As we approach the end of 2024, I’m grateful to be able to take this moment to reflect on the year and our shared experiences as a University community. This season is a time for gratitude, joy, and peace —things that I wish for all of us in the coming weeks.
With a new year on the horizon, it’s also a good time to think about what we can each do to make this wish a reality. It begins with listening more deeply to one another with a true openness to seeing the world from a different perspective. And then asking ourselves, how, in a world that feels increasingly fractured, can we reaffirm the values that we hold most deeply, while also working constructively to find common ground? Both are essential to cultivating the courageous leadership that will be so necessary for building a better future.
I have great confidence in our ability to meet those challenges when I look at the incredible achievements of our UW community, like Professor David Baker’s groundbreaking working in protein design, which earned this year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work, like so much of the scholarship, teaching, research and innovation at the UW, is a testament to the promise and power of bringing together different disciplines and areas of knowledge in new and novel ways. It is by building interdisciplinary teams of faculty, staff and students to translate these new ways of knowing and understanding into solutions and discoveries that we not only have the potential to change the world for the better, but are already doing so in countless ways.
Uncertainty and tension can catalyze creativity, innovation, and constructive change as well as stress and anxiety. I encourage all of us to take the time to care for ourselves and for each other. This is a season to be gentle with ourselves, to seek the support we need, and to extend that same care to our colleagues and peers.
I wish you all a happy holiday season filled with renewal, joy and the connections that sustain us. May the new year bring us all the opportunity to continue our shared work with energy and purpose. Thank you for all that you do for the University of Washington. I look forward to what we will accomplish in the year ahead.