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Dear Faculty, Students and Staff, It has been more than two years since a universitywide committee began working on a comprehensive self-study of Johns Hopkins in preparation for its decennial reaccreditation evaluation. We are delighted to share the final report, a sweeping work that tells the story of one integrated university marshaling its distributed strengths to advance a common mission of discovery, research...

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community, More than 20 years ago, a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers participated in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an effort to assemble a photographic record of the night sky. The image data collected over the next eight years numbered hundreds of millions of objects and dwarfed the typical volume of data collected at that time. It was the beginning of a new era of scientific...

Dear Faculty, Students and Staff, This summer, I was touched by two acts of kindness by Johns Hopkins employees – not as a president, but as a father and spouse. Let me explain. In the first instance, my daughter, Ally, was driving around campus in her grandfather’s hand-me-down car when she misjudged a turn, hit the curb and blew a tire. As Ally cursed her bad luck – not for blowing the tire but for forgetting to charge...

Dear Faculty, Staff, and Students: From its earliest days, Johns Hopkins has been a place of remarkable, organic collaboration. The driving vision of our scholars and the commitment of our staff historically have lifted our work above and across disciplinary silos. At times, though – to outsiders and perhaps even to ourselves – we don’t project a shared identity or, more important, a shared set of values. That’s...

Dear Students, Faculty and Staff, On Saturday, before the region began feeling the effects of Hurricane Sandy, nearly 1,000 of you turned out for the President’s Day of Service, across Baltimore and beyond. Together, we planted trees and gardens, helped to refurbish buildings and even led workshops for young dance students. For the first time, alumni chapters in four cities also took part in the day, making it a national...

Dear members of the Johns Hopkins and Homewood communities, Three years ago, in my first address to The Johns Hopkins University community, I spoke of a great university that is not only at Baltimore or in Baltimore, but truly and proudly of Baltimore. The campuses of Johns Hopkins and their surrounding communities are and will forever be inextricably linked. Put simply, we share with our neighbors an interest in safer...

Dear Faculty, Students and Staff, Two weeks ago, my wife, Joanne, and I officially became empty nesters after dropping our fourth child off for her first year of college. In the weeks prior, my daughter packed up her room, embarked on countless forays to Bed, Bath & Beyond for the “essentials” of dorm life, and spent one summer night after another saying goodbye to her friends as they set out in separate directions....

Dear Faculty, Students and Staff, As I grew up in Toronto, every year, the final weeks of August were marked by the Canadian National Exhibition, a three-week extravaganza of rides, shows and tooth-decaying delights that ended on Labour Day (translation for non-Canadians: Labor Day). As kids, we would dare each other onto progressively bigger, more death-defying roller coasters, and fight with our parents to stay...

Dear Faculty and Staff Members and Students: Johns Hopkins is not just in Baltimore, but also proudly from Baltimore and fiercely devoted to the city’s health and success. You demonstrate that devotion every day. You demonstrate it in the work you do in the community. You demonstrate it in the programs you offer its citizens. You demonstrate it in the unequaled patient care and other services you provide. You demonstrate...

Dear Faculty, Students and Staff, Last month, we marked the passing of Baltimore’s former mayor, William Donald Schaefer. Time and again, those memorializing his life noted his gut-level belief in this city, his tireless vision of a Baltimore that was always more than – better than – it was at that moment. That vision, as I have come to learn, is shared by many Baltimoreans. It marks the spirit of optimism and the...