Letter from Kyu - January 2025
As we gear up for the year ahead, I’d like to recap where we are and share with you some areas of focus in the coming year.
Jan. 3, 2025
Happy New Year and welcome back to work. I hope you all had a restful holiday filled with fun activities. As we gear up for the year ahead, I’d like to recap where we are and share with you some areas of focus in the coming year.
We are in a very exciting time, as we round out the busiest construction periods in the history of Princeton University. Many new facilities have opened in recent months, including the Class of 1986 Fitness and Wellness Center, the new Racquet and Recreation Fieldhouse, the Cynthia Paul Softball Field, the Frist Health Center, and soon, the new Princeton University Art Museum.
Looking a bit further into the term, we anticipate the completion of Environmental Studies and Commons, and later in the year the completion of the two SEAS buildings, Bioengineering and Chemical Biological Engineering. 2025 will be the year where we see a winding down of construction activity, which I am certain will be welcome news to campus constituents.
The University is fortunate to have the resources to enable it to build and expand the campus in support of our strategic priorities. However, resources need to be stewarded, and they don’t last forever. There are times when calibration of spending is needed. We are facing such a period right now where we must practice fiscal prudence. Princeton is not in financial danger — far from it. We will continue to build all the projects we have anticipated in our current Capital Plan looking out to 2030 and beyond. But what we must do is to spend our resources wisely and intelligently. One suggestion I’d like to offer is to consider if you would make the same spending decision if it were your own personal money. Applying this rule in our work demonstrates prudence.
Despite this backdrop, we are so very fortunate to be at Princeton and supporting everything the University stands for. Thank you all for that you do. I wish each of you a happy year and I look forward to engaging with you during the year ahead.
With much gratitude,
Kyu