If you drove past Guilford College on an early summer afternoon after graduation and before summer camps and music workshops began, you might think not much is happening. From the road, our postcard campus can look almost still. Our bricked sidewalks are quieter than they are in October. Students aren’t rushing out of residence halls to class. The parking lots have more empty spaces than full ones.

Except the thing about colleges is that some of their most important work happens when nobody is watching. Spend a little time here and you’ll discover a different story. Behind office doors, in committee meetings and planning sessions, across campus and throughout Greensboro, people are doing the work of imagining what Guilford can become — and then setting about the business of building it.

This is the second issue of Guilford College Magazine since I became president last year, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to share some of that work with you.

Last December, when Guilford secured its accreditation, there was understandable relief. But relief only gets you so far. The more interesting question remains: how do you take a college with nearly 190 years of history and make sure it prepares students for a world changing faster than any generation before them? And just as important: how do we do this while preserving the values that have made Guilford distinctive for nearly two centuries?

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The answers are taking shape in ways both practical and ambitious. Later this summer, we will begin to implement a new strategic plan that will guide Guilford through 2030. The plan emerged from months of conversations with faculty, staff, students, alumni, trustees, friends and community partners.

It reflects a shared belief that Guilford’s future depends not on becoming something different, but on becoming more fully itself.We’re also developing new ways to tell Guilford’s story, refining how we present ourselves to prospective students and families, and making our website more compelling and easier to navigate.

Those efforts may sound modest, but they are important. In a crowded higher education landscape, institutions must clearly communicate who they are and why they matter. And Guilford has a powerful story to tell. One sign of that story arrives in July when the sounds of classical music once again drift across campus this summer as the Eastern Festival of Music brings some of the nation’s most talented young musicians to Guilford for five weeks of study, rehearsal and performance

Every evening, Dana Auditorium fills with music. If you’ve attended one of the music festival concerts in the past, you know the experience. The lights dim. An orchestra or ensemble settles. Then something remarkable happens. For a few hours, people from across the Triad gather in a shared space to listen, reflect and be moved. Guilford has always possessed extraordinary strengths. Our commitment to an education that is both “civil and useful.” Our Quaker-inspired values. Our highly personal approach to teaching and learning. Our belief that every person carries an inner Light worth discovering and nurturing. Those qualities remain as relevant today as they were generations ago.

I often find myself returning to a simple truth the late Professor Cyril Harvey shared: Human beings learn from other human beings how to be human. That truth sits at the heart of liberal arts education. It sits at the heart of community.

And it sits at the heart of democracy itself. At Guilford, we intentionally create spaces where people from different backgrounds, experiences and perspectives learn alongside one another. We make room for everyone. In a fractured world, that work matters.

I would love to see more of that at Guilford. In the years ahead, I envision our campus becoming an even stronger destination for the performing arts and cultural experiences of all kinds, a place where people from throughout the region come together to learn and connect.

Meanwhile, our faculty members are nearing the completion of an important yearlong effort to rethink Guilford’s core curriculum. Their recommendations, scheduled to take effect in Fall 2027, are grounded in a simple but increasingly urgent question: How do we educate students to live meaningful lives in a world filled with constant distraction?

Technology offers extraordinary opportunities. It also competes relentlessly for our attention. A Guilford education should help students navigate that reality. It should create opportunities for reflection, curiosity, wonder, discovery and genuine human connection. It should prepare students not simply for their first job — or even their eventual career — but for lives marked by purpose, adaptability and engagement with the world around them.

That vision is not new. In many ways, it reaches back to the very foundations of this College.

None of it would be possible without the extraordinary commitment of Guilford’s faculty and staff. Over the past several years, they have navigated financial challenges with resilience, creativity and unwavering dedication to our students.

Because of their efforts, generations of Guilford students have continued to receive the meaningful, transformative experience they came here seeking. I am equally grateful to our alumni and friends. Your support, encouragement, advocacy and generosity have helped bring us to this moment.

Together, we are creating the conditions not simply for Guilford to endure, but to flourish. The campus may look quiet from the road. But look a little closer. Music returning to Dana. Faculty are imagining new possibilities for teaching and learning. First-year students are preparing to arrive and upperclass students are eager to return. There are alumni investing in the future. There is a community doing the patient work of renewal. And there is every reason to be hopeful about what comes next.
 
Jean Parvin Bordewich
President