Given all these stress producers, our department theoretically should find itself very ill. The fact that our department is not ill is real testimony to the community that we all have built. I like to play with that etymology by asserting that a community is a group of people who change together. And that's what we're doing as a department. The word communication is thought to derive from those same two roots.
Communication is what lets communities change, and what keeps communities together as they change.
So I'd like to take this opportunity to communicate just some of my appreciation of others in the department, and then to give the rest of you the chance to do the same. First, I thank Cynthia and Genise for the extra work they're having to do in Wanda's absence. I want to thank Mary for her continuing service, not just as acting director of writing, but as an important presence for hundreds of students, staff, and faculty each week. Genise, for example, tells me that she could not do her job, in Wanda's absence, without Mary's help. I also want to thank Jane for her skillful coordination of a very complex search and screen process.