Hello students, my name is Lillian Mills, and I am the Interim Dean
And I wanted to convey to you that you're our most important audience
The heartbeat of the campus, you the students.
And we are already in the summer session, where the faculty and staff are doing all they can to support
your physical and mental health and safety and assure your academic progress. It's been such a tough spring.
We were uprooted from each other in March because of COVID-19, and we've seen the tragic death of hundreds of
thousands across the globe, with disparate negative impacts in our Black and Latinx community here in the US.
In addition, it's causing a lot of job uncertainty, and our career teams are working to assure your success
even in the midst of that uncertainty. And then, on top of that, we have the grievous deaths of
George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and many others in the Black community
that revealed once again the corrosive racism and pain in the Black community, both within our 40 Acres
and across the US. I am reading and watching everything that comes across my social media because I want to
be present, learn and to feel, and then to move into positive right action into the future.
I invite you to come with me on that journey. In the last several years, McCombs has been focused on
building a more inclusive classroom, including lots of training within our faculty and staff
and a student nominated initiative to highlight the best practices of our best faculty
In addition, we are working creative ideas in faculty recruitment and curricular enhancements
And trying to think how can the McCombs school leverage its business education into better community impact.
I promise to keep you up to date on our progress, but what can we all do together right now?
In a companion email, I invite you to sign a community statement of support where you
will already find 250 faculty and staff signatures. Join us.
Second, there is our links to multiple resources to both educate yourself better
and to seek additional action and to seek support for yourself. I have found all of these very useful.
Third, we want all and any of your requests, suggestions, ideas, demands, to the D & I committee
and there's an email dedicated to that because the time is now. And as we evaluate the positive actions
that an elite school of business can do to transform the world, we want to take those actions
and you can help us in that.
So in closing, the faculty and staff are eager to see you on campus in August, and I hope when you come back
you will feel a homecoming feeling of a restored community, and even
more, and for every single student here at McCombs, we want your experience to be one of maximum
belonging, and that's a responsibility all of us share to make sure that is every student's experience.
I miss you very much, I can't wait to see you. Hook 'em horns.