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Pursuing a New Century of Innovation and Impact at Jefferson
Entering its third century, Thomas Jefferson University is a leader in professions-focused higher education and globally impactful research.
Thomas Jefferson University traces its origins to the 1824 founding of Jefferson Medical College — one of the nation’s first medical schools, the first to open a clinic for the poor, and the second with an associated teaching hospital.
In the centuries since, Jefferson has become a national doctoral research university with more than 200 diverse academic programs — and a research powerhouse in discovery, translational, clinical, and applied research and scholarship.
Dr. Susan C. Aldridge, President of Thomas Jefferson University, is an accomplished higher education leader, strategist and futurist who has served as President of the University of Maryland Global Campus, President of Drexel University Online, and Vice Chancellor of Troy University.
We asked Dr. Aldridge to share her perspectives on higher education, Jefferson’s unique characteristics, and the path forward in its quest to redefine possible.
What motivated you to accept this role at this challenging time?
This is a pivotal point in time for both higher education and a university, like ours, that possesses unique characteristics, strengths and opportunities.
Higher education is experiencing tectonic shifts, with hundreds of colleges and universities merging, being acquired, or landing on financial watch lists — and the pressures will only increase. Simultaneously, the world desperately needs what our institutions are best-positioned to offer: New knowledge and the capacity to prepare the skilled and adaptable workforce required to apply that knowledge.
This is also special time for Jefferson: We’re celebrating 200 years of accomplishment, growth, and leadership; and we’re defining the path forward for our next century. We are asking ourselves big questions, developing exciting answers, and working steadily to redefine possible for the 21st century.
Given that context, how could I not be excited about this role and the opportunity it presents to help shape the future?
Would you offer an example of Jefferson’s unique characteristics and strengths?
One notable strength is our novel, future-focused model for educating professionals. It’s why our admissions have grown steadily and our graduates have a 96% success rate.
Jefferson students know they will receive value for their investment and a clear pathway to employment — at graduation and beyond. We’re preparing them to succeed throughout their professional careers. We’re enabling them both to surf the waves of change they encounter and to relish the opportunities that change offers.
Our academic programs help students cultivate a core set of skills that enable them to address the evolving nature of work and of employers’ and society’s needs. The University’s Nexus Learning approach gives students hands-on experiences working with skilled professionals and addressing real-world challenges. It prepares them to collaborate within their disciplines and across professions, to bridge cultures and perspectives in the workplace, and to make bold, well-informed decisions.
Not only do our students learn to be facile in using emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, we help them recognize the importance of bringing empathy, insight and creativity to bear in using them. We encourage students both to leverage new technologies’ advantages and be cognizant of their limitations.
Perhaps most significantly in the long run, Jefferson empowers each student to be the curator and navigator of their own career-long educational journey, redefining possible for themselves and their professions.
Jefferson is notable, too, in its organizational structure, isn’t it?
I think we’re unique in two ways.
First, today’s Jefferson is the thriving product of the 2017 merger of Thomas Jefferson University and Philadelphia University, which united an institution focused on medicine and health sciences with one focused on design, business, textiles, engineering and more. Few higher education mergers have succeeded as we have: A strong, growing organization, we’re finding opportunities in the very demographic and technological developments roiling much of higher education.
Second, we’re one of the few multifaceted universities closely allied with a major regional health system and a non-profit health insurer. The close relationship of Thomas Jefferson University, the nationally recognized 17-hospital Jefferson Health system, and the award-winning Jefferson Health Plans offers opportunities not available to most universities. Just for example, we’re a robust pipeline for nursing graduates joining Jefferson Health hospitals; and we can provide targeted career-development programs for the system’s clinicians and staff. Jefferson Health Plans can offer student internships and provide data for faculty research. Our faculty can collaborate with both organizations to seek new federal, foundation and corporate research funding.
Jefferson’s unique characteristics enable us to define an exciting path that keeps us on the leading edge of professions-focused, cross disciplinary higher education and research.
How, then, are you thinking about Jefferson in its third century?
The cornerstone question we’re pondering is: Building on our accomplishments, how best do we ensure that the value of a Thomas Jefferson University education continues growing and the impact of our research continues increasing?
I know that our answer will incorporate three key principles shared across Jefferson: The importance of real-world, experiential learning. The need for creativity, empathy and collaboration among professions and across traditional institutional boundaries. The imperative of innovation, broadly, and specifically of continuously improving teaching by applying new technologies such as AI and new discoveries about cognition and learning.
The answer will also be guided by our commitment to:
- Providing high-value professional education and making life-long learning accessible for generations of students.
- Preparing our graduates to be leaders pursuing innovative and successful career paths in which they help redefine possible for the world.
- Creating, translating, and applying knowledge in impactful ways — across the full range of fields our faculty, students, researchers and scholars represent.
- Being a forward-looking, agile, flexible institution seeking new ways to solve problems and address evolving challenges.
Guided by those principles and commitments in our third century, I believe that Thomas Jefferson University will help ignite the new era of professional university education and research the world needs.