Dear UAlbany Community,
I am delighted to welcome you to the start of the Fall 2024 semester at the University at Albany! I am looking forward to an exciting and productive fall semester on our campus.
As we begin the semester, I want to reinforce some of the most important values of our campus community: inclusive excellence, working toward the common good, freedom of expression, and academic freedom.
I am so proud of the Great Dane community we have built, one in which we strive to treat each other with dignity and respect and seek to understand and empathize with each other, even in the face of passionate differences of opinion or belief. We are living through historic and often challenging times, but I have confidence that by leaning into the strengths of our campus community and allowing our shared values to guide us, we will persevere no matter the challenge.
Throughout the semester, you will see programming and events focused on civil discourse and civic engagement. We are calling this campaign the Great Dane Dialogue and our goal is to provide all members of our community with opportunities to learn and engage in dialogue with each other. We will bring guest speakers to campus to talk about their experiences with civil discourse, offer opportunities for debate and discussion, and encourage all members of our campus community to prioritize civic engagement through our UAlbany Votes campaign. You can learn more about these efforts on our Great Dane Dialogue website.
Earlier this week, we celebrated the opening of the new Well at Colonial, a health and wellness space in Colonial Quad. If you haven’t yet had a chance to check out this beautiful new space, I encourage you to visit! It will be a home for group exercise classes, including yoga, spinning, kickboxing, dance, and so much more. The Well is the embodiment of our holistic commitment to the physical, mental, and spiritual health and wellbeing of our campus community, and I am thrilled that this space is officially open to everyone on campus.
We are doing amazing things at UAlbany – on our athletic fields, in our research labs, in our classrooms, in our performance spaces, and everywhere in between. Thank you for all you do to make UAlbany great. Together, our potential is limitless.
Go Great Danes!
Sincerely,
Havidán Rodríguez
President