Dear Students and Colleagues, 

Happy new year! I want to welcome you back to campus and wish you well as you prepare for the start of what I hope is a productive and fulfilling academic semester, full of growth and success.   

This past year was an exciting one for Temple University. We welcomed the largest first-year class in our history, received record-setting gifts, and furthered our commitment to student success and research and creative achievement. Our students also gave us plenty to celebrate. We cheered as nearly 8,500 graduates joined the Temple alumni family during the Class of 2025's universitywide Commencement ceremony in May. We cheered as our Diamond Marching Band made history by performing during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in November. And throughout the course of the year, we cheered as our Temple Athletics teams continued to succeed not just on the courts and fields but also in the classroom.  

All the while, our talented faculty continued to perform high-impact research and scholarly work, driving innovation across so many disciplines. Especially notable is that in spite of the uncertainty around federal research funding, during this past fiscal year Temple faculty submitted more grant requests than ever before, totaling more than $1.2 billion. 

A new year always brings with it tremendous promise and possibility. I am grateful to each of you for the many ways in which you enrich our university and the Philadelphia community, and I wish you all a productive and rewarding semester. 
As we begin our spring term, I would like to provide some updates. 

Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service 
Temple will serve as the host for the 31st annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service’s regional signature project on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026. This is the first time in more than 15 years that this special event will be held on our campus, and we are honored to host dozens of meaningful experiences.  

Volunteer opportunities across the city can be found through Owls for Philly, which can be accessed through TUportal. Assistance is also needed to help set up for the day’s festivities, and those opportunities can also be found through Owls for Philly. 

Strategic Plan 
We are now nearing the beginning of the launch of our new Strategic Plan. This comprehensive plan will be presented for approval to the Board of Trustees later this month and shared with the Temple community through a series of presentations. The Strategic Plan includes a campus development plan, which supports our strategic initiatives through facility and campus improvements focused on research, residential and community-building spaces designed to make our campus a safer, vibrant and more creative place. 

These plans will serve as our compass, ensuring that Temple and Temple Health fulfill our role as Philadelphia’s most important anchor institutions. I can assure you that the Strategic Plan is very much Temple Made. Many stakeholders—faculty, students, staff, alumni and community partners—have had a voice in the process, and those voices have all been widely incorporated into the final product. 

Senior vice president and chief operating officer search 
I am pleased to share an important update as we move forward with our search to find Temple’s next senior vice president and chief operating officer. 

I have appointed a search advisory committee for this important position, and it is co-chaired by Richard Deeg, Christopher M. Barnett Dean for the College of Liberal Arts, and Susan Smith, chief compliance officer. Michael Gebhardt will staff the search on behalf of my office. 

The other members of the search committee are 

• Steven Balsam, professor of accounting and Senior Merves Research Fellow, Fox School of Business;  
• Sharmayne Burns, vice provost for finance and administration, Office of the Provost; 
• Cheryl Carreno, vice dean of finance and administration, Tyler School of Art and Architecture; 
• John Doman, senior director, Campus Recreation;  
• Cameron Etezady, vice president, University Counsel; 
• Andrea Gaudini, assistant vice president for strategy, insights and operations, Strategic Marketing and Communications;
• Amy J. Goldberg, Marjorie Joy Katz Dean, Lewis Katz School of Medicine; 
• Arthur Johnson, vice president and Debbie and Stanley Lefkowitz '65 Director of Athletics;  
• Stephen G. Nappi, associate vice president of technology commercialization and business development, Office of the Vice President for Research; and
• Abhinav Rastogi, president and CEO, Temple Health. 

We have retained Korn Ferry, a national executive search firm, as our search partner. If you have nominations, candidate suggestions or questions about the search, please feel free to reach out directly to our partners at Korn Ferry at [click-for-email].

I want to thank all of our colleagues who are serving on the search advisory committee. 

Budget update 
Colleagues from across the university continue to work diligently to address Temple’s structural budget deficit. As I have shared, we must be creative in exploring all solutions as maintaining status quo is not a financially viable option.  

Last month, I shared that we will be launching a voluntary retirement incentive program for eligible faculty members, which we have been able to do by leveraging the one-time tax credit reimbursement that we received for retaining employees during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Moving forward, we will continue to work to optimize and eventually balance the operating budget and explore changes that will make a meaningful impact on the structural deficit.

As we identify recurring expense reductions, the work to develop the new budget model for the university also continues. Special thanks to our Budget Model Task Force for their continuing work to propose an integrated, transparent and mission-aligned approach to resource allocation. Their charge is to recommend a model that ensures financial sustainability through a combination of predictable base allocations, incentives and strategic investments, which will be initiated beginning on July 1, 2026, and fully implemented over the next several years. 

Enrollment update 
As you may have seen, we welcomed Rob Reddy to the university on Jan. 1 to the role of interim vice provost for enrollment management. Rob brings strong credentials to the role as he most recently served as the vice president for enrollment management at St. Louis University, and before that as the assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management and dean of student financial services at Northeastern University. 

Rob is working closely with his team to ensure Temple continues to build upon its momentum in undergraduate admissions. While it is still very early, all the indicators are positive as application volume continues to outpace last year’s record numbers. 
I look forward to sharing more enrollment news in the weeks and months ahead. 

Protocol for federal law enforcement agencies 
For many of you, the potential presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Philadelphia or on Temple’s campuses has sparked questions and concerns, and rightfully so.  

Please know that as of this date, we have had no reports of ICE or Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers being on our campus, and we have an established protocol should ICE or CBP agents be present on campus. I also want to direct you to the following FAQs related to federal guidance on a variety of topics. 

Student success 
Finally, I want to reaffirm our commitment to student success, which is a cornerstone of our new Strategic Plan. Specifically, we will strengthen coordination across academic affairs, student affairs and enrollment management, both centrally and within the schools and colleges, so that students have clear access to academic support, advising, financial guidance, career counseling and other essential resources. Student success at Temple is shaped by many people in many different roles: the learning environments faculty create, the services and connections staff facilitate, and the way students support one another. This collective effort is what helps our students persist, graduate and go on to make their mark on society. 

Together, we must ensure that student success remains at the center of Temple’s mission and the way we operate the university. 

I look forward to reconnecting with you during this semester and throughout 2026. Let’s work together to ensure that the positive energy continues, both this spring and in the years that follow. 

Sincerely, 

John Fry 
President