Southwestern Magazine | Spring 2020

I think youwill enjoy this issue. It offers reminders of the leadership roles of Southwestern and of Pirates in higher education and in state and national affairs that stretch across our 180 years. But it also highlights the history being made at Southwestern today, fromcreating opportunities for ambitious students who are the first in their families to pursue higher education to engaging students early in their college careers with the process of connecting their education in the liberal arts and sciences with prospective careers and engaged citizenship. But since ScarlettMoss ’86, Southwestern’s vice president for integrated communications, asked me to prepare this column, much has changed in our—and your—world. History has taken an unexpected turn. On campus, faculty and staff have had to come together to make critical decisions about how we ensure that our students can continue their education, how we secure the future of theUniversity, andhowwe seek to protect the community’s health during the COVID-19 pandemic. I’mpleased to share that our community has rallied to meet this challenge. Initially, we elected to extend spring break from one week to two while faculty took advantage of consulting resources made available through the offices of the Dean of the Faculty; Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship; and Information Technology to allow them to continue remote engagement of their studentswith academic coursematerial.We thought thismight last for a period of weeks, with students returning to campus to complete the final month of the semester. But additional efforts by local authorities to protect the public ultimately made it clear thatwewould have tomove the entire balance of the semester to remote learning. I could not bemore grateful for the resourcefulness of our faculty, the dedication of our administrative and support staff, and the resilience of our student body, O F F I C E O F T H E P R E S I D E N T History & Tradition HATLUCK! I THOUGHTwhen I learned that this issue of Southwestern would focus on University history and traditions. After all, I am a historian by trade, and my first experience with Southwestern more than 20 years ago was as dean of the faculty and professor of history. Two decades away as a university president inOhio and, more recently, as aGeorgetown retiree and Southwestern trustee only deepenedmy appreciation for Southwestern’s consequential history and primedme to share a few introductory remarks for our magazine. W 4 SOUTHWESTERN