Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues,

In a matter of days, a new academic year begins.

It begins with our community doing what it has always done: charting a path that is distinctively our own. Our mission is unchanged and ambitious: to develop human talent and to create knowledge that addresses the grand challenges of a world in motion.

A decade ago, when artificial intelligence was still a curiosity to most, we recognized what it would mean for human work and learning. Northeastern was the first university to develop an academic plan focused on the transformative power of AI. We formulated humanics—a curricular framework integrating technological, data, and human literacies. We built a network of connected campuses, while much of higher education still assumed a university should be confined to one place.

But we cannot rest on our laurels. AI is advancing faster than any technology in our lifetimes. It is no longer merely a tool; it is an entity—inorganic, agentic, autonomous. It is a fourth world, acting upon the physical, natural, and social worlds that higher education has organized around for centuries.

On Monday, leaders from across the university gathered to brainstorm and propose bold directions for our next academic plan—building on the work our community began last year. We discussed our leadership in experiential learning, our globally distributed research enterprise, and our core commitment to lifelong learning and reinvention.

We explored the possibilities that we can unleash with our Global University System: 14 campuses, 4,661 partners, and experiential opportunities in 151 countries. This integrated network is an asset that is providing us with differentiation and resilience. Nothing like it exists in higher education.

In an age of agentic AI, human centrality can no longer be taken for granted. It must be continuously reaffirmed. We must keep humans at the center of our endeavor. This will be the primary focus of our new academic plan. In the coming weeks, a broad cross-section of stakeholders will continue to refine key aspects of the plan, keeping human centrality as our guiding star.

This work will not unfold in easy conditions. Public confidence in higher education is strained, enrollment patterns are shifting, and institutions are closing. We will not navigate this terrain by waiting to see what others do. We will shape our innovations along a clear vector: to serve our students and society. A renewed social compact.

In the age of autonomous machines, the university that keeps human beings at the center will define what comes next.

I believe that university will be Northeastern. We are uniquely in tune with the world. We have a track record of innovating. The path ahead demands courage, imagination, and an unwavering belief in human possibility. Each of us will have a role to play in shaping the future.

Let us work together to lead this change and, in doing so, help restore the social compact between higher education and society.

Sincerely,

Joseph E. Aoun
President