Dear Students, Colleagues, Trustees, and Friends of the College,
If you’ve been following me on social media, you may have noticed a little something new from Thomas called “The College of the Future Podcast.” This podcast stems from our strategic plan and seeks to draw local and national thinkers from higher education and a variety of industries into an important conversation about the future of higher education. In the face of unprecedented skepticism—and without any map or formula to guide us—we are building the College of the Future by confronting directly both the challenges facing higher education and the reality of what today’s students will encounter from the day they graduate until they retire sometime around the year 2070. That’s right: the job of higher education is in large part to equip today’s graduates with the skills and habits of mind they will need to navigate the world of work until sometime in the 2070s. I want our alumni to look back on their Thomas education and feel they were well prepared, and graduation season is the perfect time to articulate this goal.
I’m proud to report that just one year into our strategic plan, the College of the Future is already taking shape. Considering the current pace of technological change, it’s clear that the future of the economy is going live at the nexus of business and technology. With institutional roots in business fields like accounting and marketing, strong existing programs in computer science and cybersecurity, and brand new science labs and STEM majors, Thomas is perfectly positioned to expand into artificial intelligence, applied STEM fields, even certain engineering disciplines. As the College of the Future, Thomas must provide students with the technological expertise the future of business will require. This is why we are planning for an applied STEM center that can house spaces for 3D printing, prototyping, application development, and robotics, allowing future graduates not only to sell and market other people’s products to but to take their own products to market and grow the small business and manufacturing sector.
The College of the Future must also provide students with career pathways into the health professions, something Thomas has never before offered. I’m thrilled that with a substantive change now approved by our accreditor, and with our first faculty members hired, we have completed the final steps in preparing to offer the College’s first clinical degree: a master’s in clinical mental health counseling that will enable Thomas College graduates to become licensed clinicians. Developed in partnership with Kennebec Behavioral Health and other local health care providers, this degree was designed to meet the unique needs of Maine’s rural populations and to build clinical capacity in rural Maine. Kennebec Behavioral Health, Maine General, and other smaller providers are ready and excited to place our interns with their clinicians and to send their unlicensed employees to us for a licensure pathway. Our expansion into clinical mental health counseling is the next step in our commitment to supporting the mental health of our students, central Maine, and the entire state. As the only JED Foundation campus in Maine and a college with its own Mental Health Team and Mental Health Strategic Plan, offering an academic licensure program into behavior health fields makes perfect sense.
Finally, but maybe most important, the College of the Future must respond to the needs of Generations Z and Alpha, which are different from the needs of any previous generation. Generations Z and Alpha are digital natives, unfamiliar with a time before the internet, smartphones, social media, or artificial intelligence. Alongside the impact of the COVID pandemic, the environment in which today’s undergraduate students exist is radically different even from that which their Generation X and Millennial parents experienced. If you haven’t thought much about generational change recently, I highly recommend psychologist Jean M. Twenge’s Generations (Atria Books 2025), which offers a chapter on every generation from the Silents to Generation Alpha. The book is fascinating and should be required reading for anyone trying to understand, teach, or support today’s undergraduate students.
At Thomas, our response to the needs of today’s students is comprehensive. We are studying every aspect of the student experience from the time a student makes their deposit with us until they graduate. We are designing an intentional, proactive academic advising model based on best practices in the field to make sure our students are retained and that they persist. Thomas is committed to offering today’s students the supports they need to complete a college degree, and we plan to distinguish ourselves by going above and beyond in these efforts.
As we close out the 2025-2026 academic year and look forward to 2026-2027, we are clear-eyed, energized, and we have a plan. The mission of Thomas College is more relevant and more valuable today than ever before, and we are ready to lead in our sector as we continue to build the College of the Future right here in Waterville, Maine.
