Thank You

To the Campus Community:

I know you have received a lot of messages from UCLA lately. Amidst profound change, there is so much information to share and so many questions to be answered. We will continue to share information and answers, but today, I just wanted to say thank you.

To our students, I want to thank you for your patience and understanding as our efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 by moving to remote instruction forced many of you to leave behind your friends and your campus. Your commitment to your coursework and your community — through perseverance and ingenuity — gives us all faith that the world will be an even better place, because you will be running it someday soon.

To our faculty, I want to thank you for your dedication and flexibility as we have asked you to lead courses in ways many of us never expected, adapting to new technologies and finding new ways to engage students. I understand how difficult it was for many of you to either step away from years of research in labs or just stay focused on projects with all that is happening. Your devotion to our students and the betterment of society is consistently inspiring.

To our staff, your extraordinary efforts to support our immense needs in technology, resource coordination, communications and so many other areas have defined the best of UCLA. Working from your homes all across the region or supporting functions we must maintain on campus, UCLA staff continue to find innovative ways to do what needs to be done.

To our health care workers in particular, you have been truly heroic throughout this pandemic, and I cannot thank you enough. We understand you are truly on the front lines, and your commitment is beyond anything I can imagine.

This will continue to be hard for the foreseeable future and we do not yet know when and how this will be resolved. But I can tell you that, despite all this uncertainty, UCLA’s mission remains unchanged: We are driven by curiosity and committed to inquiry, we delight in learning and welcome new ways of understanding, and we strive to make the world better and seek others who share our dreams. Every member of our community contributes to that mission.

We will get through this because we are Bruins. We hold ourselves to the highest standards, no matter what comes at us, and we remain committed to our mission and our community. In just 100 years, we became the best public university in the nation. Just recently, we saw the ecstatic reactions of students who were admitted to UCLA. And every day, we see the incredible, life-changing innovations produced through UCLA research.

There is so much to be proud of and so much more to look forward to. Never lose faith and never lose your Bruin spirit. We will get through this, together.

Sincerely and with best wishes,