Message to the Campus Community: Welcome Back

September 04, 2020 BK LI

I am honored to be your president at a time like this — maybe the most challenging time in the history of our College — and proud to be a part of this journey with all of you. Next week, we will open our doors to a new class of students, and reopen our doors to our returning students and faculty, as we begin the fall 2020 semester. I am so excited to welcome you all!

SJC administration and staff, along with our COVID Response Team, have been diligently working to safely reopen our doors for the new academic year, and I am very pleased to say that we have taken many steps and precautions to combat the spread of COVID-19 in our College community. Our reopening website highlights many of the important details you will need to know about the changes taking place at St. Joseph’s College this fall. I encourage you to check back often for new updates as our plans, along with the current climate, continue to change on a day-to-day basis.

This academic year will look very different from years past. Many of you will attend classes remotely. For those of you joining us in person this fall, you will see your SJC family having their temperatures checked, wearing masks and socially distancing as you walk through the halls and sit in classrooms on our beautiful campuses in Brooklyn and Patchogue. We do this to not only protect ourselves, but to protect each other. Because that is what it means to be part of this incredible family. So, while this may be the new normal … for now, I look forward to the time when I am able to see all of your smiling faces again.

St. Joseph’s College is, indeed, a very special place. We are a community dedicated to transforming the world around us for the better. We do this by living the College’s mission: Esse non videri — “To be, not to seem.” And we do this by embracing the College’s values: The value of service, to reach out to other people, which allows us to overcome the darkness. The value of intellectual rigor, of giving yourself to your academic programs that will shape your lives. The value of spiritual depth, of trying to understand yourself better, and those around you. You are embarking on a journey at St. Joseph’s that will provide you with a foundation built on these core values — values that will enable you to face the opportunities and difficulties inherent to the human condition. Values that are especially important to us during the incredibly challenging times we are living in.

Just as the Sisters of St. Joseph — who founded this school more than 100 years ago — have risen and overcome many challenges to create an institution that is unique and special, we, too, will rise above our current challenges in order to move the institution forward and begin anew. Because we are resilient, and that is what it means to be part of the SJC family.