Dean’s Letter: Welcome, and Welcome Back!

Dear CALS Family,

As we celebrate the beginning of a new academic year at your College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, I want to welcome first-time CALS students and to welcome back all returning students. I hope you have the opportunity over the next few weeks to explore campus, reconnect with friends, and access the events and support services our Career & Academic Services team offers to help you make the most of your time here, stay on track for graduation, and add hands-on experience to your resume. Through the Learning Lab, our nationally innovative partnership with the SALT Center, CALS students now have access to additional resources to address all learning styles.

I am reminded daily that we are part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are part of an unbroken chain since 1885 – generations of students, faculty and staff investing their knowledge, curiosity, and drive into our university and into their hopes and dreams for themselves and their families.

I am deeply grateful that I am a small part of this legacy. I am so very proud to work alongside our talented faculty and staff who will provide you with the excellent education, experiences, and opportunities you are seeking.

Every one of us knows that you will be juggling many serious commitments in addition to your degree and sometimes this may become overwhelming. Please know we are all committed to helping you overcome your obstacles and achieve your goals.

You are here at a very exciting time!

Many of you are joining us in Tucson, and we welcome our very first cohort of Fashion Industry’s Science & Technology majors. We also welcome our Environmental Science students at our UArizona campus in Yangling, China. Many of you enrolled in online degree programs and you are every bit a CALS Wildcat as anyone.

We will continue to enhance our curriculum so that we are preparing you to be extremely employable, to do jobs that haven’t even been invented yet, and to go out and create new jobs for others.

If it has been a year or two, or more, since your first-year orientation, I want to remind you of our single most important thing:

We have zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind, at any time and in any place. We must tolerate no less than 100% fairness, equity, and inclusion.

Let’s all ensure that your college is always somewhere where you can pursue your academic goals, grow as a person as you want to grow, where you are always without fear of anything, without any discrimination and certainly without any fear for your physical safety. Any and every form of prejudice and discrimination must find no home within our family.

I look forward to seeing you throughout the year ahead.

Have a great fall and Go Cats!

Shane C. Burgess