Commission on Residential Environment (CORE) Report

Dear Members of the Campus Community,

In the spring of 2014, Lehigh University began a process of taking a comprehensive look at the residential experience of our students, both on and off-campus. This group was created to evaluate and recommend improvements to student living and examine how the residential environment relates to education and social life at Lehigh.

The full review of preliminary recommendations, including an executive summary, can be read online here.

The Commission on Residential Environment, or CORE, was co-chaired by trustee Sarat Sethi and professor emeritus Edwin Kay. More than 60 faculty, staff and students served on eight CORE working groups. As the conclusion of this comprehensive process, the CORE group proposed six major recommendations for the university to consider.

These recommendations provide a great deal of material for thoughtful consideration. They will form the basis of a broad discussion that will begin with the start of the academic year. We will be hearing from students, faculty and staff in open forums that will be held on campus, and we will also solicit feedback from alumni as part of this process.

More information will be provided about how all of you can participate in these discussions. In the meantime, we welcome your thoughts. Please either email your comments to corereport@lehigh.edu, or share your comments online on a discussion board at www1.lehigh.edu/corereportfeedbackforum.

Our intent is to gather input over the course of the summer and fall semester, and take those insights into consideration, along with financial implications and integration with the university's long-range strategic goals. Our goal is to arrive at a final decision on the recommendation by the end of the 2016 Spring semester.

We want to take this opportunity to thank Sarat Sethi and Ed Kay for their extraordinary leadership of this review process, and extend our gratitude to the committee members on depth of their work and for their commitment to creating a better Lehigh. This review is emblematic of broader efforts across the university to continue to evolve to meet the changing needs of our students while sustaining a vital, intellectually engaging and extraordinary living and learning community.

Sincerely,

John Simon
President