It's a privilege to greet you as president of Rosalind Franklin University, my academic and professional home for nearly four decades. As both a professor and administrator, I take great pride in the caliber of our students, faculty, staff and alumni, whose collective excellence helps define our institution and drive its continuous, strategic transformation.

Working together, we've achieved measurable, sustainable results in educational assessment, quality, and innovation. We've become a leader in cutting-edge interprofessional health professions education and collaborative, patient-centric care. We've realigned our research strength around core areas of scientific expertise to foster innovation and collaboration. We've made strategic investments in simulation, curriculum and academic and clinical partnerships. We've created new pathways, expanded opportunity and enhanced our reputation by seeking deeper engagement with our surrounding communities.

We've been guided in these changes by our institutional mission: to serve humanity through interprofessional education and the discovery of knowledge dedicated to improving wellness. We've also been guided by the signs of the times, including shifting landscapes in both health care and higher education; national goals for improving healthcare delivery; the knowledge explosion; the increasing impact of artificial intelligence in health care; and the recognition by systems that innovations that improve the health of populations will drive the future of care.

We need to continue to evolve and grow. We need to continue to self-assess, look at what we can do better, talk and carefully listen to our many partners to discover how RFU can work with them, innovate with them to produce a highly-trained workforce that's relevant to their needs today and tomorrow.

The development of our next strategic plan, again, guided by our mission, will help shape who we are to become and how we will change the future of care. Our own future will include growing our interprofessional identity, academic and clinical partnerships, and research excellence in strategic niche areas. New academic programs, enrollment growth, simulation as a strategy for clinical partners and building on our culture of philanthropy, will also help us lead and succeed in our changing field.

RFU will take a strong hand in shaping whatever the future brings, as our students, faculty and alumni work to transform practice, research and the next generation of care.

Wendy Rheault, PT, PhD, FASAHP, FNAP, DipACLM
President and CEO