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Dear LAS Community,

This fall marks the beginning of my second year as your dean. While last year we faced unique challenges, I feel fortunate to be a part of this amazing community—a community that made a sincere effort to welcome me. In this past year, we demonstrated that LAS is full of students, staff and faculty who genuinely care about each other and about developing and improving as a team.

Over the past year we have taken on the challenges of our nation’s pandemic: scaling the steep learning curve of shifting teaching modalities and managing our professional and personal commitments with creativity and innovation. Through it all, our community remains committed to an engaging and evolving learning environment, to each other’s professional development and to supporting each other inclusively and equitably, especially when the pandemic did not impact us all equally. I am proud to be a part of this team.

We are again called to adjust to our circumstances while facing new organizational challenges. Together, we will grow our understanding of the new budget model, work to clarify performance expectations and continue to find ways to support research and teaching efforts impacted by the pandemic. It will be challenging. Therefore, I ask you to care for yourself and each other, to communicate with patience and respect and to approach the year with a new curiosity and wonder for learning and collaboration. We are a community of strong, resilient individuals, but we are so much stronger together.

Thank you for everything you do. Although we have some challenges ahead, our mission remains constant: to develop innovative ideas through research and to graduate life-, community- and work-ready citizens for the State of Colorado.

I look forward to celebrating your many successes.

Go Mountain Lions!

L. Lynn Vidler, Ph.D. (they/them/theirs)
Professor and Dean, College of Letters, Arts & Sciences
University of Colorado Colorado Springs