Dear Students, Colleagues, Trustees, and Friends of the College,
On the first anniversary of my presidency, I am reflecting on a year of rapid change at the College and focusing on the second priority of our new strategic plan: Care for Our Community. In my Inauguration speech last spring, I observed the ethic of care inherent in the Thomas College community and characterized our culture as our “special sauce.” As I said in April, “Thomas College has the kind of culture you can’t manufacture, and you can’t purchase.” This has been true for decades, and it remains true today. In fact, during the strategic planning process, it was revealed that the care Thomas College students, faculty, and staff feel from the community was the top reason people chose to work and learn at Thomas.
This fall, I gained more insight into our special sauce from Kiara Goggin, Associate Director of Professional and Career Development at the College. Each year, our first-year students participate in the CliftonStrengths assessment. This assessment, along with expert coaching, helps students understand what they naturally do best and how to build upon their innate talents for personal and professional fulfillment. To date, 526 Thomas College students have participated in CliftonStrengths. The aggregated results of these assessments reveal overwhelmingly that the top strength of our students is “Relator.” Relator is among the top five strengths of more than 42% of Thomas students, and of those with Relator in their top five strengths, 80% have Relator as their top strength. No other strength appears as frequently.
If you know our students, the fact that many of them are naturally gifted at building relationships and relating to others may not be surprising, but the ubiquity of the finding is remarkable. These results suggest that when students report that they chose Thomas College for our community of care, they were choosing us because our community was aligned with their strongest talents and deepest values.
According to CliftonStrengths, Relators derive pleasure from being around close friends. A person with strong Relator talents enjoys close and authentic relationships. People exceptionally talented in the Relator theme find deep satisfaction in working with friends to achieve a goal. Relators tend to organize their lives around close relationships, and they need opportunities for one-on-one interaction. Knowing our students are Relators can help us ensure we are providing the experiences and environment in which they will thrive. And knowing what we now know about our students from CliftonStrengths, we can proudly claim Relator as part of our special sauce, part of what distinguishes the Thomas College community from so many others.
Celebrating my first full trip around the Thomas College sun, I am buoyed by the strengths of our students and the fierce dedication of our faculty and staff to those students. Our special sauce led to the creation of a strategic priority that calls upon us to be sure our students, faculty, and staff feel connected to the College. It calls upon us to invest in our employees and to become a responsive partner to those who seek to work with us. Our special sauce cannot protect us from the many challenges facing higher education or the hard choices those challenges require, but it can bind and heal us when times are tough. Through our challenges and changes, one thing remains constant: the deep and abiding love of Thomas College students, faculty, and staff for the institution and its mission. I join you in that love.
Sending my best,
Jeannine Diddle Uzzi, Ph.D.
President