DEAR ALUMNI AND FRIENDS,
I love university traditions — the rituals, the events, the stories that carry on from year to year and bind together each generation of students. Those traditions, which engender such devotion to our alma mater, make us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves.
But as much we love our traditions, they carry a risk. Held too tightly, they render us slow to adapt to changing circumstances. Sometimes colleges and universities allow tradition to shackle them to outdated practices that no longer match the institution’s mission. We need courage and wisdom to discern when it is time to hold on and when it is time to let go.
That’s the choice RMU confronted when we decided to put the Pittsburgh Center, the building we have owned at 600 Fifth Ave. in downtown Pittsburgh since 1959, up for sale. While the university went on to purchase the Oliver Kaufmann estate — which became the Moon campus — three years later, Pittsburgh remained a focal point of the school for many more years. Downtown Pittsburgh had been the institutions home since its founding in 1921, and I know many of you completed your degree at the downtown campus.
Now RMU’s center of gravity has shifted to the Moon campus. That process accelerated during the most recent decade, but the change has been ongoing for three decades; enrollment at the downtown campus has declined steadily since the early 1980s. As a result, in 2001 RMU stopped offering most undergraduate programs at the Pittsburgh Center. Today we use only about 30 percent of that building.
Meanwhile, we are experiencing tremendous growth in Moon. As I write this, we make plans for approximately 900 new freshmen this fall — breaking last year’s record of 720. An astounding 1,500 students are asking to live on campus — about 200 more than we can fit in our residence halls. We have reserved space for students in local hotels, and for the fall of 2011 we plan to build a new apartment-style residence hall to accommodate 190 students.
The resources necessary to maintain the Pittsburgh Center are much better spent enhancing the Moon campus. Of course, we will keep our connection to the city. We plan to lease space at satellite locations in downtown Pittsburgh and the southern and eastern suburbs. Those decisions will be market-driven, based on the needs of the graduate and nontraditional students who will be served at those locations.
At Moon, we plan to use the proceeds that will be generated by the Pittsburgh Center to build a facility for our media arts programs, which currently utilize the downtown building. Already we have a new media arts house on campus, which you can read about here..
We also plan to strengthen our commitment to nontraditional students with eight new wholly online degree programs, both graduate and undergraduate, which will allow working adults greater flexibility to earn their degree while balancing the demands of job and family. We have a long tradition of serving students like these, and it is one we intend to continue. No matter how they earn their degree, Robert Morris will be their alma mater nonetheless. Just like it will always be yours.
Sincerely,
GREGORY G . DELL’OMO, PH.D .
PRESIDENT