Dedicated students, distinguished colleagues and dear friends,

Happy Friday!

The ongoing university disruptions nationwide have caused uncertainties across our campus, not unlike many other institutions. As a result, there are expressed and unexpressed concerns in the workplace that need to be addressed or at least acknowledged. To this end, I called an all-hands meeting for us to come together and share our thoughts, concerns, hopes and aspirations. As you can imagine, people were worried about the impact of national priority shifts on their work. There were suggestions on how we, as a university, should move forward. Reacting to these suggestions, there were agreements and disagreements about tactics and approaches to addressing disruptions, both internal to the university and broader.

The feeling in the room was “Where is the certainty?” Individual faculty and staff asked for ideas to get to the other side of the rapid changes that have disrupted their scholarly and research activities. “How can we put all of this behind us? And soon!” The truth, in my view, is that we don’t yet know for how long the disruptions will continue before academic life is back to “normal,” albeit the new reformed normal. For now, the only constant is change as ambiguity abounds! The feeling and the sense of the room reminded me of early 2020 at the onset of the COVID pandemic. I vividly remember how in our virtual townhalls we were looking for clarity in ambiguity. But now, like then, we need to lean into our fortitude, pause to reflect and resist feelings of despair.

I highlighted our lasting successes, potential challenges and possible vulnerabilities. I reminded us that, as an institute of technology, our engineering and science educational and research programs map directly onto the macro national agendas, regardless of political directions and redirections. I highlighted that our Protoplex and Manufacture Missouri Ecosystem initiative are already a part of the solution for the national aspirations of onboarding manufacturing. Clearly our Critical Minerals and Materials for Advanced Energy Tech Hub will provide critical contributions to the national critical mineral challenges. Our new Bioplex programs will address some of the most pressing technological needs at the intersection of engineering and medicine. Our nationally recognized experiential learning-based engineering and science education will continue to provide career-ready engineers and scientists for the growing needs of American industry. We will continue to provide high-technology human resource needs ranging from traditional engineering to extreme engineering, from macro to micro technologies, from bio to enviro sciences, and from geo to spatial domains.

Given the nature of the meeting, it was natural to expect significant diversity of thoughts, opinions and expressions, and, perhaps more importantly, differing suggestions on how the university should move forward. The meeting was intended to provide an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and suggestions of how to deal with disruptions. All the while, we maintained an atmosphere of institutional neutrality to ensure open dialog, debate and disagreement.

To all my colleagues, I say thank you for your participation, openness and understanding. I appreciate the conversations as I repeat my timeworn advice that in times of adversity, the best that we can do is to buckle down and do the best job that we can. Although going through the turbulence, things might feel different – in fact, they are and will continue to feel different – I assure you that your work, now as always, will remain impactful. I also assure you that, at some point, the fog of uncertainty will lift, and then we will be glad we continued to hammer away and delivered on our mission.

Warmly,

-Mo.

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Mohammad Dehghani, PhD
Chancellor
mo@mst.edu | 573-341-4116

206 Parker Hall, 300 West 13th Street, Rolla, MO 65409-0910
chancellor.mst.edu