From the President’s Desk

The cover of this issue of EASTERN Magazine highlights the strength of our University. In times of plenty and in times of challenge, Eastern’s people have come together as a community. Since our beginnings 132 years ago, Eastern has been a place where students, faculty and staff work together and support each other. We continue to be a campus of familiar faces, where faculty know students by their first names and guests feel at home. Students, faculty and staff also count alumni, parents and the local Willimantic community as members of this special bond.

During the past two years of COVID, the relationships built and maintained on our campus have never been more important. Throughout the pandemic, Eastern students, faculty and staff have demonstrated their resilience, ingenuity and continued commitment to excellence. This past fall, we learned that Eastern was again ranked #1 in New England among public regional universities by U.S. News & World Report — the third year in a row! We were also ranked #1 in New England as a “Best Value” college for the quality of our academics compared to our costs. Our athletes continued to shine on and off the playing field, winning the Little East Conference Commissioner’s Cup for the fourth year in a row for on-field performance; taking home the LEC’s Presidents’ Cup a record sixth time for overall academic performance; and witnessing three Eastern students become national Academic All Americans. Go Warriors!

Our faculty and students also found ways to continue to engage their studies, ranging from hosting the 20^th, 21^st and 22^nd CREATE conferences for undergraduate research on our website, to performing musical concerts virtually. We mastered the intricacies of WebEx, Zoom and Microsoft Teams.  In addition to the expanded use of technology, we have discovered during COVID will no doubt inform our curriculum in some way in the future.

Even so, the campus community looks forward to a return to more normalcy in the coming months.  In the meantime, we continue to focus on providing our students with an outstanding liberal arts education — grounded by experiential learning — that prepares them for rewarding professional careers and engaged private lives as citizens contributing to their communities.

As always, this issue of EASTERN Magazine has interesting stories about the Eastern community, ranging from campus activities to alumni accomplishments. We celebrated our 15^th consecutive Day of Giving luncheon in support of the local community. We named the Science Building in honor of the late David G. Carter Sr. You will also read about the exploits of young alumni in STEM careers, as well as news of the latest academic programs at Eastern. The generosity of our donors is also documented in several stories.  Read on . . . and thank you for being a member of the Eastern community. Our big “family” continues to thrive because of you!

Elsa M. Núñez

President