Live Q&A with Lehigh's President and College Deans

Special Virtual Event for Admitted Students of the Class of 2024.
Join Lehigh University Admissions for panel discussion and interactive Q&A featuring: President John D. Simon, Dean Robert A. Flowers II (College of Arts and Sciences), Dean Georgette Chapman Phillips (College of Business), Dean Stephen P. DeWeerth (P.C. Rossin College of Engineering and Applied Science) and Dean Whitney P. Witt (College of Health).


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Good evening, everyone. I'm Dan Warner, Vice Provost for Admissions and Financial Aid here at Lehigh, and I want to start by saying congratulations to all of the admitted students who are joining us this evening. We were honored to receive your applications to Lehigh, excited to be able to extend an offer of admission to you. And we've enjoyed interacting with you over the last three weeks or so on these new virtual platforms that we've created to replace the on-campus events that, of course, we're not able to hold at the moment.

If you've not already joined our admitted student community online, I encourage you to do that. We have lots of students who have already done that. But if you haven't, please do that, and we can interact with you in lots of different ways. I also want to share that this is something of a bittersweet time for those of us in the admissions world. It's a very sweet time because this is the time that we get to meet and interact with the people who will literally be the future of Lehigh University, and that's very, very rewarding, very exciting.

It's a little bit bitter for us because this is also the time of year that those of us in admissions realize that you don't have much use for us anymore. And what's worse yet, you're not afraid of us anymore. But the good news is that the folks that you do have use for, the people that will be integral parts of your academic life at Lehigh, are here this evening to talk with you, to answer your questions, and I'm very excited to be a part of this panel.

And I want to mention that Lehigh is the fifth university that I've worked for in my career, and at none of the other places would we have gotten agreement from the president and the deans of the undergraduate colleges to be a part of a panel like this. And this is something that's really special about Lehigh, the direct contact that you're going to have with leadership at the highest level.

Our program tonight is pretty straightforward. In a moment, I'll introduce President Simon. He will, in turn, introduce the deans. And President Simon, by virtue of his office, will get to ask the first couple of questions of the deans. And then after that, I will ask them all to answer questions that have either been submitted in advance or that you're asking live here through the question and answer feature of this webinar. So send your questions on. And to start off, I want to introduce President John Simon, who is an internationally renowned chemist, a distinction that preceded his appointment as Lehigh's 14th president in July of 2015.

And shortly after coming to Lehigh, he launched an ambitious plan to grow the undergraduate population by a thousand new students, the graduate population by 500 new students, to diversify the Lehigh population in all measures-- racial and ethnic, geographic, et cetera-- and to add an additional college to the Lehigh family of colleges, the College of Health. And you'll hear more about the College of Health, I'm sure, from Dean Witt later this evening.

He's also expanded Lehigh's presence to the West Coast, entering into a partnership with NASDAQ for Lehigh to be the exclusive entrepreneurial center partner of NASDAQ out in San Francisco. And President Simon also has the most popular Instagram account at Lehigh. @pressimon, join it, you won't be sorry. With that, I'll turn things over to President Simon and to our deans.

Thanks, Dan. Welcome. It's interesting because every year around this time, Dan and I get to go around and welcome prospective students and their parents. And not only do you get to see us, but we get to see you. And this is a very interesting venue because I get to see my colleagues and none of you. Thank you for joining us tonight. Congratulations on your admissions to Lehigh, and I want to thank all the parents that are joining us tonight as well.

Tonight, you'll have an opportunity to hear from the deans of our four undergraduate colleges-- business, engineering, arts and sciences, and health. We also have a College of Education. It offers a variety of professional programs, and undergraduates are able to take courses in that college as well. I think the discussion tonight will reveal the intellectual and caring community that is Lehigh. And before we get started, I actually want to share with you and the other parents that are in the audience, I'm also a Lehigh parent. I'm a proud parent of a graduate in electrical engineering, the class of 2019.