Welcome to a New Academic Year!
August 15, 2022
Dear Faculty and Staff in Academic Affairs,
Welcome to the start of a new academic year! I hope you have enjoyed these summer months and found creative ways to stay cool, relax, and engage in different activities that are meaningful to you.
August is an exciting time as a cohort of ~55 new faculty, over 4,500 new students (first-years, transfers, and graduate students), and more than 50 new staff (since July 1) join our Seahawk community. With a new Chancellor at our helm, the opportunity to create a long-term strategic plan, and many important activities underway across our division, we are poised for another great year.
The start of a new year is also a good time to remind ourselves why we do what we do - our Simon Sinek “just cause,” if you will. For me, the why is a belief that, by working together, our faculty and staff can have a transformative positive impact on our students and the community through our teaching, research, and service. I believe our work creates a “ripple in still water” that is potentially boundless across space and time. What we do matters!
I also realize that many of us remain concerned about COVID this academic year. I want to point you all to an email OUR sent on Aug. 4 detailing the fall 2022 COVID safety protocols and community guidelines. Please read through the information carefully. Faculty: please note the section regarding course modality modification guidelines. As always, the most recent information for our campus can be found on Best for the Nest.
Lastly, similar to last year, I plan to resume my monthly communications starting in September and will continue to focus on highlighting updates from my office. In coordination with Faculty Senate President Nathan Grove and the Provost’s Advisory Council - Staff, I will continue to participate in regular faculty forums and staff feedback channels where we can engage in discussion and Q&A about topics of interest. Collectively, we want to remain radically open-minded and transparent about our work and how it impacts our most important asset: YOU!
Best wishes for an excellent 2022-23 academic year, everyone! As I tell our students, wings up and soar high, Seahawks!
Yours,
Jamie
P.S. Since I started drafting this message on Jerry Day 2022, it was appropriate to drop in the Grateful Dead reference. Did you catch it?
James J. Winebrake, Ph.D.
Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
University of North Carolina Wilmington
