Matt Harmon:
It's our year end wrap up on our Monmouth Weekly podcast series. We step outside the box from our normal virtual world and inside the Raymond j Micelli Studios for a live broadcast on WMCX 88.9. Special appreciation to engineer Eric Reiser to wrap up 2024 with university President Dr. Patrick Leahy on faculty member of Matt Harmon. It's time for the latest episode of Monmouth Weekly.

WMCX:
This is WMCX 88.9 West Long Branch

Matt Harmon:
We are continuing with now some live programming here on WMCX 88.9 inside the Micelli Studios in West Long Branch. Great to be with you. I am faculty member Matt Harmon. We are assisted by our technical director Eric Reser, the director of engineering here at Monmouth with university President Dr. Patrick Lehe. It is Monmouth Weekly. I'm not sure if we can say Monmouth weekly anymore. It's been a while then. Great to number one, president Leahy have you here in the studios. I thought this was a great way to wrap up the semester. Wrap up 2024 and ironically enough, as we were just talking when Monmouth Weekly started over Covid, I was here on campus, would sneak into our new studio to record. We've done all of these remotely. It is great to be able to do it live in person and want to welcome you in here to the Plange Center and the studios of 88.9. How nice to be with you and

Patrick Leahy:
Here in our first class studios with Eric, did you have permission to sneak in here during the pandemic?

Matt Harmon:
I did. I had a handwritten note from the university president in case I needed to show it to police coming in. That was the craziest time and thinking of reflecting at the end of the year when we started the podcast in 2020, it was basically an informative way to keep people up to date with covid updates and how classes were going to run. But as we're at the end of the semester now, it was somewhat similar to me driving into the parking lot today because students are gone. Faculty have turned their grades in the parking lot's pretty empty. And that's exactly what it was back in 2020 when we started. And now here you are in essence your fifth year as university president, but things are so much different and so much better now in 2024 than they were in 2020. Boy are they?

Patrick Leahy:
I mean that was a dark period in our country, our world's history and here at Monmouth too. But we came through that very strongly, especially as I hear more about other institutions generally of our size and the struggles that they have. We came through that very strongly and because we did our strategic planning in the throes of the pandemic, we were ready to roll as soon as sort of the pandemic lifted and we're moving aggressively on our strategic plan.

Matt Harmon:
As you reminded me, since you are five plus years in, I think you said you just finished what would be your 11th semester as university president and you are proclaiming here today on Monmouth Weekly that this 11th semester was the best of your tenure so far.

Patrick Leahy:
I'll call it the best of my 11th semesters so far. I mean for a lot of reasons, and maybe I can start us off by getting into some of those. We have a bold strategic plan goal of being a national leader at integrating Excellence and Access. I always say not just a local leader or regional leader, but a bonafide national leader at integrating the two things you want in education, academic excellence and accessibility to deserving students irrespective of their financial means. So our goal is to become a national leader. And one of the reasons this semester is the finest ever in my opinion is because we are this semester the most highly ranked institution that we've ever been and the most accessible institution we've ever been. We're now 15th in our US News and World Report ranking. Again, take it for what it's worth, but that is one way the market measures excellence.
We're the highest we've ever been. 15th in our category 20 years ago, Matt, you'll recall we weren't even ranked 20 short years ago. We debuted at 67 and now we're 15th. Excellent. And this year for the second or third year in a row, 50% of our first year students are what we call fly students, either first generation or low income. And those are the core measures of access. So to be the most highly ranked we've ever been and the most successful we've ever been, we're on our way as an institution toward our bold strategic plan goal.

Matt Harmon:
You and I have talked over the course of our podcast about what we're talking about right now, which is rankings and where Monmouth kind of sits and is positioned from, I think when we started in 2020 and then kind of transitioned out of Covid and started talking more Monmouth happenings rather than Covid updates. It was how does Monmouth become a state leader? How does Monmouth become a region northeast leader? You're talking now about how Monmouth becomes more nationwide and I know from having these discussions with you, you've always thought Monmouth is the hidden gem at the Jersey shore. Would you still say hidden gem or would you say now based on some of these rankings and some of the things that we'll talk about today and take place on campus all the time, that the word is getting out on a little bit more normal basis? Or is it still we've got a ways

Patrick Leahy:
To go? I mean I sure hope it's getting out a little bit more. You can't help but get out a little bit more when you rise in the rankings like that. Again, for what it's worth, I know there's complexity to the rankings, but when you rise in the rankings, when you make some of the announcements that we're going to talk about here in a few minutes, that's going to put Monmouth University on a whole different trajectory. I mean, I just think can't help. One measurable way to judge that is through applications to the university. I mean, what we do is in large part to build demand in our seats. We had the largest applicant pool last year that we've ever had, and we're pretty much even again this year with last year, which was way up over the year before that. So if that's a measure of the word getting out, I think that's really positive. Again, we're going to talk a little bit about our capital campaign too, if that's another measurable way to judge this, then we're at record levels. So I hope so. Although there's still too many people that come to visit our campus and they say, wow, how come more people don't know about this place? So until I stop getting those comments, I'll still believe that we have some room yet to grow

Matt Harmon:
On Monday, this past Monday, about 10 days ago now, as we record here on a Thursday email from the president's office, speaking of a $175 million campaign, that's the capital campaign that you are discussing and talking about, and from the strategic plan side of it, I'll throw these words at you from your email, excellence, access and ambition. Tell me why those three words, excellence, access and ambition, embody what you're hoping Monmouth to be about?

Patrick Leahy:
I knew when I arrived here five years ago, we need to do a major capital campaign. Institutions like ours are constantly as raising money to try to bring the resources that we need in order to serve students effectively in the 21st century. But I have this model that I like to use before we get into a campaign. Let's go back for a minute and do our strategic planning. And part of that strategic planning process is to start with what is the vision that we have for the place, not for the next 50 years but for the next five years or so. And that's where we landed on we think we could become a bonafide national leader at integrating excellence at Access in. To do that, we would need to be both more excellent and more accessible. And so we created after that vision a strategic plan that has six intertwined themes with a lot of objectives that aim to get us more excellent and more accessible.
And then Matt, a capital campaign to what I always think of as to fund or to fuel the strategic plan that moves you closer to your vision. And so from the moment we launched our strategic plan, we started raising money in earnest and we weren't sure how big a campaign we could do. You know how these work, you do a quiet phase to get a sense for what kind of energy you can create. Then you set a goal and go public. And so we took it to the board recently and we said, we think we can get to $175 million. Well, to be candid, there were some gasps in the room because we'd never done 175 million. In fact, we've, I think at best done a quarter of that, maybe a third of that. So that was evidence that we're rolling and we're, I announced at our big public launch that we're three quarters of the way there already. Remember the Cardinal rule, don't announce a number that you don't think you can get to. Well, we're three quarters of the way there already. So I think everything we do in this campaign is to raise resources to build out the campus, to make a Monmouth education more affordable for students to improve the academic experience. So we're, we're on a really good path despite lots of challenges in higher ed and happy to talk through those, but we are on a really good pathway.

Matt Harmon:
We've talked challenges in higher ed over the duration basically of doing the podcast together. Much different when we started with Covid through the challenges of that to the FAFSA debacle last year, which was a challenge for him. No other way to say it. And you and I talked about it on one of our episodes. I have my middle son, Cooper, who I just picked up yesterday is at Springfield College up in Massachusetts and he had to deal with it. It was a nationwide, it wasn't a mammo thing, it was a nationwide thing. As you now turn the page as we are at the end of 2024, go into 25 and beyond, what now would you say are some of, I won't say all because we'd be here probably for the rest of the day, but give me one or two of the biggest challenges right now from a university administrative standpoint in terms of academic challenges.

Patrick Leahy:
I mean the biggest, I always try to boil all those challenges down into one thing, and that is the biggest challenge us is how does an institution with our ambition achieve that ambition in a resource constrained environment? Maybe we've talked about this, Matt, if we weren't ambitious as an institution and we are resource constrained, that'd be one thing. You'd be okay. Yeah, that'd be okay. If you had a ton of ambition and you had a ton of resources, well, that would be a different proposition. We have nonetheless, not given up on our ambition to be that national leader to break out of the pack of really fine sort of middle market schools that become over time a much more prominent institution. I always say I think we are a really good school, but we are on a path to greatness and that's ambitious. But how do you do that when every year the operating budgets are get tougher and tougher and trying to find incremental resources gets tougher and tougher?
It's a challenge. And the only way to lift that resource constraint to serve that ambition is one through strong enrollments and two through fundraising. And I include in fundraising, applying for government grants and the like. We consider that all resource generation. That's what I can do to help give you as a professor and all of your colleagues, the space you need, the tools you need, the resources you need to do what you do magically with our students. So the thing I worry most about is enrollment because it affects our budget and resource generation because it affects our budget. I can mind the budget in a way I hope to, even in a tough environment, make sure we're supporting the heart of the matter as much as possible, which is what you and hundreds of other faculty members do with our students day in and day out. I don't teach right now, so what I feel commissioned to do is to create the best possible environment for you to do what you do so well. And so that's a challenge. It's always sort of financial issues I think for a school like ours

Matt Harmon:
And at a school like Monmouth. And we'll turn the page off of this in a second and go through some highlights of this fall 2024 semester. When you think of it, Monmouth being the size that it is, and as the university president, and you've told me this and you've shared it in public forums, you'll get phone calls, emails from parents that want a direct line to the president. I'm sure that's a challenge for you from an administrative standpoint, but it also makes Mammoth what Monmouth is. And I was reminded of that today thinking for me, Hey, we're going to do this episode of Monmouth Weekly live in the studios. My office is across the hallway. When I was a student here at Monmouth in the mid nineties, the radio station was on top of the student center and how far we've come with this building and having the ability to do this is amazing. But Monmouth has always been that small, and I mean this as a compliment mom and pop kind of feel university where if you want to, you could pick up the telephone still and say, I want to talk to President Lehe. I'm the father of Jack Lehey and I want to know what's going on.

Patrick Leahy:
And I try to give our students, all of our staff members, the parents in our community that access, because to your point, we're small enough that it's not unreasonable. If a parent has a problem and they can't get it sorted out somewhere else in the organization, they can call me now. It's very likely I'll try to be empathetic to their concern and kick it to the person here on campus who's the expert and can help solve it. But I've always tried to be as accessible as possible, especially in an institution of our size. If we were a whole ton bigger, I don't know how feasible that would be, but for an institution of our size, you've heard me say to our faculty and staff, if you write to me, you'll get an answer from me, not from my staff answering on my behalf, but from me.
And fortunately people don't abuse that to the point where I can't handle it. And I said yesterday at a crossover ceremony for our occupational therapy program, I should add quickly, fully accredited now, occupational therapy doctoral program. It was basically a startup over the last few years. And I said to the families there, how proud I am of our campus, the investments we're going to make in our campus, this incredible studio that you referenced just a minute ago, and how state of the art I hope it is, and we'll continue to invest in the campus and I hope we talk about that in a minute. But I always subscribe to what a president of a university said a hundred years ago when he was touting how great his campus was. He said we could meet in a tent and we'd be a great university because the bottom line when you strip everything away is the magic that happens when a motivated interested student meets a faculty member with expertise and the two of them work together. That is the heart of education. So I don't lose sight of that even though I'm really excited about the investments we're going to make in our physical plan.

Matt Harmon:
Eric Recher, our director of engineering, our broadcast engineer today, this is Monmouth weekly University president, Dr. Patrick Laham, faculty member Matt Harmon. We've been doing this show for quite some time a semester. And wrap up is where we are here. We're broadcasting live inside the studios of WMCX 88.9. You just mentioned trying to make the campus better, trying to make the campus bigger. I've said this to you and I do it religiously because I think it's important. Our campus looks amazing. It always does. I always, anytime I drive past one of our facilities, people who work on campus, I stop and say thank you. I actually did it the other day driving in, had to have some, we have headphones, nod, they were blowing leaves around and they stopped. We had a nice conversation. That's one piece of it. The campus itself always looks great. What's the next couple of things from a campus perspective that over the course strategic plan the next five years, how is Monmouth going to look different than it does right now?

Patrick Leahy:
So the plan all along in our strategic plan, Matt, was we have some really significant projects that we want to execute on, and I'll mention those in a second, but while we're doing the design work on that and going through the planning in particular with the local planning boards, et cetera, and most importantly doing the fundraising to make those projects possible, we were doing a lot of other smaller things. There were two tracks, always the big legacy projects we call 'em and a lot of campus enhancements. So over the last few years during the course of the strategic plan, we built the Parton Broadcast Center, which I know

Matt Harmon:
Well.

Patrick Leahy:
We built out the space for the Center for Entrepreneurship. We retooled the Great Hall into a gathering space for students. We built out an intercultural center, we created a new alumni house. You get the idea, the Nagy common. We just dedicated this fall. So a lot of little things that I think continue to make the campus more beautiful and more functional for our students and their faculty and staff mentors. But now in addition to that, now we're ready to launch those big ones. And the first, as you know, was this fall we did officially break ground on the Bruce Springsteen archives and Center for American Music, which is a $48 million investment right here on the campus. There will be no university in the country. If you're interested in American music, all parts of American music, there'll be no university in the country where you should study besides Monmouth. When that is built and up and fully functioning, what our executive director always says is what Washington DC could have done. That is, you wouldn't be surprised if you heard, oh, that we're building a center for American Music on the mall in Washington DC to study the history of American music.

Matt Harmon:
What they could have done seems like a perfect place to have it right, because everything else is down

Patrick Leahy:
There. Yeah, you wouldn't be surprised in the least if you heard that was going to happen there. But it's going to happen right here on the campus of Monmouth University in Monmouth County at the Jersey Shore Home Run proposition, not just for our university but for our entire state. And that project is a hundred percent paid for with third party donations, number one. Number two, we just got approval from our board to in fact execute on our Student Wellness Center project, which is a major expansion of the Ocean First Bank Center going west toward Kessler Stadium. So it will bring Kessler Stadium and the Ocean First Bank Center together into a much more of a stadium like feel and add resources for students, athletes, and non-athletes alike. That's a $28 million project and it's four fifths of the way to our fundraising goal. Still a little bit of work yet to do there, but that was approved. And then the third one is this pet project of mine is Campus Gateway Project, which we already have a thoroughfare that runs through the heart of the campus around which many of our most important academic buildings are situated. When I arrived, it was still a road you could drive through. I said, first of all, we're not driving through the campus. We're not mixing cars and pedestrians on a residential

Matt Harmon:
Campus. I used to enjoy that drive,

Patrick Leahy:
Quite honestly. It was like the sneaky way in and out of campus that nobody

Matt Harmon:
Really knew about.

Patrick Leahy:
So we've decided no cars, and now the next step is to turn that into a really, really beautiful first class pedestrian walkway that will be an iconic part of our already iconic campus. That's a much smaller project, two and a half million, and that is covered a hundred percent by third party fundraising. So those projects are all going to happen here in the next few years, hopefully consistent with the close of our strategic plan in only a year and a half, two years,

Matt Harmon:
Dare I say, as we're about 20 minutes in here, did you just come up with your own Christmas list for Monmouth University a little bit on holiday times?

Patrick Leahy:
Well, I was out of community function at the Count. Basey Theater, as you know, is a great asset in our community. I was there for a holiday concert this week and Santa was there, and of course they had me visit with Santa and someone asked me, okay, what do you want Santa to bring? And my answer was a thousand freshmen next fall. Makes sense. So that back to the enrollment challenge, that's what I asked for on behalf of Monmouth. Did

Matt Harmon:
You leave the website for the donation for the new capital campaign? Yes, I should have. Hey, if you're swinging by and you have access on your sleigh, log in as you go past West Long Branch,

Patrick Leahy:
Just drop it right onto the campus.

Matt Harmon:
Drop, drop a little, we'll find it. So many good things that take place here within the Monmouth community. You just went through some of 'em. The campaigns that are going on, the buildings, the Springsteen archives, the Center for American Music, all the little nuggets that is the Monmouth campus, the big picture, you just kind of talked through a little bit, the small wins along the way, and having gotten to know you over the course of the last five years, realizing that you are somewhat competitive in nature. You don't like Monmouth to not be number one in anything or part of the conversation. And sometimes that is athletics, sometimes in a broader perspective. That's academic. And as I transition to that, where I'm heading is just talking about it in the hallway as we bumped into Aaron Ferguson, who's the faculty advisor for WMCX, member of the Department of Communication on campus as a professor, has been here for a long time like myself, and we just shared a story of the winter term that's now going to start a pilot program for winter term to give students the opportunity to, if they want to in between the fall and the spring semester, take a class, get three credits, get caught up or get ahead.
In many perspectives, Dr. Ferguson is teaching one of those classes. That's another way. And he and I being mom with alums and Eric the same thing. That was a common thing back in the day and you are trying to now bring that back.

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah, we want to bring it back under one fundamental premise. We are claim to be and are a student centered university. And my experience even in talking with students is for some of them, not all of them, not even the majority of 'em, but for some of them, they don't want to sit idle for the three or four weeks between the end of the fall semester and the beginning of the spring semester. They're like, I want to keep rolling toward my degree. As you said, Matt, oh, I need to make up a class that didn't go so well or I couldn't fit into the schedule, or Hey, great, I can get ahead, maybe lighten my load in the full semester ahead in order to make sure I'm doing as well as possible. So we just decided let's bring back this year sort of as a pilot, a winter session, and ask our faculty members to unleash as much academic innovation as possible.
It's a condensed period of time. I recognize that we have to be a little creative to put a full rigorous three credits worth of work into a three week period, but let's figure out how to do it. We have online delivery available to us, synchronous and asynchronous available to us. I hope in the future there'll be, maybe this is a chance to do study trips with students. There's all kinds of things we could do. We're asking our career development center to think of unique ways in which we might put the career development center to work during that winter session, maybe to do mini micro internships and the like matching students with alumni. I just think, and I should say as you pointed out, it's purely voluntary. We did not change the schedule. We still have the regular fall semester, the regular spring semester, and a very robust summer session as five sessions in the summer.
We didn't want to mess with that, so we figured, well, we'll just create it in these space that's available. We're going to try it, we're going to see how it goes, and it's all around trying to serve students 12 months of the year. I have this thing, maybe you've heard me say, I want to be a 12 month university, and people look at me like, what? And I say, my point is I want to be able to serve students toward their degree all 12 months of the year. We do that in huge ways in the summer. So the summer's a dead period for a lot of schools, not here, over 10,000 credits last summer. Let's just see if we could mimic that in a smaller way with the winner. So if it's bringing back, maybe you just go through cycles in higher ed, but I think it's worth bringing back and trying. And in our first year, we're going to have, I think we have 110 students signed up to take those micro courses. So it's a start. We'll see how it goes and adjust going forward.

Matt Harmon:
Couple of things to close with here. We always try and keep these podcast episodes today doing it live at WMCX 88.9 to about a half an hour, give or take a little bit. I'll embarrass you here for a second, which is to say you have been recognized by ROI nj.com as a business leader in the state of New Jersey. And I know at different times you've been on different lists, you've been recognized as a leader in higher education. This one's a little bit bigger, right? Because it's more encompassing in different areas and it's kind of the full list, right? In some ways,

Patrick Leahy:
Yeah. That's why it's a little embarrassing to me. The ROI, New Jersey and NJ Biz and some other publications every year will recognize individuals in different sectors. And I always joke that if you stick around long enough, you're going to find yourself on that list. And now I'm five and a half years into it, so I'm always grateful to be on the sector lists when they come out. This was very surprising because this is a cross sector list, 140 of the top business leaders in the state, and I was really surprised to get that because I looked at some of the other names on that list. I mean, come on. I mean, I'm honored, but I'm embarrassed to be on a list with the CEO of Merck and the president of the New York Giants and the owner of the New York Jets, and actually one of our board members, Valerie Monte Cavo, she's deserving, of course, to be on that list.
Peter Kro is on that list. Mike's of Jersey, Mike's fame. This is not false modesty. I just feel like that's very nice that you would include me on that list, but I don't deserve to be on a list like that. I mean, Peter Kro bought a sub shop 40 years ago and turned it into, I think it's public at 8 billion, 8 billion, 8 billion enterprise. So I don't feel deserving to be on a list like that. I'm very grateful. But there's a few other college presidents on the list and they're real leaders in our field. So anyway, I'm honored and embarrassed at the same time.

Matt Harmon:
So you get to go to either a Jets or a Giants game, have it be catered by Jersey Mikes, and you can sit around and talk with other university presidents

Patrick Leahy:
And Valerie Monte Cabo, who runs Bayshore Recycling. We'll do all of the waste management,

Matt Harmon:
Do the cleanup at the end, do the cleanup at the end. You mentioned the board. I'll give you a chance here, twofold. This would be board specific. All of the projects that you have mentioned really over the entirety of you and I recording, they all need on some level, board support, board approval. So as you mentioned, Valerie, who's part of the board without the support that you get from that group, none of this is in some way really possible, right?

Patrick Leahy:
I have an incredible board of trustees. Again, I say this a lot to them and maybe I've never shared it with you or with our audience, but every university president in the country should have a board like I have. They don't, which is a strategic advantage for Monmouth University that we have such a great board, but every university president should have a board like we have and a board chair like I have in Chris Maher who's the CEO of Ocean First Bank. I always say about Chris Maher that I'm 56 years old, Matt have been working in higher ed administration for 20 years, business 10 years before that at 56 years old. Every time I'm on the phone with him or I'm in a meeting with him, I'm still learning from him what it means to be an effective executive. What a privilege for me to have a board chair, not only who's as supportive as he is of what we're doing, but someone from whom I can learn increasing things even at 56. So we do have a great board. I appreciate you mentioning them. They're in large part responsible for why we are where we are with our capital campaign, and we work hard to make sure that the board is supportive. It's a two-way thing. Our administration works hard to make sure they're informed and that they have the information they need, but very grateful to have them in the university's corner.

Matt Harmon:
Good transition. By the way, mentioning Ocean First Bank because this weekend is the first and only Monmouth men's basketball game at home at the Ocean First Bank Center. Women have had a couple of game over there, but the men, because of the design of the schedule this year at just one home game in November and December, talk athletics a little bit. If you want. I'm sure that you will be there on Saturday afternoon. Hawks will be taken on Fairfield. Hopefully people come out over the course of a holiday weekend. But now year three in the CAA, which was a monumental move a couple of years ago for Monmouth, the transition from the fall into the winter, pretty soon it'll be the winter into the spring. Feel like Monmouth has really settled into the CAA pretty well.

Patrick Leahy:
It's the third year as you point out, and I'll repeat that. Nobody questions whether we deserve to be in the CAA. I mean, look at our fall sports really competitive in field hockey and men's soccer, women's soccer, football had a solid year especially, especially ending the year strongly as they did. So we feel at home in the CA athletically, I feel there's much bigger than just that. It's the chance to compete up and down the East coast and to associate with such fine super regional, if not national institutions. So there's a strategic reason, not just athletics, why we're happy to be in the CAA on basketball quickly. I would encourage support of our programs On the women's side, Kate Wetmore is in her first year, and to be a first time head coach and to start, I think oh and six, it can't be easy on a first year head coach, but then to win four straight is evidence of the character that we have. I think in our new women's head coach.

Matt Harmon:
And I should make mention, speaking of the men, just having the one home game that is on Saturday, part of a double header that will take place, the women will play at four 30 against American and try and make it five straight. Wouldn't that be

Patrick Leahy:
Great? I mean,

Matt Harmon:
We don't get many old fashioned anymore.

Patrick Leahy:
Well, exactly, and just a quick aside, just think about that for one second that we get a chance at Monmouth University to bring to campus on one afternoon in December. Fairfield University, a really fine school. Nobody doubts that, right? An American University, one of the top national universities in the country, and we at Monmouth, because we are a division one athletics program, we get a chance to compete against those really fine schools right here on campus. It's got to be good over the long run for our academic reputation. You talk about ways in which we're trying to get the word out, and I'm tired of hearing that we're a hidden gem. Well, one of the ways we do that is the people, the institutions with which we choose to compete. It's such a great thing for us now, I hope we walk away with two wins too, but it's such a great thing for us, and I've been saying to folks, I worked in a division three environment for 15 years before I came to Monmouth, and I just say to folks who have been around here for a long time and have always been supportive of a division one program, sometimes maybe people forget what a privilege it is despite the challenges.
And there are a lot, be it a division one program right now, but don't underestimate the privilege of being able to play the finest schools in the country. There's a lot of really fine schools at division three, but you just don't know them. They're much smaller, they're much less prominent in many cases. You come to Monmouth, you compete in division one, you play all these non-conference games against marquee schools. Then you go into the CAA with some of the finest schools in the country. It is an important part of what we're trying to do to chase that greatness at Monmouth. And again, there's a lot of challenges in Division one athletics. Maybe we'll hold that for our next podcast, but it is worth fighting through those challenges because of the opportunity to play some really fine schools.

Matt Harmon:
Let's finish with this one, president Lehe. As we transition out of the fall 24 semester into the holiday period before the spring of 25, I'll give you a chance to say a holiday message to everyone involved with the Monmouth University community, whether they're alums, whether they're staff, faculty, the student body. This is a great time to reflect on what 2024 has been, but a holiday message for everyone

Patrick Leahy:
At our campaign launch. I asked people to just do a little thought experiment with me. Think first, if this place did not exist, imagine if Ma Luther University did not exist maybe in 1933 at our humble beginnings. Maybe they were so humble, we never made it. What would've happened to this piece of property and to the Great Hall and the shadow on estate, and who would be playing in the CAA? That was right after the men's team beat Seton the hall. I was like, who would've beaten Seton the hall last weekend? Would there be a center for American music? And if so, if there was one, it wouldn't be here. It probably would be in dc. There'd be no Urban Coast Institute And on and on and on.
And then I said, and now think for a minute. Fortunately, it does exist and where we could be in the next five years, and we've talked about what we think we can do in just five years, not 55 short years. My message is this place matters. There are countless students who come through here and their lives are changed forever. This place matters and it's worthy of broad-based support of our students and our faculty and staff who are supporting them. And I just hope everybody who's interested in Monmouth University really feels that this holiday season support, we always, of course, welcome support, but that's not a plea for financial support, although we always welcome it. That's a plea for just energy and enthusiasm around what Monmouth University is and what we could be in a few short years.

Matt Harmon:
You got the whole gang home for the Christmas holiday or No?

Patrick Leahy:
I got the whole gang home, so it's going to be a busy holiday, but that's just the way we like it.

Matt Harmon:
It's the way likes it. For sure. I really appreciate you, number one, always clearing time in your schedule. I know it's been a while since we've done an episode of and that is on me, Matt. No, I mean, I hope that you liked the live aspect today of coming into the studio, being able to chat. I'd love to do it again at some point down the road, maybe when the building isn't so empty and there's some students popping around and they could say, wait a minute, I think I just saw the president going to the studios at WMCX. But this was great. I appreciate you coming by. Obviously, I wish you and your family nothing but a fantastic holiday and some downtime.

Patrick Leahy:
And you too. Matt, I thank you for everything you do for Monmouth University in particular, taking the lead on series, I promise you a better rhythm, 20. I wish you and your who spend some time listening to us. I wish all of season

Matt Harmon:
Eric Greer, our engineer today, thanks to Nick coming over, grabbing some video that we'll be able to publish for you as well for University President Dr. Patrick Leham, faculty member Matt Harmon. We wish you a great holiday season, a happy end of.