President Wendy Cadge Outlines Reflections at Six-Month Mark

Wendy Cadge
January 27, 2025

Reflections at Six Months

Introduction

Bryn Mawr College is an exceptional institution.

The light - the pursuit of knowledge and the power of ideas to change the world – is strong and bright.

The College has long made a difference by shaping students’ life journeys: undergraduates and postbacs, social work students and doctoral students. It is a privilege and a challenge in a world today struggling to separate fact and fiction. A world that needs all of us to think and act deeply and compassionately. What is learned here - the ability to critically engage, think across disciplines, nurture and collaborate with others, and build community across differences - is nurtured in the sun, water and soil of Bryn Mawr College. It is these experiences that help students – and all of us –learn how to live and do so in multi-generational community, especially the alumnae community that embraces our new graduates each year.

So I want to think with you today about how we dream and innovate to expand the College’s excellence and illuminate its reach.  

I want to think about how to strengthen the light, to enable it to shine well beyond our campus, and to show – in our actions – that people from all backgrounds are invited and able to be here. I will do this using the metaphor of a vegetable garden - one that is sustainably grown (of course) and feeds the community. I am assuming that we are not enlarging our undergraduate student body and will continue to offer doctoral and other graduate programs as core to mission. 

We all know that bountiful gardens need soil, water, light, seeds, and other nutrients. A seed with water but no sun doesn’t grow. Bryn Mawr College is the garden in this metaphor, and I am imagining its next chapter composed of four interlocked pieces:

1. Academic Excellence
2. Student Experience
3. Access and Inclusion
4. And nothing short of a transformation in our facilities and operating systems

The transformation of facilities and operating systems is the soil and the other pieces are the plants, light, and water. We need all four interlocking parts – any one of them can’t grow without the other three.

I am putting my cautious side on pause to talk about this garden with you. The garden is built on excellence and isn’t fully planned or grown yet. I’m pushing myself to share it to get your reactions and so we can continue to think, talk and develop it together.  I will say more about how we will do that at the end mindful, always, of what I said at the inauguration that it is we – together – who are building the College’s next chapter.

Background

The garden in my mind’s eye is in West Newton, Massachusetts, where my wife Deborah and I bought a fixer-upper house ten-plus years ago. Come spring, Deborah started to build a garden. We spent a lot of time working outside and getting to know the neighbors. I was pregnant with Risa, and come August, we had many vegetables and a lot of new friends.

Most years we continued to grow and tend this garden. Deborah built more beds, and Risa got in on the action. Some years, Deborah labeled the vegetable beds the neighborhood kids. She tried a potato tower and a green bean structure. Our kids got bigger, and the Bones family got involved. We shared rhubarb, cucumbers, tomatoes, and more with our neighbors. We learned that the art of growing vegetables (like life) is part art and part science and always includes surprises.

I arrived at the College in July when - literally and metaphorically - the College was in full bloom.

• President Kim Cassidy was completing a period of wise and dedicated service which lays the groundwork for so much of what we do today
• I found amazing faculty, excellent students, and a deeply committed staff who run this institution every day, literally holding it together.
• Application numbers have been up, and the College has the resources to reduce undergraduates’ reliance on loans.
• We have taken major steps to understand exclusionary parts of our history and have significant efforts underway – including the dedication of Nekisha Durrett’s monument “Don't Forget to Remember [Pause] (Me)” this April.
• We live, work, and play on a beautiful campus.
• I could go on and on and on

I asked questions this fall – as you all know. I read, watched, took many notes, and read – multiple times – the reports from the last two years of strategic thinking work in which so many of you engaged. Continuing the garden theme, I asked:

• How big is the garden/College in physical space, financial and human resources?
• What has been planted and nurtured here and is growing well and in quantities that meet demand? That first tomato in July is amazing and by some late Augusts you can’t give tomatoes away.
• How is the balance? Did you ever plant a squash that took up more space that you expected and made it difficult to grow other things?
• What kinds of lattices or stakes do we have to support our people and programs?
• What is the demand – what are incoming students and families looking for?
• What is (or could be) the equivalent of what indigenous people called the three sisters - corns, beans, and squash – that, when planted together, are more than the sum of their parts at Bryn Mawr? 

Four Interlocking Pieces

Academic Excellence

First, academic excellence.

The academic garden at Bryn Mawr is very full to overflowing—no surprise for the “scholarly sister.”  How can we strategically enhance and strengthen the academic excellence made possible in and through the college? 

There are lots of ideas about this in the strategic planning reports, and I will highlight just a few.

First, the undergraduate curriculum. There has been so much creativity here in the 360 program, praxis courses, and the library. AI, technology, political polarization, the rise of nationalism pushing back on globalization, and shifts in the geopolitical world require that education, particularly liberal arts education, keep up and modernize. The value of liberal arts is that it helps create integrative, multi-disciplinary thinkers who can grapple with these complex changes from a holistic viewpoint and with humanity. 

We have the opportunity to imagine and collaboratively build the curriculum for Bryn Mawr’s future in response to these realities. What do today’s undergraduates need to be integrative thinkers tomorrow? To enter the full-time workforce in the 2030s? To work alongside AI? How can Bryn Mawr uniquely prepare them to do so? How do we think about competencies and skills that match broader changes in higher education centering learning more than teaching? I just finished Arthur Levine’s book The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present and Uncertain Future, which describes higher education in the midst of a profound transformation not unlike that of the music, film, and newspaper industries. How can we – a private liberal arts college – lead in this transformation, perhaps in our core requirements, a parallel focus on competencies, or by even more closely aligning the curricular and residential pieces of undergraduates’ experiences here?

Second, graduate education is part of what makes Bryn Mawr distinct. The changing job market for PhDs and national declines in master’s programs provide the opportunity to think creatively about how we are preparing our graduate students. Social Work Dean Janet Shapiro has agreed to lead a conversation about graduate programs, in close collaboration with GSAS Dean May Cheng and Provost Tim Harte, that will start this spring. Who are our applicants, students, and graduates? Where do they go after graduation, and how are they prepared? What kinds of loans do they carry? How can we articulate and enact our academic value proposition in a way that integrates graduate and undergraduate programs and students in their work together at the College?

Third, Faculty Workload and Professional Development. The Rebalancing Faculty Workload Committee is working on a proposal to shift from faculty teaching five courses per year to teaching four. This is essential for us to continue to attract and retain the best faculty and will enable faculty to more productively balance their work inside and outside of the classroom – which, in my mind, includes work for broad public audiences. What if workload transitions were paired with more structured opportunities for professional growth for all faculty? More research support especially for undergraduate/faculty research? A detailed review and more transparent approach to faculty compensation?

Student Experience

Second, student experience.

The “lives of purpose” the College aspires to in our mission statement go beyond the academic. How do we ensure that our students – undergraduate, graduate and postbac – have the most positive holistic experiences possible at the College? 

One piece of this is about signposting and advising. How do we enable our students to see all of the amazing options on campus – from student groups to wellness opportunities to academic paths and make their best choices? How can faculty and staff better work together to label all of the vegetables in the garden and show possible paths, which can be hard to see when there is so much bounty?

I notice that faculty and staff in the Undergraduate Division, LITS, athletics, etc., are all trying to get the attention of students. Many staff and faculty are waiting for students to come to us – what would happen if we took what we have to offer to students where they are? I have brainstormed out loud about exercise machines in the dorms. What about wellness staff connected to dorms? library liaisons? IT support? colleagues in Campus Safety? I don’t know yet how to design this. I do know that when we think about advising and wellness collaboratively with today’s students physically at the center, our approaches change.  

Many students also have told me how much they want to see faculty outside of classes, and we know that strong relationships are key for student and for faculty experiences.  We started in the fall to experiment with different kinds of all-campus events that engage everyone. Can we create one hour a week (or a month) when nothing else is scheduled so we can learn together on campus? Can we bring back Community Days of Learning each semester? Next month, undergrad and grad students will get a survey to help us understand how best to go forward on these and other new ideas. I will share out to the community in April what we learn.

Student engagement is closely connected to student space and facilities. The Post-Bac program recently moved into its new space, a new lounge for GSAS students is in process, and

the student flash space project will lead to the initial renovation of three to five student-centered spaces on campus for undergraduates by the start of the next academic year. How can we continue to imagine and build the physical spaces students need to build the relationships with each other and with faculty that undergird their experiences here? Without rich soil, there is a limit to how much our vegetables can grow.

Access and Inclusion

Third, access and inclusion [slide]

Diversity, equity and inclusion are core to the college. How do we ensure they are “the engine for excellence and innovation”? 

Students, staff, and faculty – particularly in the Impact Center - have done an amazing job outlining this work, and so many in the community have moved it forward. I look forward to collaboratively clarifying how the College’s equity and inclusion goals are set and developing clear ways to report on progress. While faculty (not me or other senior administrators) hire other faculty, I am eager to partner with them to welcome new faculty colleagues with expertise in key areas such as black feminist thought, Indigenous studies, and other fields.

This work also includes the next chapters in the “Who Built Bryn Mawr” project to excavate and learn about the layered narratives of Bryn Mawr’s own history. I’m grateful that historian Barbara Savage will be consulting this semester with the students leading the Black at Bryn Mawr tour on next steps and the Histories Group will soon gather to think about how to best intertwine academics and student experiences in the next phases of that work.

Access, in the form of expanded financial aid, is one of Kim Cassidy’s many legacies. We are building on that work through partnerships with community colleges that enable students to transfer to Bryn Mawr, where we meet full financial need. The College will host the Bi-Co Exploring Transfers Together program this summer, a paid opportunity for community college students to learn about life on a liberal arts campus – both efforts we aim to continue and grow. 

What would it look like - in addition - to expand the STEMLA program? Grow the Q Center and the Writing Center? I am committed to access, including physical accessibility, beginning with the new Testing Center. All of these efforts are essential for us to include all students, just as different plants need different conditions to thrive. Back to the garden, how well do tomatoes and cucumbers grow when they are not latticed? How can we strengthen our latticing around quantitative skills, academic and physical accessibility, accommodation, and other areas key to inclusion?

A few years ago, fellow sociologist Sara Shostak was asked by organizers of a farmer’s market in a neighborhood with many new immigrants to help them hear what their new neighbors most wanted to see at the market. Long story short – callaloo– a green that is the central element of a Caribbean dish by the same name and also popular among South Asian cooks. Many of the farmers sourcing the market were not familiar with callaloo, and together, the customers and farmers, researchers, and organizers of the farmers market were able to start to grow and sell it. What is the callaloo of Bryn Mawr, and how can the College continue to transform around it?

A Transformation in Facilities and Operating Systems

Finally, a transformation in facilities and operating systems.
The students and faculty, the programs and wellness initiatives, our access and inclusion work at Bryn Mawr grows best in fertile soil: How do we move towards ensuring that our buildings, grounds, operational systems and technical infrastructures are state of the art, attract the next generation of students and faculty, and are efficient, sustainable and cost effective? 

This work is very much in process.

Facilities - we have 25,000 square feet of empty space on campus, much of it not in move-in ready conditions. A call for proposals for a space utilization study and comprehensive plan for our physical campus was released in December, and we are working to populate the groups that will select the architectural firm and develop a plan for the physical space of the campus. The strategic plan (of which this talk is an early draft) will lead and the physical space plan will be built in parallel. We aim to start moving on high-priority items like building/renovating the library of the future and re-imagining the campus center in the next twelve to eighteen months.

Operationally, Workday implementation is in process, and Samir Datta, our new Vice President of Finance & Administration, starts on March 3. He will partner with me and others on the senior team to turn our dreams into a plan with a timeline, dates, deliverables, and resource estimates. In collaboration with our Alumni and Development colleagues, this will include launching the College’s next capital campaign. The search for the next leader of LITS is nearing its final stages. The staff are what makes the College run and, later this year, we will start to re-imagine our support for staff through Human Resources. I hope this includes equitably offered professional development and staff growth opportunities.

We will do this work sustainably.  A $1 million dollar gift from an alum is jump-starting our accelerated approach to sustainability as we enact our values in the world. The College is an incubator or lab in which we teach and learn, test out ideas, and from which future work grows – like dandelion seeds when you blow them into the wind. The full-time sustainability staff position will be posted next week. The sustainability fellowship program for students is in draft form, and colleagues, especially Associate Professor Sara Grossman, have done an amazing job moving this work forward in the last three months.

Conclusion

To conclude, we have to ask, why.

Why do this work?

Why engage with me and the College in shaping its next chapter?

Dreaming and changing require effort, and they can be challenging and exhausting. We are all, in some ways, creatures of habit. So why?

For me, this is a question about Bryn Mawr and a bigger question about higher education as public confidence continues to decline. We know higher education is the most reliable path to social and economic mobility, but this isn’t all about mobility. It is about knowledge creation, discovery, and sharing. It is about the quality of our experiences and relationships, the texture with which we move through the world and plant and tend our vegetable gardens. The seeds that grow when we are on campus and flower throughout our lives.

All of us can make a difference, and we stand at Bryn Mawr on the legacy of generations who did just that. The love I spoke of as my personal spark at the inauguration is deeply rooted in gratitude – for this life, for health, for my family of birth and of choice, for the presidential pets (of course). My liberal arts education liberated me. It showed me how to think deeply and with compassion about the world and my place in it. It turned up my light.

I spoke at the inauguration about solar-powered lanterns – those whose spark is the sun. I learned afterward that Dawn and Robbie in facilities made this one several years ago. They took a standard lantern and modified it with a pre-made top. They’ve loaned it to me, and it sits on the windowsill in my office. On some days – if there is enough sun – it glows green and speaks to me in metaphor. Most of the ideas I shared this afternoon – like this solar-powered lantern – are not mine; they are yours, and they have been here much longer than I have.

Can we join together in the garden to expand the College’s excellence and illuminate its reach?

So what’s next?

We will continue this conversation in each of the three Current Topics in Higher Education lunch sessions this spring – to which you are all invited. They are focused on the future of the liberal arts, the liberal arts in the world, and the permutations of a Bryn Mawr education. Each session will begin with faculty reflections on the theme and move to conversation. This is my chance to hear from you, and it will be more vibrant when we have a range of students, staff, and faculty around the lunch tables.

I always prefer to work through existing governance structures and have invited a wide range of standing groups and committees to reflect on and further develop the ideas offered here. I am committed – as you know – to ongoing communication, engagement and conversation throughout the Bryn Mawr community. I will offer updated reflections and more details on the topics shared here in a Town Hall talk at the start of the fall semester.

I met with many (I think most) of the staff units at the College this fall. If I missed yours, please write and invite me. This semester, I will continue to learn focusing especially on students and on visiting as many academic departments and programs as possible.

The seeds are in the ground, and ideas have been germinating in the College’s rich soil for years. The light is strong. Together, we are the sun and the shade, the soil and the water that will allow these ideas to grow. Let's do the hard work of tending them together to bring forth and enjoy a bountiful harvest.

Thank you.

• Academic Excellence​​

• Student Experience​​

• Access and Inclusion​​

• Transformations in our Facilities and Operating Systems

• How big is the garden/College in physical space, financial and human resources? ​​

• What has been planted and nurtured here and is growing well and in quantities that meet demand? ​​

• How is the balance? ​​

• What kinds of lattices or stakes do we have to support our people and programs?​​

• What is the demand? What are incoming students and families looking for?​

• What is (or could be) the equivalent of what indigenous people called the three sisters - corns, beans, and squash that, when planted together, are more than the sum of their parts at Bryn Mawr?​

Central question: How can we strategically enhance and strengthen the academic excellence made possible in and through the college? ​​

• Undergraduate Curriculum​​

• Graduate Programs​

• Faculty workload and professional development ​

Key question: How do we ensure that our students—undergraduate, graduate, and postbaccalaureate—have the most positive holistic experiences possible at the College? ​​

• ​Sign posting and advising​​

• Thinking about advising and wellness collaboratively with students physically at the center​​

• Expanding opportunities to engage as a community outside of the classroom​​

• Space​

Key question: Diversity, equity, and inclusion are core to the college. How do we ensure they are “the engine for excellence and innovation”?​​

• Clarifying goal setting and reporting​​

• Partnering on faculty hires in key areas​​

• Next steps in "Who Built Bryn Mawr" efforts​​

• Community college partnerships​​

• Strengthening our latticing​

Key question: How do we move towards ensuring that our buildings, grounds, operational systems and technical infrastructures are state of the art, attract the next generation of students and faculty, and are efficient, sustainable and cost effective?​

• Comprehensive Campus Plan, a plan for the campus' physical spaces ​​

Key question: How do we move towards ensuring that our buildings, grounds, operational systems and technical infrastructures are state of the art, attract the next generation of students and faculty, and are efficient, sustainable and cost effective?​

• Campus Master Plan, a physical plan for the campus​​

• Workday ​

• New Vice President for Finance & Administration​​

• Re-imagining our support for staff through Human Resources​​

• Sustainability​

• It changes lives​​

• We stand on the legacy of generations​​

• It lasts a lifetime​​

• The ideas are all here already​

• Current Topics in Higher Education​

• Work through existing governance structures​​

• Survey of all students​​

• Updated reflections (with more details) at the start of fall 2025​