President’s Perspective

Dear Friend,

There has been much scrutiny on higher education in recent weeks and months. Including affordability, Title IX compliance, and return on investment of a college education, no topic is immune from discussion.

As the waters of higher education in the United States are navigated, there is much discussion about how it might transform. Several years ago, former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings wrote in A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education (2006) that the purpose and structure of higher education should be changed to oblige the marketplace, to provide programs and degrees that contribute to the global economy. While we are not strangers to economic competition and necessity, we believe that economy means something more than the number of zeros in a graduate’s salary.

Our goals are to provide a well-rounded education that pulls from all disciplines—whether the sciences or the humanities—that allows our graduates to make a living and to make a life, to secure jobs that are fulfilling and rewarding on more than one level. We are in the growth business. We are not here to tell students what to do, but to help them find and learn the skills for what they want to do.

As you will read in the In Brief pages, Springfield College has moved up within the highest ranks of the influential U.S.News and World Report latest edition of “Best Colleges.” We now occupy the 29th position in the first tier of Best Regional Universities–North. This is up 38 spots from five years ago and 26 spots from three years ago. Are we proud of this? You bet. But it does not define the real work that we do every day.

We prefer to think of return on investment as the creation of a life of value, value to both the graduate and to the people he or she will serve. In these pages, you will learn about members of the Springfield College community who have constructed such lives, to the benefit of the cities and towns in which they live, beginning with Wilmington, Del., Chief of Police Bobby Cummings.

In a field that has taken more than its share of hits, Chief Cummings has helped build a community, while building a meaningful life, on the secure foundation of a Springfield College education. This is an example of a Springfield College alumnus helping to better the world one little corner at a time.

Like Cummings, Matt Calendrillo has applied the Humanics philosophy to his life. Through his physical therapy, orthotics, and prosthetic practice, he seeks to help his patients become strong, fully functional, and independent.

Members of our faculty, our staff, and our leadership team are committed to educating and preparing quality humans through the creation of a student-centered experience that considers more than the bottom line.

When all is said, we want our graduates to be successful and rewarded—both intrinsically and extrinsically—and, as Bobby Cummings and Matt Calendrillo show, they are. We stand behind an education that is worth every penny, because nothing is more valuable than a life well lived and lived for the benefit of all.

My very best,