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Dear Members of the NJCU Family,

I warmly welcome you to the 2023-24 academic year at ¿ìèÆƽâ°æ. Every new academic year is filled with promise and possibility, optimism and enthusiasm, and for new students, even nervousness and a hint of apprehension. The excitement of a new year culminates this week as our vibrant community begins to come alive with your daily presence as your academic and extracurricular pursuits rise to the forefront of our daily purpose on campus.

To our extraordinary students, whether you are a returning member of our NJCU community or joining us for the first time, we are grateful for each of you to be part of the Gothic Knight family. This is your home. This is where you are going to launch the rest of your life from. 

With renewed energy, I can promise that our dedicated and remarkable faculty, staff, and administrators are here to serve you and champion you. We will lift you every day to help bring you closer to your dreams.

Whether you are a returning student or joining us for the first time, I encourage you to embrace every moment of this educational adventure. Know that you are destined to become who you decide to be. Be boldly proud of where your stories began and the chapters you will write with the expectations you set with a community in your corner.

Lean on one another. Champion each other. Be kind to yourselves and one another. You will be eagerly met by faculty, staff, and administrators who dedicate their professional lives to lifting yours. They are extraordinary people, unrivaled by anyone, anywhere, readied to emulate and support the resiliency of our community.

My heart is full every time I get to share time and space with all of you. I am reminded of how extraordinary our mission is and how remarkably resilient our community proves to be. I see my own story reflected back at me on our campus every day. I see it in the nervous new students and the determined returning ones, the proud loved ones, the caring staff, the passionate faculty, and the dedicated administrators.

Our stories are only possible when they are championed. We will not just celebrate our beautiful diversity; we will empower it. We will breathe life into our mission every day.

Our students deserve the opportunity to better their lives. This is our mission and we will meet our students where they are. On this campus, student achievement, the student experience, and the life-changing power of a higher education will always be paramount and the cornerstone of our pursuit of academic excellence. That is a mission we are all recommitting to this year and beyond. You have our commitment, that our singular mission will be bringing the future you want for yourselves within reach. We will be unrelentingly committed to building up lives.

Yesterday, I had the joyous privilege to spend the day on campus speaking to many of the thousands of students and parents and loved ones who joined us on a beautiful final day of August to learn more about the university they will spend the next four years of their lives at. Those feelings of promise and possibility, optimism and enthusiasm, nervousness and apprehension, resided in each of our students.

I also saw it glimmer in the eyes of our extraordinarily dedicated faculty, staff, and administrators. To our new and returning students, you are our why.

There was also an insatiable feeling of pride — yes, pride from students who are about to embark on a new academic journey, but also a record number of moms, dads, and loved ones in attendance beaming with pride. For an overwhelming majority of our students, they are the first in their families to be able to embrace that sense of pride from their parents and loved ones, that they are the first in their families to go to college. That sense of pride accentuates the mission of what NJCU represents and what it delivers to our community, the City of Jersey City, Hudson County, and beyond. 

That pride is strengthened in our incoming remarkable Class of 2027! In all, over 1,200 new students have joined the university for the Fall 2023 semester, representing first-year, transfer and readmit cohorts.

We are a community of firsts, unrivaled by any other public institution in the State of New Jersey. At an institution that prides itself as a catalyst and statewide leader for social mobility, the overwhelming majority of our new students are first-generation college students.

Not surprisingly, 55 percent of our new students are from Hudson County, where NJCU has been the public anchor university for nearly one hundred years. What is notable is that the Class of 2027 also draws from 18 of the 21 counties in New Jersey, while five percent of this class is from out of state, with 10 different states other than New Jersey represented. We are proud that students, near and far, are Saying YES to NJCU because our mission is singularly focused on driving socioeconomic mobility through an enriching and transformative higher education.

Let’s infuse zeal and determination into our new academic year together.  Welcome to the 2023-24 academic year. Thank you for saying Yes to NJCU. Thank you for being NJCU.

Yours in service with admiration and affection,

Andrés Acebo
Interim President
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