Remarks at Founders Day 2026

Delivered in Wait Chapel on Feb. 19, 2026. Remarks as prepared.

Good afternoon! Welcome to the 2026 Founders Day Ceremony.

Every year in February, we acknowledge our beginnings as a manual labor institute in the town of Wake Forest, North Carolina, in February of 1834 – and, we gather together to celebrate how far we have come; to reflect on the many moments of achievement, growth, and change. And to look excitedly – hopefully – forward. 

This year, we are celebrating 192 years of Wake Forest. 192 years of tradition and 192 years of change. 192 years of excellence and progress. And looking – full of hope and excitement – to the year ahead. 

We call these “birthday” celebrations Founders Day as a way to honor the discovery and determination that brought us from that small, unassuming manual labor institute to the Wake Forest University we know today:

A university that is impossible to ignore. A home to leaders of character and integrity. A leading, student-centered research university dedicated to our liberal arts foundation, driven to excel by the spirit of Pro Humanitate.

As I approach the conclusion of my presidency at the end of June, I have often reflected on my first year at Wake Forest, and my first Founders Day ceremony in February 2022. In learning about our Founders Day traditions, I was struck then as I am today about the complexity and nuance in the word “Founders.” 

Who is a founder? Who gets to found? And for what purpose? 

What I said four years ago feels even more true today. 

“To found” is a verb. It is an action—not a single, static moment frozen in the past. It implies motion, fluidity, and the courage to affirm, over and over again, our shared values.

I believe that founding is a collective process. A collaborative endeavor. Simply put: founding is the work of all of us—and all who came before us.

As a great university, Wake Forest was founded:

• In 1834, by those first students and faculty.
• In 1941, by the pioneers who moved our medical school to Winston-Salem.
• In 1956, by the leaders who brought the College, the law, and business schools to our new home here.
• Our new Reynolda Campus expanded shortly thereafter – in 1961 – to include the Graduate School.
• And in 1999, by the leaders who established the Divinity School. 

And founding has happened over the past five years, all the way up to today, as we fully launch the School of Professional Studies and second medical school campus in Charlotte. And as we partner with others on The Grounds, Innovation Quarter and the Pearl.

So, rather than celebrating a single founding event or a singular founder, we recognize all that we do that makes us who we are. 

We recognize that we are all founders. And our founding is never finished. 

Not simply because there are spaces and places being updated, new buildings rising or new initiatives launching. It is never finished because every year, we are joined by new voices: new students, faculty, staff, and families.

Our founding is never finished because we are constantly innovating, forming new connections in the classroom, new constellations of friends and mentors, stretching the boundaries of discovery while remaining anchored to the hallmark of care for one another. 

I see this cycle everywhere. 

Students who were once first-year students become the campus leaders others look up to. Faculty who are experts in their disciplines continually digging deeper, achieving excellence in moving their scholarship forward to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world. Staff who steward our resources and traditions and constantly reimagine campus life, ensuring that Pro Humanitate is felt in every interaction. In every step, the people of Wake Forest are collectively defining — for themselves and for the world— who we are. 

Our founding is never finished because – no matter our academic disciplines and interests – we are all working on the Wake Forest story. Some of us are writing brand-new chapters—freshly imagined and full of possibility. Others are uncovering stories once forgotten or ignored—telling them again, more thoroughly, more honestly, and with more care.

We are here today, and we are who we are today, because of all the hands, all the minds, and all the hearts that make Wake Forest. 

Over the past nearly five years, I have called on all to be founders for the future and to engage in the hard work needed to accomplish great things;  to build, to create, to write the ongoing story of Wake Forest. 

Today, in this, my last Founders Day address as president, I want to thank each of you for the many ways you have responded to that call. Because of you, I know that the tradition of founding is alive and thriving at Wake Forest. 

We are building a Wake Forest of access and opportunity. A Wake Forest with $175 million MORE for scholarships, and with a dedicated early action pathway for first-generation students.  A Wake Forest where North Carolina families –  who once thought Wake Forest too cost-prohibitive to even consider – are now able to send their deserving students due to the NC Gateway to Wake Forest Initiative. A Wake Forest with a childcare center! 

We are also creating a Wake Forest that is a vibrant and innovative ecosystem of interdisciplinary scholarship, research and discovery. A Wake Forest with new academic opportunities that embrace the generative power of interdisciplinarity and radical collaboration. Like the Neuroscience and Society initiative – with cutting edge offerings at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and other new undergraduate programs of study – like the Critical and Creative Media Major and the Accounting and Business Minors. 

A Wake Forest with unprecedented funding from foundations and generous donors to support academic expansions in Leadership and Character, Entrepreneurship, Divinity; and our re-investments in technology and classrooms, and the soon-to-reopen Alumni Hall, home to new spaces for the Departments of Philosophy, Education, and Computer Science, and the Entrepreneurship Program. 

Finally, we are doing more to tell the stories of Wake Forest – boldly and honestly. We are honoring trailblazing student and faculty leaders – undoubtedly founders in their own right – through the naming and renaming of our Reynolda campus roads and a residence hall. 

And we are taking thoughtful action on the April 2021 Board of Trustees resolution that endorsed the Campus Memorialization Project.  The Steering Committee of faculty, staff, students and alumni I established in April 2023 has worked diligently for years – and now – earlier this month, by the unanimous approval of our  Board of Trustees, we are taking the next steps forward  for our Campus Memorial: an amphitheatre and garden concept placed at the intersection of Wake Forest Road and Eure Drive, in what is now Lot S. 

This memorial is designed to bring people together, to invite all in, to reflect on our past and to learn, to discern, how all can be founders for the future.

This is the Wake Forest that we are founding together: a Wake Forest of opportunity, discovery, honesty and excellence.  

As I look forward, I am so full of hope for what this university will continue to do to discover and invent itself. 

I am so full of gratitude for what we have accomplished in this era of Wake Forest and deeply confident that this great university is positioned to continue thriving. 

In closing, I would like to offer up a birthday wish, of sorts, for Wake Forest on this Founders Day: that we will remain a university passionately focused on purposeful excellence, driven to discover and do good; that we remain ever open-hearted to ways we can more fully embody our sacred Pro Humanitate motto; and that we embrace being both unafraid to tell the story of who we have been and who we are and excited to write the next chapter of who Wake Forest will be.

Thank you.