Our next chapters

May 12, 2023

The expiration yesterday of the federal Public Health Emergency for COVID-19 brought to mind what I wrote to you back in August 2020.
 
Remember that time, when we accompanied our students into the bizarre environment of hybrid-flexible, masked, and socially distanced learning?
 
I explained what I would tell my own students that week: that each of us writes our own distinct story, despite having limited power to control the setting and the plot – like navigating college during a pandemic.
 
I also promised my students that you and I would be with them through the challenges we then faced, supporting and encouraging them even as we wrote them into our own diverse stories. And what stories we have written together over the past three years and more!
 
Today I am writing to tell you that I and you will write our next chapters separately.
 
This week I agreed to become the next Provost of University of Portland, where I will begin on July 1. I am tremendously excited about the opportunity.
 
At this moment, though, my thoughts are of you – and of the twenty (!) years that the Xavier community has been my home.
 
It has been my great privilege to be your colleague, as a faculty member, CTE faculty director, Associate Dean, and – for the past seven years – Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.
 
You have written yourselves into my own story and that of my family. Who I have become and who I am becoming are impossible to imagine without you, without Xavier University, without our Jesuit Catholic mission, and without Cincinnati.
 
And although our stories will diverge from here, please know that I’ll be reading along from my new home in the Pacific Northwest. I am so proud of what we have accomplished together, and I leave with great hope and firm confidence that Xavier University will flourish in the years ahead.
 
I know that you will have questions, including some for which I don’t yet have answers – such as who will step into this role in a month or so. In the days ahead, I encourage you to support one another and those in the Dean’s office as you together write the college’s next chapter.
 
Be well,

David Mengel