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May 31, 2022
My May Blog: “The Environment We Create for Ourselves”
Dear Baruch Community,
This is graduation season and the completion of another unusual academic year—not only for the graduates but for everyone in the Baruch community. The transition from virtual to traditional face-to-face settings has influenced us in ways that have been quite unexpected, at least that is the case for me.
Throughout the month of May, I attended a series of the College’s first in-person celebrations since 2019, which included the Bernard Baruch Dinner gala, Student Achievement Awards, Athletics
Awards Banquet luncheon, Baruch Community Spring Celebration on
Clivner=Field Plaza, and the 2022 Commencement at the Barclays Center—along with numerous festivities leading up to it. I also attended a number of external gatherings around the City, including the Association for a Better New York gala at Rockefeller
Center and a reception at Gracie Mansion with Mayor Eric Adams. Out of all these events, my most memorable experience was the community gathering on the Plaza, where I had the opportunity to meet staff, faculty, and lots of students—some of them graduating seniors. It was a perfect spring day, with the sun shining and a gentle breeze that blended with the sound of a saxophone flowing from the student jazz band and mixed with the smell of cotton candy and lemonade. I took selfies with students, shot hoops, played a serious game of Connect Four, and engaged in countless casual chats with graduating seniors about their Baruch experience and what they want to do with their lives. The euphoria on the plaza was palpable, and I went home that night with a warmth in my heart I haven’t felt in a long time.
In a much more formal, but just as heartwarming setting at the Bernard Baruch Dinner, I met nearly 400 of our alumni and College sponsors, some for the very first time. As I chatted with the guests, many reflected on the fact that we don’t realize how much we miss human contact until we re-experience it on such occasions. As I stepped on the stage to welcome the crowd, I felt an electricity in the air that had almost been forgotten.
While these face-to-face interactions were both refreshing and mesmerizing, our pragmatic selves have now realized the overhead we were paying prior to the pandemic in traveling and organizing for certain in-person meetings that can now be comfortably substituted by a simple Zoom chat.
This time last year I called for the Baruch community to think of an experiment blending the virtual and in-person worlds as a metaphorical dress rehearsal for the future. By now, I hope we have all learned our own lessons from the dress rehearsal and perhaps formed our own opinions about what the future should look like. Depending on our own circumstances and experiences, it may be clearer and more intuitive as to how we should balance the virtual and physical in order to get the best out of both worlds.
It is quite likely, however, that each of us has very different ideas about the future we envision, as well as the environment we want to create for ourselves. Let’s pause for a moment and reflect on that. Not only for Baruch but for our society.
Please read this month’s blog, “The Environment We Create for Ourselves,” and join the conversation—comment, subscribe, and sign up for blog notifications. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
S. David Wu President, Baruch College
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