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We are determined that Fairfield will be a beacon in Jesuit, Catholic higher education, shining a light of hope for prospective students and their families, welcoming our neighbors and friends who come to us seeking assistance, and serving as a place for inquiry, dialogue, and artistic enrichment. At the heart of this work – naturally, and in keeping with our rootedness in the traditions of Jesuit education – is our focused attention to the specific needs of today’s students, both in the classroom, and as young persons who may need our financial and community support in order to grow.

Certainly, we know that with each new year we are encountering more and more young people who join the Fairfield community. We welcomed 1,436 new Stags to our campus this September, drawn selectively from the largest applicant pool in our history with an admit rate of 44.9 percent. This is the most geographically and culturally diverse group we have ever welcomed, and includes almost 100 students from Jesuit and Cristo Rey high schools.

Additionally, as we seek to reach broader student populations in ever more innovative ways, we are committed to providing access to students of all backgrounds and economic resources. You will read inside — in addition to features on our faculty research, and arts & minds initiative — about some of the work that we have been doing to provide access to a Fairfield education. These initiatives include our Company Scholars, some of whom you will meet inside, and of course our Fairfield Bellarmine program in Bridgeport, which opened its doors to its first cohort of students this September.

While we do not seek affirmation for such work, we are heartened to see our efforts acknowledged in a variety of university rankings of distinction. Recently, as you know, Fairfield moved into the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education’s Doctoral Professional University category – essentially, we are not a regional university anymore but a national one. And gratifyingly, this year US News & World Report ranked us 75th among the private universities in this group. That’s an indication that we are making strong headway as we grow in national prominence. We were also ranked 28th in the nation for undergraduate teaching — our primary raison d’etre — a recognition that our students are engaged and transformed by our faculty. We were also ranked 124th on The Wall Street Journal’s Best Colleges in the U.S. list, up 66 spots from the previous year. Finally as a values-based, student-centric, outcomes-focused institution, it is most significant that we are ranked among the top one percent of universities among the 4,500 postsecondary educational institutions examined for long-term return on investment by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. In the state of Connecticut, we are only surpassed by Yale in this measurement. As students and families assess their commitment to further their education, we can assuredly say to them: “Your faith in us will be rewarded.”

With this as background, I want to also draw attention to how we financially support students and their families from a broad range of incomes and backgrounds. We look at the needs of families from across the spectrum of incomes, and where there is high need, we make sure that we can provide those students, including Pelleligible students, with financial support so that they can graduate on time, and with minimal debt. For the majority of our Pell students, we meet their full financial needs after the Pell grant is applied — not every school does this — and that support is sustained through graduation. In addition, Fairfield historically enrolls and supports 35 to 40 students a year who, because of family circumstances, do not qualify for federal aid. We commit $2 million a year to support this group of students. Through our Jesuit networks, we are also committed to fully funding a number of talented students from around the world who come from low-income backgrounds. Finally, we continue to significantly increase our need and merit-based aid. Since 2017, our aid has risen from $72 million to $101 million, an increase of 40 percent, and we certainly expect this level of aid to continue to rise.

Our whole portfolio of practices to support access — from Fairfield Bellarmine, to The Company Scholars, to our financial aid across the economic spectrum – is part of our strategic enrollment plan that extends our University’s founding mission. The core of this mission, as it has always been, is to provide the transformative gift of education to those who desire it. As we continue to grow, we remain confident that our commitment to form children of God as individuals of purpose in service of the greater good will be available to more and more students of promise. Now, perhaps more than ever in many of our lifetimes, the world needs confident and compassionate Fairfield graduates to set the world afire.

With my best wishes for you all,

Mark R. Nemec, PhD
President