This fall has been a season of renewal for me, as I begin my tenure as UVM president. I’ve already begun meeting faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends, and I’m so grateful for the welcome I’ve had from the members of the university community, and from people across Vermont.

My message to all I’ve met has led with how proud and fortunate I am to lead a land-grant university: a brilliant innovation, the brainchild of Vermont’s own Justin Morrill, that opens access to education to all people, giving them the opportunity to bring their talents to the world–an idea that transformed this country. It continues to hold our best hope today, particularly when higher education and our nation are facing such real and profound challenges.

You can read in this issue a bit about my own personal journey. As a first-generation graduate from a rural community, I’ve experienced the power of education to transform lives. My passion and commitment are to ensure that we can change people’s lives so they can change the world, whether that’s in their hometown or across the globe.

We do that at UVM in part by creating new knowledge through our extraordinary research enterprise, driven by a faculty dedicated to innovation and commitment to community. Our research is critical to the future. I know UVM is ready to meet the challenges research enterprises face today with creativity and insight.

One of the most important efforts underway is our broad, campus-wide work to craft the university’s new strategic plan. A committee of more than 30 members, with broad representation from across the university—including elected faculty members from each college and school, staff from throughout our academic and administrative units, student representatives, members of our governance groups, our valued alumni, and the community—is engaged in this work right now, with a goal of a finished plan by early in the spring semester. This is an important step for our community–an opportunity for us to come together, guided by our institution’s Our Common Ground values,  and create a vision for the future of UVM.

A crucial challenge today for universities and, indeed, for our broader society, involves the problems affecting young men, particularly their participation in higher education, and the benefits that flow from that. This issue details the crucial work that faculty and staff at UVM are performing in this area, and points to some hopeful outcomes.

When I think of the more than 130,000 UVM alumni who are out in the world right now, making a difference in thousands of ways each day, I’m awed by the power of this institution. You can read here the story of three alums who, working together over the years, built the Catamount Trail, a ski path that connects the state from top to bottom and has added another dimension to Vermont’s important winter recreation industry.

It seems to me that the term “Catamount Trail” could be an appropriate descriptor for so much of the good work that’s done by the faculty, students, staff, and alumni of this university. It’s a path on which I’m happy to add my footprints.