Hopeful Change in the Newest of New Years

Dear Cal Lutheran Community,

Over the past two weeks we have welcomed students back to campus; started in-person instruction; celebrated Regal and Kingsmen victories in football, volleyball, soccer, and water polo; and enjoyed many of the activities that characterize a college experience.

On the surface, this sounds like a routine start of any new year. In actuality, the start of this academic year has been anything but routine. We begin the academic year (AY) 2021-2022 with a newness that is unusual. In normal times, about one quarter of our students are first-time Cal Lutheran students — new to campus and new to the collegiate experience. Conversely, for the first time in my 36 years in academia, more than half of our students are new to the university at this very moment. Our first-year students and new transfers join a majority of sophomores and a large number of last year’s new transfer students who together are stepping foot onto campus for the very first time. And it doesn’t stop at students. Many of our new faculty and staff who started during the pandemic also are experiencing campus life for the first time. They, too, are getting a sense of the rhythms of a semester where face-to-face instruction and co-curricular activities are the re-emergent norm.

All of this gives us the chance to embrace the start of this academic year like we have embraced no other year before. We can make the most of it by recognizing and celebrating three relevant realities.

Reality No 1: We are all in this together. 

When we are new to an experience we can often feel out of place and alone. This year, all of us are either orienting or reorienting ourselves to the physical campus. Together, we are all doing mental calculations about safe social distancing. We are all figuring out where to keep and put our masks so we can wear them when we enter a building and put them somewhere handy when we take a sip or a bite. New and returning students, faculty, and staff are learning how to repopulate the campus together. In this new world, we will make some mistakes, and we will give each other the grace to fix them as we move forward.

Reality No. 2: There has never been a better time than right now to chart a new course.

This new academic year is a great opportunity to think about what has and hasn’t worked over the past 18 months. We should hold on to the lessons that were beneficial and let the other things go. Charting a course this year is even more exciting and open-ended than it has been in the recent past. Why? Because the pandemic disrupted all of our lives. But that disruption not only has been frustrating, it has been freeing in some ways, too. We should celebrate that liberation.

Reality No. 3. Even some of the unknown that we might encounter this year will not be totally new. 

We have learned a lot about surviving and thriving in these difficult times. In the midst of it all, we honed the tools and skills and developed the resiliency to overcome the obstacles we faced. When challenges surface this year — and they will — draw from the strength you have already demonstrated when similar challenges emerged last year.

Making the most of the world we inhabit at this moment necessitates that we design and bring to life a host of changes at Cal Lutheran. I have begun referring to such changes as “hopeful change.” Hopeful change is the type of change we need to become the best version of ourselves: at the individual, departmental, and institutional levels. Our hopeful change will begin with new strategic and master planning processes; it will include our commitment to build and expand diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across campus; and it will underscore the need to reconnect as a community of teachers and learners who are making our way together.

It is fitting that this note comes on the heels of Rosh Hashanah. In that wonderful tradition, let’s sound a noise and savor some goodies to ring in the sweetness of a new year — one where we come back together in person, once again.

Lori E. Varlotta, Ph.D.
President