Dear Siena Community,

Thank you to everyone who attended our Fall Community Town Hall and took the time to share questions and feedback. I also want to thank the more than 150 members of our community who participated in the strategic planning interactive workshops that followed. Over two days, the Strategic Planning Committee collected hundreds of ideas and suggestions that will help inform the next phase of our work. Your engagement matters, and I appreciate your willingness to help shape Siena's future.

At the Town Hall, we introduced two important pieces of our vision for the future: the new Siena Guarantee and the four strategic drivers that will guide our next strategic plan. While they are connected, they serve different purposes.

The five commitments in the Guarantee will help us stand out in an increasingly crowded and competitive higher education market. The four drivers – Connect, Ignite, Become, and Thrive – represent how we get there. They provide a framework for aligning our work and ensuring that everyone across the University has a role in advancing our mission.

While the Guarantee is designed to highlight Siena to prospective families, as I explained at the Town Hall, its true foundation is internal. More than anything, this initiative is my vote of confidence in all of you. We can make such a bold promise only because of the dedication, care, and Franciscan values demonstrated daily across our entire campus, from student life and our faculty to our friars, support teams, athletics, advancement, enrollment and all community members.

Other institutions might try to copy our program commitments, but they can never replicate our people, our culture, or our Franciscan identity. As we look ahead, our strategic drivers will give us the roadmap to back up these assurances and invest strategically, helping us work more collaboratively, build greater consistency, and position Siena so that prospective students move from asking whether they should apply to actively striving to be here.

We know that experiential learning, career preparation, and meaningful career outcomes are areas where Siena can lead, and we have the people, the programs, and the track record to stand behind that commitment. The Guarantee gives us an opportunity to bring those strengths together in a way that is compelling and difficult for other institutions to replicate.

There are, of course, many details still being worked through. We are approaching implementation thoughtfully and deliberately, with significant attention to the operational and financial considerations involved. 

The feedback from our Town Hall survey showed broad community support, with a majority agreeing that the elements of the Guarantee will successfully differentiate Siena in a competitive market. At the same time, the survey and workshops surfaced very real, legitimate questions regarding logistics, workload, and long-term financial modeling.

To address those exact areas we will be holding a Community Forum focusing on the details behind the guarantee on Monday, November 23 during free period. An invitation with RSVP will be sent tomorrow. At that event, you will learn more about the specifics of the Guarantee and the extensive financial modeling we have done to carefully estimate our risk exposure alongside our potential return on investment. We will also discuss the scalable investments we have explored and may need to make over the course of our strategic plan to support this work. 

We have also taken an important step in how we will introduce this initiative to the marketplace with the goal of impacting this year’s recruiting cycle. After interviewing five external firms, we selected a strategic partner last week to help us develop and roll out the Guarantee. This is about much more than a marketing campaign. It is about brand positioning and establishing a clear, compelling identity for Siena in the minds of our core audiences. Getting that right is critically important.

While much of our recent conversation has focused on the Guarantee, I don't want the important work of strategic planning to get lost in that discussion.

The four drivers provide a framework, but it is the ideas, actions, and contributions of our community that will bring them to life. The Strategic Planning Committee now has hundreds of ideas gathered through the interactive workshops to consider as it develops proposed actions. This is an opportunity to think creatively about how we work together and how we can make the greatest impact on our students and the future of Siena.

I encourage everyone to continue following our progress through the Siena In Focus website. The site brings together important University updates, announcements, resources, and information about our strategic planning efforts. It is a great place to stay informed as these initiatives continue to take shape.

Finally, this past Saturday, we welcomed more than 675 prospective students and their families to our second Fall Open House. It marked the second largest Open House in Siena's history, following the fourth largest in October. That is an extraordinary accomplishment, and it is a testament to the work of so many people across campus.

Thank you to everyone who helped make these events successful. These programs require a tremendous amount of coordination and collaboration, and I am grateful for everyone's contributions. I had the opportunity to meet many of these students and families firsthand. Because of the great work done, numerous prospective students made the decision this past Saturday that their future goes through Siena. Think about that for a moment. A student who may have arrived feeling overwhelmed by choices, concerned about the cost of college, and uncertain about what comes next suddenly has a moment of clarity: ‘This is where I belong. This is my future home.’ That's a wonderful moment. And it's why the work we do every day matters. 

As we look ahead, I also hope you will join us for our next Community Conversation on Thursday, November 19, featuring Ann Dejnozka, Vice President of Development and Alumni Engagement. These conversations are another opportunity to hear directly from our leadership team and engage in the important work happening across the University.

Thank you for everything you do for Siena. I am excited about our future, and I am excited to continue building it alongside all of you.

Peace and All Good,

Chuck