Dear Adams,
We write you today to tell you that we will be retiring as your Faculty Deans at the end of this spring semester. These 21 years have been wonderful for us, and we will miss all of you more than you can imagine — all the students, tutors, staff, members of the Senior Common Room and all our alums who write to us from all over the world. We will miss our spectacular traditions, events and activities and all the amazing spaces, great and small, that comprise Adams House. All of you have been our Adams family for more than two decades, here and across six continents — not just while you are here, but always.
We have been honored to serve as Faculty Deans at Adams House because of the strength of our community and our long tradition of warmth, openness and inclusivity. This year, with the publishing of our house mission, you have once again underscored the centrality of welcoming, diversity, belonging and active anti-discrimination in our Adams House life. Adams has a proud history of community consciousness and advocacy, and every year we celebrate the amazing contributions that our students and other members make to our house, university and country. And we love how Adams House celebrates so joyfully in the arts of all kinds, all the music, theater, art and literature that is so central to the life of the house.
This decision of ours is not sudden. We made it over a year ago, but to support the house and college during this complex time, we postponed our retirement until now. We wanted to be here to help everyone over most (we hope) of the hump of the COVID epidemic and to help complete the architectural plans for Adams House renovation, which we have now done.
We are sad to be stepping down, but want you to know that Adams House will always be close to our hearts. These 21 years have been fun and exhilarating. Adams House has been a home filled with such extraordinary residents and staff that every day has been new and interesting. You, our alums, have given us great pride and joy both while you were here and equally as much now that you have graduated and moved on. We see you expanding on so many of the values you showed here – your commitment to friends and family, teams and orchestras, innovation in academic fields, and most of all, commitment to building equity and diversity everywhere you go and giving strength, support and potential to the people around you.
We have loved hearing from you and seeing you when you come back. We urge you to visit the new Claverly Hall, which is beautiful and will be completed this Spring. Work on the rest of Adams has been suspended for lack of funds, though we have completed the architectural plans, which are magnificent. We are also enormously grateful to the alumni/ae of Adams who have participated so eagerly and generously in the FDR Suite Renovation and Programming of the FDR Foundation.
A letter from Dean Khurana to the university will outline the process that will soon be put into place to find the new Faculty Deans for Adams House. We hope that many of you will participate in the search for the new Deans. We have been enormously blessed to serve in this role and know that our successors will also revel in the amazing world that is Adams.
We love you.
Sean and Judy