The below message was sent to faculty, staff, and students on February 17, 2026.
Dear Bryn Mawr Community,
Thank you to everyone who has been helping us through the cold and the snow. Please join me in taking a few minutes this week to personally thank someone who has been helping you - maybe a staff member or student in the dining hall who served you warm food, maybe a professor or peer who helped you understand something you really didn’t at first, maybe a plumber or colleague in Facilities who helped with heaters or frozen pipes, maybe a friend who joined you to sled on Rhoads beach, maybe someone you had fun with during WTF week or who just makes you smile. The opportunities for gratitude at Bryn Mawr College are endless.
My gratitude list includes the College being named a top Fulbright producer, the fact that so many of you engaged in college-funded pilot projects as we build Bryn Mawr's Next Chapter, and new waste stations (with QR codes) arriving on campus. At home, the list includes a recent long weekend with no school for the kids; melting snow, which makes pug walking more enjoyable for all, and a repaired heater.
The semester is off to an amazing start, with terrific audiences at a range of campus events, including packed bleachers at Girls & Women in Sports Day. This Wednesday, Christopher Kelly, professor of political science at Boston College, will speak on "Rousseau and the Birth of the Public Intellectual: A Writer Responds to his Readers." On Wednesday evening, Claire Messud, novelist and the Joseph Y. Bae and Janice Lee Senior Lecturer on Fiction at Harvard University, will read on campus. On Thursday, Black History Month's Unsung Heroes Celebration will take place. And on Saturday, the Bi-Co math departments will mark Meet a Mathematician Day by hosting Rosemarie Bongers, assistant teaching professor at the University of California, Merced. Details on these and so many other exciting events are here.
See you out there as we look toward the spring cherry blossoms, together.
Wendy Cadge
President and Professor of Sociology
Bryn Mawr College
101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010
Pronouns: she/her
brynmawr.edu
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