From the Dean's Desk: The Year in Review

The following letter from Interim Dean J. Thomas Wren was mailed to alumni July 11. 

As my term draws to a close, I want to communicate with all our dear alumni to tell you what a privilege it has been to serve you as interim dean, to bring you up-to-date on another active year in the Jepson School and to give you an indication of our exciting future. 

Serving as interim dean has been the capstone of a career in Jepson that began with the opening of the School in 1992. In the dean’s chair, I have had the opportunity to see the work of our dedicated faculty and staff from a different vantage point, and I now have an even deeper appreciation for the passion and commitment they bring to our mission of educating students and creating cutting-edge scholarship. It has been a rewarding experience. 

This year at Jepson was a banner one. Our classrooms continued to buzz with intellectual vitality as our students grappled with the large, complex and deep questions surrounding leadership. Led by our capable faculty, there was a palpable sense of discovery and fulfillment. Equally important, Jepson students applied their learning about leadership to many different challenges in many sectors. As in previous years when you, today’s alumni, were undergraduates in the Jepson School, the result was the creation of individuals with an understanding of the complexities of leadership and a sense of the moral obligations that accompany it. 

Concrete evidence of our success can be seen in the fact that, yet again, Jepson students garnered more than their share of the honors that were handed out at year’s end. The graduating class of 2007 also accepted an impressive array of employment opportunities in the private sector, admissions to graduate and professional schools and chances to make a difference in government and the not-for-profit world. Again, the Jepson School has produced a new wave of individuals ready to make our world a better place. 

At the same time, the activities of our faculty and staff have continued to stake out the claim that the Jepson School is the center of the field of leadership studies. Faculty members generate a steady stream of cutting-edge books and articles, and numerous scholars and educators trek to the Jepson School to observe our operations and to engage our students and faculty in discourse on central leadership issues.

This year we have drawn upon three different foundation grants to expand the study of leadership across the liberal arts disciplines (to include co-hosting a national conference in California), plan a national ethics symposium and help implement new coursework linking leadership studies to health care.

The 2006-07 Jepson Leadership Forum on “Leadership and Science” brought an impressive array of scholars and policy specialists to campus. The School hosted other unique and important programming, such as a discussion with Virginia governor Timothy Kaine on his first year in office, a panel of college presidents who shared their views on leadership in the educational sector, a panel of museum directors who debated the role of art and cultural institutions in the revitalization of cities and a student-generated-and-organized panel of local leaders who discussed their views on leadership and the challenges they face.

Hopefully this partial listing gives you some sense of the dynamism and intellectual energy that has surrounded us this year. Alumni are always welcome to join us at events such as these, and we will try to keep you apprised of all Jepson activities. 

This brings me to one of our most important initiatives of the year, our efforts to enhance our relationship with our alumni. As you well know, the Jepson School provides an intense and personal experience, and most of our graduates leave here bound closely to their classmates, faculty and the Jepson staff—and to the institution itself. We want to preserve that feeling of connection and reinvigorate the ties between the Jepson School and its alumni.

We have attempted to do so in several ways. One is simply through more and better communication. To facilitate this I appointed an alumni networking committee, from which we have gleaned many insights in informal meetings and conversations. Under the guidance of the School’s new director of alumni relations, Sue Robinson Sain, in February we held a brainstorming meeting that yielded several good ideas.  

One was to share more information about what our various alumni are doing. Cassie Price (who took back her maiden name; you may remember her as Cassie King) has made great strides in this direction with our electronic newsletter @Jepson. In response to alumni requests, with the next edition (out in July) we will begin publishing “class notes” in the electronic newsletter. We will beef up our Web site along these lines as well.   

Another idea stemming from our February meeting was the creation of mentoring relationships between alumni and current Jepson students. The logistics of this are a bit daunting, but Associate Dean Teresa Williams is taking some initial steps in this direction by hosting get-togethers this summer between Jepson alums and current students in New York, Richmond and Washington, D.C. We hope that the relationships thus begun can eventually flower into some mentoring relationships.  We are also exploring the possibility of linking specific alums and current students via e-mail. 

You will find enclosed a form requesting a bit of information about your professional and community service that, if completed and returned to us, will help us move forward on strengthening the network of Jepson graduates. Fellow alum Evan Baum has already created a Jepson site on Facebook, and we are working toward the creation of an easy-to-use career site where alumni and current students can contact one another and perhaps even share such information as employment opportunities and the like. We will keep you informed of our progress in this regard.           

Please make a special note concerning our upcoming 15th anniversary celebration. On Sunday, September 9, we will host a reception, dinner and dessert bar to which you will be invited as our guest. Not only will it be a celebration of fifteen years of the Jepson School, but it will also serve as an introduction to new dean Sandra Peart and new president Edward Ayers. We hope to seat returning alumni at class tables, so I encourage you to plan to come to toast Jepson, see former classmates and meet our new leaders. 

This brings me to my concluding theme: the future at Jepson. Nothing could be brighter. Everything is coming together: we enroll the best students on campus; have a world-class teaching and research faculty; a caring and hard-working staff; new, visionary leadership; and a strong alumni base. All is in place for the Jepson School to “take off” and reach new heights. I hope you will join us on this trajectory: together, we can achieve whatever we wish! 

On a personal note, please keep in touch. Just as “all politics are local,” so too all links to former students of the Jepson School are personal relationships. I look forward to many more years of interacting with an expanding pool of individuals who have been touched by the Jepson School experience. 

With warm regards, 

J. Thomas Wren

Interim Dean