 Okay, so first off, I'd like to welcome everyone, and I have to tell you that I've only been at Roger Williams a little while, and this is actually my first alumni event on campus, and I am gratified to say that even throughout the whole COVID reality, the personalities, the characteristic and the warmth of this community has come through time and time again. And my name is Amy Berkeley, and I'm the Vice President of Institutional Advancement. I am lucky enough to have been brought by our new president, well, actually, two and a half years. Oh yeah, President Mialis, with whom I worked at the Museum of Science. And as I said, this is my first alumni weekend, but the experience that I've had here, even though the majority of it has been through COVID, has resonated with a warmth and a continuity of community that is, to me, very touching. And one of our trustees, Bill Garrity, I don't know what year Bill Garrity graduated, but he came to Yanis and to my office and said, I cannot believe what this institution has done throughout COVID. I not only have we maintained a 0.3% positive, no faculty member came down with COVID in the spring semester. Our students have allowed us to stay open in a way that has not only shown respect for the institution, but respect for each other. And I hadn't really thought of it that way. And he said, I think we need to make a statement. We need to do something that talks about what this community did for each other and what this community did to ensure that our students are continuing their academic journey. And so it's my great pleasure to introduce a piece that he inspired, he paid for, and has actually helped us raise a lot of money to mitigate all the COVID costs for the institution. So when the students came back in the fall, it was a bittersweet situation because it was exciting to see life back on campus. It's amazing that the wildlife actually had taken over campus. We had the foxes of pups running around campus and deer and wild turkeys because there was nobody around. And it was, although I liked seeing the animals whenever I would go to my office, it was better to see the students coming back. The bitter part of it was that you couldn't see people's smiles. I'm very happy that Roger decided to stay open. It was very hard to concentrate on with my classes if everything was online. Having the opportunity to come back to campus and having not only the dorm open but having the lab setting open was really crucial to my education here at Roger Williams. Not to be to be sappy or cliche or anything, but the ability to be able to be here my senior year and finish off is incredible. Whether you're an undergrad or law school, like being in person is just, it's better to build that community but also to be able to put in your best work, whether it's in the classroom on the field or in the clubs and really getting that full experience. I think it's really important to talk about how great the reopening Roger plan was and how amazing it was that we were able to stay on campus for the whole year. And I know a lot of schools, like a lot of my friends from high school, their schools sent them home halfway through first semester. They didn't go back second semester. And just the fact that we were able to be here for so long means so much. Some of the other institutions around us did not want to take a risk to invest in testing and technology. I was in constant communication with presidents from around the state and around the country and I realized we're one of the best schools in the country for dealing with this. I think the biggest difference between Roger Williams and other schools was their testing protocols and just having us test twice a week, sometimes as athletes we tested three times a week. I think that made the biggest difference in the amount of stuff that we still had freedoms to do. Walking into the COVID testing, a lot of times I would see my coach or a lot of my professors actually administering the test so it was even a nice little catch up with them. But it was really nice seeing the community band together and them giving their extra time and efforts to help us. Half of my friends weren't even going to college after high school in person. They were all doing it online. And that just, it kind of broke my heart after seeing like how different of an experience they're gonna have. I just think it's us as Roger Williams University, faculty, staff, students, we're passionate about being here. We're passionate about what we do. And staying home was just not an option. We were ready to make the sacrifice and continue to work to make sure that we were going to thrive and succeed here on campus. I think just in general, just seeing what has happened, this school definitely has like a bright future. And I know like just going forward, we're gonna see just how amazing the school is and how they can just like quickly act on things. Whenever there's a situation, the school is willing to like think of solutions. What I keep telling my senior team is if we could go through this, we could go through anything. For this unfortunate period, I believe built some confidence in us that we can handle a lot of difficult tasks and difficult programs. So as we move into the next steps of the university through strategic planning, we are very much not only equipped to make significant positive changes, but also would be confident throughout the process. So hopefully we're nearing the end of this crisis. And I feel so grateful to everybody in this community, the students, the faculty, the staff of their amazing efforts to keep us going and have a great ending. Go Hawks! While I love the students on that video, I think I love Yannis more, go Hawks! So Yannis and I are both, all of us, are honored to be at Roger Williams to build on this foundation. And I'd love to invite Yannis up because I think he has some big plans, so. Thank you all, and it's so wonderful to see alums and smiles, no masks, it is wonderful. I officially joined the university in August of 2019. And we had grand plans for strategic planning, grand plans of re-engaging with alums, grand plans for traveling and starting the alum clubs throughout the country, boom! March came and it all fell through and we're so happy to start again and we're in full force moving forward. There are lots of challenging things that happened throughout this crisis, but on the other hand, this crisis showed, as I said on the video, that we are a very strong community. It's amazing how the faculty and the administration and the students and the staff all came together to make this amazing thing happen and we're truly one of the best universities in the country of how we handle the situation. And because we went through this hard time, together, we have built much stronger relationships between faculty administration and students. We're a much stronger family now, which is very important as we move forward into transforming the university. The faculty and staff and students also work together along with the board to create a new strategy for the future, which we're going to roll out slowly and it's going to involve much more personal attention to students and Brian is gonna talk more about it after me, we're going to specialize on some excellence we have at the university and combine excellence from different schools to move forward within the disciplinary education. And as you know, yes, we can have lots of plans, but it's the people that make it all happen. And you, as alums, are going to be great partners. From what I understand, alums have not been at the focus of the university in the past, but this is all going away and alums are going to be partners in helping us build the future, helping us mentor students, helping us make this awesome university from good to awesome and great. So thank you for coming tonight. Good evening, everyone. I'm Brian Williams, Chief of Staff and no relation to Roger Williams, I've looked. And I've been at the university for four years. I came in as Vice President for Enrollment under President Farrish, and then with the transition, Yanis pulled me into be his Chief of Staff. Right before dinner, I think I want to talk a little bit to talk about our strategic plan, but talk about it in terms of how Yanis talks about food is having all of the right ingredients at Roger Williams and just to want to share a little bit of the momentum that we're creating coming out of the pandemic and how we put all of our energies of campus into the present and staying open through a challenging time, but now it's about taking all that energy and putting it towards building an amazing future for the university. So the degree that you have will value and go up through all the energy and what we need to do as a campus together. In that sense of right ingredients, what I want to share is thinking about our schools of study. We have a lot of amazing programs at the university, but the strength of adding them together means even that much more for our students and for the world that our students are going to enter. A key example of that we have with us tonight, a large contingent from our School of Architecture, but I wanted to call out, but through a challenging year and an unexpected passing and death of one of our deans of our schools of engineering construction management, Dean Steve White served as sort of a double dean in his leadership through this year, and what that gains us as a leadership team in Steve is to see the entire design and build spectrum, to think from design and architecture all the way through to construction. And when we talk about centers of excellence on the academic side and a new provost and deans and a lot of energy for our faculty, we start thinking about real estate. We start listening to our alumni about different partnerships and skills that our students need to enter the world. Through listening sessions with boards of advisors and alumni, those sessions have had us here that a lot of construction projects that are happening are laboratories and lab management and construction managers saying we don't have enough scientists on our staff to design the right lab facilities. We need our construction managers to understand science. So the lines between majors and schools and putting right ingredients together is how the university is really moving right now in exciting ways. And you'll see this idea of centers and how they move really coming together with Yanis's leadership and the provost over the years ahead. But the most powerful combination and right ingredients mixing together for us is students and alumni. The alumni and the experience you've had mentoring our students, helping them see career paths, helping think of the skills they need to be job ready the day that they leave this campus and then coming back to reunion and continuing to learn new skills, moving to a new city and connecting with the alumni of Roger Williams as you move on through different pathways through your lives and helping others and you continuing to help and be helped by others as you move through your career paths and how we can be a partner and truly a lifelong partner in that. So these relationships of building a degree, putting faculty and students and staff together is just an energy and a momentum that is really exciting for us to all see and be a part of. And we're all here today to listen to you to have discussions. If some of these things spark ideas for where Roger Williams should head next, Giannis will say that's great. Talk to Brian, that's why I'm here as well. And thank you for being here. I hope you're wonderfully connecting and reconnecting and making new partnerships and friends while you're here and hope you enjoy the rest of the evening. Thanks so much. Hi everyone, I'm the last one, I promise. So just for those that I haven't spoken to during the weekend, I'm Megan Hansen, Senior Director of Alumni Relations. I just want to give a final thank you for joining us this weekend. It's been so great to see all of your faces. And I know I've heard from many of you that you're happy we had something in person. And we are too, honestly. This is what it's all about. Coming together to be in community together and having our reunion classes here has really been exciting and sort of gave us some new energy because this last year definitely has been challenging. So seeing you here has definitely given us a renewed energy for sure. And earlier you heard me speak about how reunions are important because we can celebrate our alumni accomplishments and be in community. And so I just wanted to give one last mention to our honorees that we congratulated earlier today. Omar Barr, our Young Achievement Award and then our two Spirit Awards to Jamie Warner and Mac Doyle. Congratulations again. And I know you've heard the theme of the weekend which is that great things are happening here at Roger Williams and it really does apply to our alums. And so as we develop this future together, definitely reach out. We're always happy to talk about the opportunities but also you'll be hearing more from us and we look forward to working together down the road and today and tomorrow. So with that, we are gonna start dinner but we're gonna call up tables so we don't have a mass rush. So if you're just a little patient, catering is gonna come around to welcome you to join and enjoy dinner and thank you again for a great weekend.