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YU President Richard Joel Delivers First State of the University Address

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YU President Richard Joel delivers his first State of the University AddressAnnounces largest incoming class at Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women

In his first State of the University address, Yeshiva University President Richard M. Joel announced on September 12 that he would accept the Board of Trustees’ offer to extend his term until June 2018 for a planned 15 years in office and outlined his vision for a united and prosperous University, both as an academic and as a communal institution.

“It is here, in this complex and special space, that we can see our future,” said the president before hundreds of alumni, students, faculty and staff in the Gottesman Library Heights Lounge on the Wilf Campus. Hundreds more watched the streaming broadcast of the address online. “If I listen carefully, I hear the murmurings of a consecrated conversation taking place here—a conversation between Torah and the world, between tradition and modernity, between the sacred contents of this beautiful bastion of wisdom and the wide world around it so desperately yearning for the dissemination of those contents.”

President Joel went on to announce that Yeshiva College and Stern College for Women had each welcomed their largest incoming undergraduate classes to date this semester with 270 and 304 students, respectively, and additional growth at the Sy Syms School of Business. That total includes more than 120 honors students in the S. Daniel Abraham Honors Program at Stern College and the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program at Yeshiva College, record highs for both, in addition to the inaugural class of the new Sy Syms Business Honors and Leadership Entrepreneurial Program. With 23 doctoral students, the Bernard Revel Graduate School for Jewish Studies also set a new record this year.

“These numbers are not a blip—they are the start of a trend,” said President Joel to applause. “Over the past nine years we have labored to build a first-rate product here at Yeshiva, and the public perception has finally met that product.”

The president focused on YU’s unique mission, which infuses Torah values and ideals into every aspect of students’ academic careers and experiences, and reminded the audience that as members of this singular community, they had a mandate to matter. “The dream is real,” he said. “We are more than a Yeshiva, more than a University. When we speak about who we are and what drives us, I believe that we must put forth an agenda of shleimut. Of wholeness.”

Touching on the University’s new educational offerings, the president highlighted several new graduate programs recently launched at YU, among them a Masters in Accounting and Executive Masters in Business Administration at Sy Syms and Masters and PhD programs in Applied Mathematics, as well as a Masters in Quantitative Economics, at Yeshiva College. Looking toward the future, he shared the University’s plan to establish a Division of Health Professions in the coming months that would integrate existing undergraduate programs with the advice and support of faculty at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in addition to the launching of graduate programs in speech pathology and audiology in 2013 and physical and occupational therapy in 2014. The Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration will also launch YU’s first full online master’s program this spring.

“We hope these programs will not only benefit our students, but serve as choice destinations for others, developing into a new educational and revenue source for the University,” said President Joel.

Referencing a post graduate survey conducted by YU’s Career Center, President Joel stated that nearly 95 percent of the undergraduate Class of 2011 are either employed or in graduate school. In addition, he noted that 97 percent of law school applicants from Yeshiva were accepted to a school of their choice, well above the national average of 71 percent, and 91 percent of medical school applicants were accepted to schools of their choice, more than double the national average.

“Knowing the value of our mission-driven institution, we are both resolute and hopeful moving forward,” said President Joel. “The state of Yeshiva University is sound, it is strong, and it is poised for tomorrow.”

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