medicine in service to humanity. 

 For example, the School of Medicine and the School of Professional Studies are developing health-focused graduate programs. In 2022, we launched a Master in Health Informatics and added a Master of Health Administration degree. We currently have over 120 students enrolled in just these two programs. 

And we are partnering with Advocate Health to support fellows in our Health Administration program, as the health system seeks to develop the next generation of leaders in health care.

In sum, these investments and actions are extending Wake Forest’s impact, both across our state, nationally and internationally. 

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Our existing excellence across the Strategic Framework’s five areas of academic distinction represents incredible potential for coalitions across our university – and we will continue to support and invest in these efforts. 

This year we designated $1 million in special seed funding for strategic academic initiatives, and we hope to double this investment in fiscal year ‘26 and again in fiscal year ‘27. 

Such promising, high-impact initiatives further strengthen our academic excellence at Wake Forest. 

I believe that Wake Forest has a distinctive and critically important role to play among the very best universities in the country, and Wake Forest has something distinct and critically important to offer to the world. 

Not only do we foster talent, intellect, and achievement, we nurture conscientiousness, collaboration, and care. We foster character, courage and empathy for the leaders of today, tomorrow, and throughout the next century. 

The goals articulated in our Strategic Framework, paired with the critical actions and investments we will make together, will position Wake Forest for a strong, and impactful third century. Our momentum – and what we do with it – will inspire more people to join us as we catalyze good in the world.

Right now, right at this moment, the next generation of Wake Forest is out there: kids doing their homework on their laptops at kitchen tables; young people with undergraduate degrees contemplating next steps in their academic journeys; outstanding artists, innovators, scientists, writers, entrepreneurs who are positioned to become exceptional teachers, scholars, higher-education professionals, and leaders.   

What will lead them here to us? 

How we act together to invest in our shared future, in our aspirations for this great university, will ensure we are ready.  

The future is calling. Thank you for the many ways each of you will answer its call.