August 21, 2022
To our students, our faculty and our staff: welcome to the exciting start of the 2022-23 academic year at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln!
I want to encourage us all to collectively enter this new academic year with a fresh, renewed and maybe re-energized perspective for the new academic year.
A lot has happened over the past three years which have seemingly been full of multiple disruptors and required pivot points and adaptation. While we can always expect to encounter challenges in this world, we have clearly turned a corner from where we have been over these last few highly unusual academic years under what may have seemed like curve-ball conditions of the time – and that is cause in and of itself to be excited for this new “normal” year.
We are here at the university to do big things and to make a big impact.
Like earning one of the largest research grants in our history to lead the U.S. physics community at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. Or breaking a university record for the most Gilman International Scholarship recipients. Or continuing to be a world-leading institution across so many areas of research and development important to Nebraska and the world.
This fall we open the brand-new Carolyn Pope Edwards Hall, built from the ground up on the site of the former Mabel Lee Hall, and on East Campus, the addition to the Barkley Center and a newly fully expanded renovated Schmid Law Library for Nebraska Law. Architecture Hall is in the final completion of new expanded design studios and major building renovations for our College of Architecture. We will dedicate the new Veterans Tribute on Memorial Plaza on 9/11. And major construction continues on two other mammoth, record-breaking campus building projects: the transformation for the College of Engineering with the new Kiewit Hall, addition of the new now complete Engineering Research Center and renovation of the Scott Engineering Center. And the Go Big North Expansion Project that will create the future of Nebraska Athletics. These are just the beginning of a long list of major investments to grow and renew our UNL campuses in our N2025 plan.
We’re only able to do big things because of amazing people. To each and every member of our faculty and staff — thank you for your dedication, your innovation and inspiration. It takes the work of every one of us to make the magic happen in meeting and exceeding our tri-partite committed Land-Grant mission of exceptional education, world-leading research, innovation and development, and statewide engagement and extension to the people of Nebraska.
I also am so pleased to welcome our new faces on campus. To our incoming freshmen and transfer students: we’re so glad you’re here and excited to work one-to-one with you on your success. I look forward to seeing your success as you take on your studies and co-curricular activities here at Nebraska’s Land-Grant university.
We have 111 new faculty in our classrooms, labs, studios, and clinics this year — welcome to our UNL family and I can’t wait to see the impact you have on our students and our research, scholarship and creative activity. And in July, Andy Belser joined us as the new dean of the Hixson-Lied College of Fine and Performing Arts — and I know that Andy already has big things planned ahead.
To our returning students, welcome back — I know you will continue to make the most of your one-of-a-kind Husker experience.
Here’s to the big things we will accomplish together in 2022-23 ahead.
Have a great year ahead, stay safe, take care of one another — and as, always —
Go Big Red.
Ronnie D. Green, Ph.D.
Chancellor