Welcome Back!

Dear Members of the Georgetown Community,

As we begin fall instruction, I want to share a warm welcome with all of the new and returning members of the Georgetown community. I have felt so generously welcomed by all of you over the past few months, and I’m excited to be starting this new chapter with you.

I am grateful for all this community has done to prepare for the new academic year. The past few weeks have been filled with programs, events and ceremonies celebrating our incoming and returning students. For me, it has been an inspiring and energizing introduction to Georgetown. I look forward to seeing many of you at the annual Mass of the Holy Spirit in Gaston Hall later today.

Georgetown holds a special place within American higher education. As a student-centered research university founded on Jesuit, Catholic values and located in the nation’s capital, Georgetown could not be in a better position to respond to the challenges and opportunities of this moment. Jesuits describe themselves as contemplatives in action. A Jesuit university cannot stand still: there is great work to do. And so, as we begin this new academic year, I would like to provide a brief preview of some key activities we will be launching in the coming weeks.

New Initiatives

Listening Sessions

As a new member of this academic community, it is important for me to begin by listening and learning about the community I have joined. In my meetings these past few months, I have heard both the deep affection and bold ambitions that you have for this place. For those of you who I’ve not yet met, we have begun to organize listening sessions to provide me with an opportunity to hear directly from faculty, staff, and students across the University. Please be on the lookout for those.

Strategic Planning Process

To help us establish shared priorities for our work over the next few years and to increase transparency in decision-making, we will engage in a strategic planning exercise for the University. This inclusive and consultative process – which will involve the entire community – will be completed over the course of this academic year. The listening sessions will provide an initial foundation for the plan’s development, with more opportunities for input and engagement in the months ahead. We will provide additional information over the next few weeks as we launch this process.

Beyond this strategic planning process, there are two areas that require our immediate attention and action: university bureaucracy and artificial intelligence.

University Operations

Many colleagues have shared with me that, too often, collective momentum toward Georgetown’s goals is encumbered by overly complex or outdated structures and procedures. I want to get started on addressing this issue, and I need your help to identify the key areas for improvement. In the coming days, we will be launching a new initiative to identify bureaucratic pain points, prioritize our responses, and begin removing barriers to our forward progress.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence (AI) poses immediate challenges to longstanding models of teaching, learning, and assessment. At the same time, it presents new opportunities for research and innovation. Our University’s engagement with AI is informed by Pope Leo XIV’s May 2026 encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas, which emphasizes the importance of tying decisions about AI to human purposes, human dignity, and the common good and calls on universities to lead the way in crafting responses to this new and rapidly evolving technology. In the coming days, we will launch a new, university-wide AI initiative, building on work that is already happening at Georgetown, and seeking to extend it. This new effort will ensure that our engagement with AI – in the classroom, in our research, and in the workplace – aligns with and supports our core values.

We will be sharing many more details as these projects get underway.

At Georgetown, we are called to pursue excellence in all that we do, not simply for the sake of excellence itself, but in service to others and of the world around us. Whether (like me) this is your first year at Georgetown, or this place has been your home for many years, every new academic year invites us to reflect on our mission as a Jesuit, Catholic institution and on the values that unite us as a university community, and to discern how we can more fully live them out. I look forward to sharing this work with you, and I thank you for the many ways you uphold Georgetown’s mission, values, and excellence every day. I wish all of you a wonderful start to the academic year.

Hoya Saxa!

Respectfully,

Eduardo M. Peñalver
President