Enhancing and Transforming Lehigh's
Intellectual Footprint
Welcome from President Gast
The great Lehigh University campus community has the opportunity to apply our best thinking to how Lehigh will contribute the next generation of problem solvers and the next generation of new ideas to the world's challenges. With the help of our faculty and staff, this will be an important transformation following Lehigh's founding vision and our heritage of important changes.
Lehigh University has made several important transformations in its recent history while remaining true to its founding vision. The transformation from an all-male to a co-educational institution in 1971 was a significant change without which Lehigh would not have thrived. In 1986 Lehigh University doubled its size with the purchase of the 800-acre Mountaintop Campus. In 1988, Lehigh undertook another bold expansion of its physical footprint by moving the football stadium to the Murray H. Goodman Campus and building a business college and arts center on the Asa Packer Campus. This expansion of our physical footprint transformed the university in ways that continue to amplify as our business college continues to excel and our arts program has become a centerpiece of Lehigh educational and community life.
Now is the time for Lehigh to embark on another bold transformation, this time enhancing our intellectual footprint. We have an opportunity to change Lehigh University for the coming decades by aggressively taking on an ambitious plan to transform our programs and our campus community. We have an opportunity to amplify the things that make us distinctive.
To contribute to these grand challenges we must turn to our core purpose: to contribute to society by creating and disseminating knowledge through our graduates and new knowledge. This is Lehigh's "intellectual footprint," our graduates and the knowledge we create. We strive to define how, in the coming decade, we will enhance our contribution and broader impact to society; not only domestically, but globally. We must determine how we will have the best faculty and staff to inspire and prepare students to tackle big problems. We must determine how we will have the best faculty and staff to produce the new ideas from research and graduate programs to provide the world with solutions to big problems.
A transformation of this importance requires an inclusive process engaging everyone in our campus community. There are several ways you can be involved depending on the amount of time you are able to contribute.
Those who participate in this strategic thinking process will interact with colleagues from across the university, better understand university operations and networks, and learn energizing and efficient approaches to setting goals for the whole university. I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to help shape the trajectories of the university for decades to come.
Alice P. Gast
