A Message from the President

Dear Faculty and Staff,

I know these past few weeks have been difficult for many of us on campus as the world continues to react to the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID-19. With so little known about the virus and so much changing at home and abroad, it’s been an unsettling time for all of us. And now the impact has reached us personally, interrupting the routine of teaching classes and supporting our students that we’d all rather be following. Today under normal circumstances is the day many students would be returning from break to our beautiful Bentley campus.

While you’ve been receiving updates from the Cabinet about university policies, I wanted to take a moment to thank each of you for your cooperation, resolve and effort during this challenging time. So many of you are stepping up to work in new ways and to perform new tasks so that we can continue to live our mission of both preparing and inspiring ethical leaders. Over the past several days, students and parents have expressed gratitude for the thoughtful and compassionate ways that we at Bentley have treated them. I believe that we have and will continue to inspire students and families with our genuine caring and our commitment to creating the best possible community of learners.

From the efforts of our faculty to quickly mobilize for the preparation of remote learning to the responsiveness of our staff in assisting hundreds of students here and abroad in returning to wherever they will be staying for the next few weeks, I know that many of you have been tasked with responsibilities that are not typically asked of you. These are unprecedented times for Bentley, higher education and societies around the world, for that matter. Thank you for being a thoughtful member of the Bentley community, and especially for your flexibility and willingness to adapt so that we can continue to educate our students.

I would like to take a moment to remind us all that moments of great disruption can also be moments of great creativity and innovation. As we all experiment with new ways of working, we may discover more effective ways for the university to operate. We also may be able to think of entirely new things that we should be doing to enhance our collective ability to be competitive and differentiated in this evolving higher education environment. As you discover ways to innovate, please share ideas and imaginative solutions with your colleagues, department chair or manager so that we can use this moment to experiment and to live even more fully our Bentley core value of Learning. As we do this, I am confident that we will emerge from this time of disruption more resilient, adaptive and competitive than we were before.

As the world continues to track the developments of COVID-19, I hope we will be mindful of each other and support one another, remembering our Bentley core values of Caring and Collaboration, and do all that we can to keep healthy and safe. As a community, we will see this through.

Alison