Please tell the members of the Senate Executive Committee, and indeed of the University Senate as a whole, how delighted and touched I was to receive the resolution of appreciation that the Executive committee unanimously approved in October on behalf of the full Senate.  I have great respect for the collective wisdom of the Senate and for the care that all of its members take to represent their constituencies in the most thoughtful and responsible manner possible.  The quality of the work that the Senate committees did on each of the difficult issues we faced was uniformly high.  All of the members of my administration and I benefited tremendously from the good counsel we received from the Senate.  The free flow of information and opinion between the administration and the Senate has been crucial in keeping every part of the university -- administrators, faculty, students, and alumni -- fully informed of the problems, the triumphs, and the progress of the university, contributing to our sense that we were all involved in a common cause and working toward goals that we could understand and agree were important in order to create an even better Rutgers.

I want to thank the University Senate as a whole for welcoming my participation and for working with my administration throughout my tenure.  I owe thanks in particular to all of the chairs of the Senate, to the Executive Committee members, and to the members of the Senate committees, who have spent so generously of their time and energy.  You have enabled the Senate, as one of Rutgers’ major formal means of participatory governance, to function in what seems to me a virtually ideal way of mutually respectful give and take for the past 12 years.

Sincerely,

Fran Lawrence