On Thursday, March 21, Carnegie Mellon president Farnam Jahanian held a town hall meeting with students. He gave a presentation on the state of the university, which was followed by questions and answers with students.
Jahanian spoke about the university’s focus on improving the residential experience for students, including the new, popular Fifth and Clyde and Forbes and Beeler dormitories, as well as Scotty’s Market. “We not only opened these two new residence halls,” he said, “but also one by one the residence halls are getting updated and upgraded, and this neighborhood commons concept is going to become pervasive across the university.”
Jahanian said he is also proud of various health and wellness accomplishments, including the Highmark Center, which will open “sometime this summer,” and which will host University Health Services, Counseling and Psychological Services, “wellness initiatives, religious, spiritual life, and of course some additional facilities for our student athletes.” Another wellness feat is the new Fall Break.
Carnegie Mellon has become more selective. Jahaian described how over the past 10 years, the admission rate went from around 33 percent to around 11 percent. Over the past five years, there was a 40 percent increase in the number of applications Carnegie Mellon received. The student population increased after COVID, largely because of students who had chosen to defer, but Jahanian said, “the overall population of the campus is intended to be fairly stable.”
Jahanian acknowledged the tuition increase, although he emphasized that our tuition is about average among our peers, and that the university “is among the best in terms of return on investment.” However, he “still worr[ies] quite a bit about making Carnegie Mellon accessible to students from various socioeconomic tiers.” According to Jahanian’s slides, 80 percent of financial aid for Carnegie Mellon students comes from “internal sources” (as opposed to federal funding and the endowment).
The president said he was also proud to have recruited 198 faculty members last year. Carnegie Mellon has upgraded many of the research facilities, ANSYS hall, and 103 classrooms, not to mention the upcoming Richard King Mellon Hall of Science. Over the past ten years, Carnegie Mellon has “added 1.6 million square feet of space across campus, on top of only about 4.5 or 5 million square feet that we already had,” Jahanian told students.
Jahanian said that Carnegie Mellon has been doing a good job regarding campus climate. “We can disagree and hopefully build some bridges of understanding and bring people together, and I feel so strongly about the role of university as a place of civil discourse and free expression.” Jahanian also sees this as an American value, saying that while we should always “strive to have a better society. … I’m an immigrant and I’ve traveled all over the world. I have to tell you, we’re the envy of the world when it comes to freedom of speech and freedom of expression.”
Carnegie Mellon has also been engaging in the wider world. “This is CMU’s moment. The areas that CMU has excelled at in recent decades are the areas that are so important to society,” he said. Carnegie Mellon is involved not only in local community engagement — including educating Pittsburgh children in robotics and teaching more than 100,000 students through CS Academy — but is also involved in federal policy.
Jahanian also mentioned the fact that he serves on President Biden’s export council and attended Biden’s signing of the CHIPS and Science Act.
Jahanian said that “almost every month, we have faculty members from CMU who are testifying before Congress, meeting with staffers, advising them on important priorities. And disproportionately, we impact the investment that the country makes in research and education,” which he said Carnegie Mellon does not to fill its coffers, but to aid the nation. Carnegie Mellon even hosted the Global Energy Conference for the administration.
Carnegie Mellon is also influential due to the startups its students have hatched, and the collaboration between researchers and important private companies. Jahanian encouraged students to continue to create startups (and then donate to Carnegie Mellon).
One student asked about Carnegie Mellon’s investments in the fossil fuel industry. Jahanian said that the university “does not invest in individual companies,” and has been a “100 percent green- powered campus for ten years.”
Three students asked about Carnegie Mellon’s ties to the “military-industrial complex.” Jahanian said that doing research with funding from the defense industry is a “decision made by individual faculty in terms of the work that they do,” and is an expression of academic freedom. In terms of defense companies recruiting on campus, Jahanian said, “it is not for us to decide what jobs [students] take or who they interview with.” Other students asked about the shortage of psychiatrists, to which Gina Caslegno of Student Affairs responded that there is a national shortage of psychiatrists.
Jahanian meets periodically with the Student Senate and the Graduate Student Assembly, but this format — opening up the meeting to the entire student body — was new.
“Participation of the students in the governance of the university is really important,” Jahanian said, thanking Student Senate president Kyle Hynes for organizing the event. Hynes said that the Student Senate plans to host more town halls with President Jahanian. In the future, he hopes that more people will show up — there were around 20 people in attendance.
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