Dear Alumni,

Visiting our campus from one end to the other to speak with faculty, staff, and students, traveling the world to meet with members of our global alumni community, and working closely with AUP's Board of Trustees, I have now come to the end of my initiatory “walkabout” and with it the first few months of my presidency. I want to begin by thanking the large numbers of you who wrote to offer congratulations and support when I took office in late October, and the many alumni I have seen on the road since for sharing with me your hopes and dreams for our University. It has been of enormous value to me to hear your suggestions, to get a sense of what was most important in your own AUP experience, and to synthesize the many ideas that came forth in these gatherings. This letter will be the first in a series that I will be sending out to the AUP alumni community.

As you can imagine, AUP is facing many of the same issues as our peer institutions worldwide. In addition to the financial crisis, the continuing weakness of the dollar has caused us to rethink our strategies even as we reaffirmed our mission to educate students from all national, cultural, linguistic and educational backgrounds. We have thus opened several new mission-aligned programs to bring in more of our kind of student. Next fall will see the launch of an English for University Studies Program and two new Master’s degrees, one in Cross Cultural and Sustainable Business Management and one in Cultural Translation. All three have attracted a large number of applicants and interest. AUP also continues to be vigilant and rigorous in the management of its operations while, at the same time, keeping an eye out for opportunities that the shifting financial climate presents.

Such a singular opportunity, stemming from the recent fall of Parisian real estate prices, presented itself this winter, and in early March the University signed a promesse de vente to purchase the Combes building, a 1,500 square meter space behind the American Church that we have been renting since 1997. This elegant 19th century building houses just under half of AUP’s classrooms, provides office space for our three largest academic departments and is home to AUP’s art gallery. This is the first important step in a multi-year plan for the refreshment, the renewal and the expansion of our campus in the 7th arrondissement. For a tuition-driven institution such as ours, the ownership of our campus buildings is essential in ensuring AUP’s perpetuity. We are currently working with an American architectural firm to design a unified, though distributed, urban campus in the quartier of our founding—we will have much more to share with you about our campus plan in the months ahead.

AUP is also increasingly focusing on key partnerships to help us expand and diversify our student body, to share expertise and experience with like institutions, and to leverage our smaller size through the advantages of linking to a larger network. Just last week, AUP came to an agreement with the State of Kuwait to create a partnership for a new model of global higher education. Bringing top Kuwaiti scholarship students, both undergraduate and graduate, to AUP, the agreement will provide for a flow of students, strengthening of both teaching and research ties between the State of Kuwait and the University, and future exchanges, conferences, and projects of mutual interest. This is a first important step in what we expect to be a long and mutually beneficial partnership.

As former Provost and now President, I will continue to champion academic excellence, innovative curricula and pedagogies, and faculty research. And, as we all know, when you put that together in our classrooms—where students from up to 15 different nationalities come together—some very special alchemy takes place, as learning becomes inflected by intercultural dialogue and debate. I am committed to developing and deepening the signature AUP learning experience as we all know and value it, and I look forward to partnering with alumni in this effort.

Please send me your reactions and responses at alumni@aup.edu. I look forward to receiving your input and suggestions as we take AUP forward into its second half century.

My warmest regards to each of you,

Celeste Schenck

President

president@aup.fr