A welcome back address Thursday afternoon for the West Chester University community was filled with great optimism as the school begins its fall semester.  

Student success, student diversity, inclusiveness, and academic excellence topped a list of goals, achieved with the support of tutors, on-campus student success coordinators, and a community of educators.  

West Chester University President Chris Fiorentino and Executive Vice President & Provost Laurie Bernotsky spoke from the Madeleine Wing Adler Theatre located on campus. 

The two positioned the university in the welcome back talk as a place that embraces all students, preparing them for the world’s challenges.  

Moving forward, all new faculty will be trained on innovative teaching practices and similar trainings will be created for staff — they will learn to be exceptional educators for all the students, Bernotsky said. 

“Our intent at WCU is to close racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps while simultaneously maintaining high retention and graduation rates for all of our students,” she said. “It’s a tall order because we already have a diversifying student population with strong overall graduation and retention rates.”  

Fiorentino is starting his 40th year in academics at a time of national declining college enrollments, yet WCU is welcoming the largest incoming class in the university’s history, he said. 

He described this fall as “the most excited I have ever felt at the start of a school year.” 

But Fiorentino said the optimism felt at WCU is countered by pessimism expressed recently in our culture through an anti-college narrative. 

The narrative says there’s no value in a college degree or a college experience. 

“It’s a narrative that’s more than just wrong — it’s downright dangerous,” he said. 

West Chester University is ideally suited to push back on the anti-college narrative. Its core mission is still to serve as an undergraduate, four-year residential, regional, comprehensive university. 

Annual in-state tuition there is only $7,700 and students spend time with exceptional teachers and excellent researchers. 

While other universities are fighting it out for that top one percent of students, West Chester is becoming more accessible and diverse. It admits about 87 percent of all applicants, Bernotsky said.  

“Our student profile hasn’t changed,” she said. “Our incoming student GPA hasn’t changed. Our student population is changing; it is becoming broader and more diverse…We proudly educate the 99%.”  

“We need to stop asking if these students are ready for West Chester and start asking if we are ready for these students,” she added. 

“Ideally, West Chester University students are out there making positive changes in the world,” Bernotsky said. “I often like to say that at West Chester, ‘We are changing the world 4,000 graduates at a time.’ Think about the cumulative impact on our communities, our Commonwealth, and our country, by producing that many students committed to the public good each year…Year after year…Decade after decade…Century after century.”   

Watch the entire welcome back event.