2025 State of the College: ‘This Is Our Moment!’
President Roger Thompson outlines a student-first agenda—elevating the Saint Mary’s experience, advancing academic innovation, expanding access and belonging, and shaping a bold regional and global vision.
Saint Mary’s President Roger Thompson delivered the 2025 State of the College address on October 22 in front of a packed Soda Center audience, framing the year around four priorities—Student Experience, Academic Excellence, Access and Belonging, and Places and Spaces—and outlining steps to strengthen the College’s long-term sustainability.
He highlighted momentum in enrollment, new academic pathways, and vibrant campus life—and called for expanded evening and weekend programming in The 1928 Pub, Saint Mary’s Redwood Grove, Café Louis, and the Joseph L. Alioto Recreation Center—to create more opportunities for students to connect and participate in a vibrant campus experience. He also wove in student stories that bring the themes he spoke of to life: from collaborative research projects in the Sierra Nevada to internships that turn curiosity into purpose.
“Our goal is simple,” he said. “It is to ensure that more Gaels learn here, launch here, and lead here—contributing to a thriving economy and a stronger common good for the communities we call home.”
Watch the full address below to hear President Thompson’s remarks and vision for the decade ahead:
On Academic Excellence, President Thompson spotlighted growth in Nursing and Public Health, faculty-student research, and a proposed core requirement in Big Data and Data Analytics beginning with the Class of 2030—ensuring every graduate can interpret and communicate with data “to think logically and live ethically.” He reaffirmed the liberal arts as the foundation for ethical leadership and celebrated strong results in Division I Athletics.
“Our goal is simple. It is to ensure that more Gaels learn here, launch here, and lead here—contributing to a thriving economy and a stronger common good for the communities we call home.”
When it comes to advancing Access and Belonging, Thompson noted increased scholarship support; the new TRIO grant powering High Potential’s HP-RISE initiatives to better serve first-generation and low-income students; the PREP program’s decade of welcoming students with disabilities; and new enrollment pipelines with community-based organizations and partner schools that are designed to broaden opportunity and welcome mission-aligned students to Moraga.
Looking ahead, Thompson cast a vision for what Saint Mary’s might offer: a Health Sciences hub serving the East Bay, a state-of-the-art Museum of Art, and a renewed “business school of the future” that integrates ethics with analytics and deepens employer partnerships from the inner San Francisco Bay to the I-680/I-80 corridors. He also called for “Every Gael, a passport”—leveraging the worldwide Lasallian network for study abroad, short immersions, and global experiences. Positioned as an engine for regional growth from Moraga to Lafayette and Walnut Creek and up the corridor toward Sacramento, he underscored, “This is our moment.”
Read the full address:
