Date: September 19, 2022
TO: The NYU Community
FROM: NYU President Andrew Hamilton

Dear Members of the NYU Community,

I have always been thrilled by the start of a new academic year — the energy I draw from the excitement of students and their families on Move-In Day, and the pride I take in all who volunteer to help; the pleasure of reuniting with colleagues returned from summer break; the fun of speaking at the welcome ceremony for first-year students. I enjoy the perennial activities of the fall semester’s start: the try-outs for teams and the University Orchestra; the librarians going all out to familiarize new students with the scholarly heart of our university; the Reality Show, and the orientations and welcome events; the veteran community members giving guidance to new arrivals; the resumption of classes.

This year is off to a marvelous start. We have enrolled an exceptional first-year class. Move-in Day could not have gone more smoothly. Mobility was much improved — both the international students coming to New York and the students going around the world to study at global sites encountered far fewer impediments than the last couple of years.

In the weeks and months to come, we look forward to steadily but cautiously lifting more of the restrictions imposed on us by COVID and to reclaiming more of the vibrancy of campus life. We shall open new facilities important to our future, including 181 Mercer — with its much-needed new classrooms, performing arts education spaces, athletic facilities, and housing — and a new, much-expanded campus for NYU Shanghai. We shall launch a new partnership with the Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology (KAIST), which is intended to lead to research and educational collaborations and a joint campus in New York. We shall also continue our work to complete new homes for the College of Arts and Science and for the Wagner School, and carry on our plans to improve facilities at Tandon and to expand and improve science spaces in the Silver Center, among other projects. And we shall be undertaking work on Rubin Hall that will make it the largest passive house renovation in New York City.

And even at this early stage of the year, our students and scholars give us much reason for pride. A dozen NYU students were recently named Millennium Fellows for their leadership in helping to achieve the UN’s sustainable development goals. In a sign of our researchers’ impact, our most recent submission for the NSF's Higher Education Research and Development Survey indicated that NYU was for the first time among that small number of universities with R&D expenditures over $1 billion, and NYU was also named by the National Academy of Inventors as being among the top 100 universities in the world for its patent creation. And, impressively, over the summer NYU Langone Health was named the #1 hospital in New York State and third in the nation. Doubtless, there will be many more accomplishments and honors as the year progresses.

This is to be my final year as president, yet I find myself filled with as great a sense of promise as when I arrived in January 2016. It is a singular honor to be president of a university with such a remarkable academic trajectory and to be a part of a community filled with such wonderful faculty, students, administrators, and staff.

For those who are new to campus — welcome. For those who are returning — I hope you had a lovely and restful summer break. And to all — I wish you every success with your studies, your research, and your work in 2022–2023.

To paraphrase the University’s motto, Perstare et Praestare — let us persevere and excel in 2022-2023, my friends.

Sincerely,
Andrew Hamilton