August 23, 2021
Dear Students—
Welcome, and welcome back, to IU Bloomington for the start of a new academic year.
To those of you who are new to Bloomington or living away from home for the first time, welcome to your new home on our beautiful campus.
To those whose IU experience has taken place during a global pandemic, welcome to the campus that we have been waiting so patiently for you to truly experience—a campus known for its traditions and spirit.
And to those who experienced life in this special place before March 2020, when the whole world seemed to shut down during the COVID pandemic—welcome back to the place that we hope you will always consider your second home.
To all Hoosiers, we are thrilled to have you with us.
This will be an exciting year. It is our first fall with Pamela Whitten, IU’s 19th president and the first woman in our university’s history to hold this position. And it is my first fall as interim provost of IU's flagship Bloomington campus, though I have been an IU Bloomington faculty member since 1998 as a law professor in the Maurer School of Law.
You are joining the IU community at the dawn of IU's third century. We celebrated our bicentennial in 2020, and this is the first fully in-person academic year since then. At IU Bloomington, we are rededicating ourselves to our core purposes—to create, disseminate, preserve, and apply knowledge—while also reshaping and reimagining what we can be as a university moving forward.
Our return to campus signals a renewal of our mission to offer an excellent education to students of vastly different backgrounds from all over the world who meet here as equals, as Hoosiers. At IU, you will study with internationally renowned scholars, and you will be supported every step of the way by staff members who help to ensure your well-being and success. Your intellectual journey will also be shaped and guided by your peers, whose unique backgrounds, interests, and knowledge will certainly contribute to your personal growth and help you realize your dreams as part of a vibrant community.
We are preparing for the future through new, innovative programs designed to fulfill your interests, to pique your curiosity, and to ensure your success now and after you graduate; an Antiracist Agenda and wholehearted commitment to an inclusive campus environment; important volunteer work with rural Indiana counties throughout the state; expansive international partnerships that ensure life-changing experiences; and immersive arts and humanities offerings. Our artistic community lights up the campus with festivals, films, fairs, performances, and exhibits and installations so pervasive, you can experience some of the magic just by walking through campus. I highly recommend that you visit our monthly First Thursdays event that fans out from the Fine Arts Plaza to include the Eskenazi Museum and Grunwald Gallery, IU Cinema and IU Auditorium, the Musical Arts Center, The Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center, and the Wylie House and the Lilly Library, to name just a few.
One of the things I am most excited about this year is being able to once again watch our gorgeous campus come to life. As you re-enter our community, I urge you to draw upon the resilience, kindness, and compassion that you cultivated during recent challenging times. I am so glad you chose IU. As one of our students put it recently: “You are exactly the person someone needs right now.”
I look forward to celebrating this new page in our university’s history together. My very best wishes for a wonderful semester.
John S. Applegate
Interim Provost & Executive Vice President
Indiana University Bloomington