Welcome Back!

August 25, 2025

Dear Pitzer Community,

Welcome to a new academic year at Pitzer! It’s wonderful to see our campus alive with energy and purpose as students, faculty, and staff have all returned. Whether you’re joining us for the first time, returning after the summer, or continuing after working through the summer, I’m grateful to share in this moment of renewal with you.

Since its founding in the 1960s, Pitzer has embraced values that remain urgently relevant and important today: social responsibility, intercultural understanding, interdisciplinary learning, student engagement, and environmental sustainability. These values do more than guide us; they challenge us to lead with courage and creativity as we navigate a complex world. Together, we have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to engage across differences with respect, to debate ideas without resorting to personal attacks, and to keep our shared educational mission at the center of our work. Living out our core and community values requires intentionality, consistency, and, above all, collective effort. To advance that mission and those values even further, this semester we will be completing our process of strategic visioning, in which we chart a path to an even brighter future. Stay tuned for more details.

The arrival of the fall semester always feels like a fresh beginning. Reflecting on our observations of activities on campus this past week, Isabelle and I were struck by the excitement in the air—new students discovering the Mounds, returning students embracing friends and mentors, and abundant moments of connection that embody the Pitzer spirit of belonging. This promises to be a year filled with possibility and growth, as embodied beautifully in this video of new students being welcomed into the Pitzer community during orientation.

None of this would be possible without the care and dedication of so many of you who prepared our campus and supported our community through the summer months. Thank you all for ensuring we are ready to launch into the year ahead.

Here’s to a year of discovery, collaboration, and impact, true to Pitzer’s enduring mission.

Provida Futuri,

Strom C. Thacker
President