Bryn Mawr College welcomed 374 first-year students at a convocation ceremony on Sunday, Aug. 30, opening the 2026-27 academic year. The college also launched its first online Master of Social Work program this fall.
Associate Professor of Geology Selby Hearth delivered the keynote, using geologic time to urge students to stop planning for the future and start paying attention to the present. She held her arms at her sides to represent the age of the Earth, telling the crowd that complex life spans only half her right palm and human existence fits in a millimeter on her fingertip.
"All of written human history, the Greeks and the Romans and all the empires and the Polynesian navigators, everybody is in the last skin cell at the top of my finger," Hearth said.
She said that even solving climate change and eliminating nuclear weapons would not change the species' fate on a geologic timescale. The point was not despair. Hearth pivoted to a call for present-moment attention, saying purpose is not a list of future accomplishments but a devotion to values "right now on the scale of the Earth."
She closed by returning to the metaphor: a semester, she said, is a single hydrogen atom wide.
Cadge: college must engage the world
President Wendy Cadge, a sociologist of religion, described the campus as a sacred space shaped by traditions and rituals. But she said the college cannot remain a place apart. Cadge told the audience the campus must be open to the world students will encounter and lead, summing up the direction in five words: "a beacon, not a cloister."
Provost Dee Matthews, Vice President for Enrollment Nichole Reynolds, and Student Government Association co-presidents Angelique M. Lee and Autumn Kelley also spoke. Seniors Priyanka Rajapatiran, Molly Fancher and Kit Kringel, along with graduate student Dalena Vien, reflected on their time at the college.
A dance performance by Lucia Engelhardt, Julia Lee and Lauren Kocurek, choreographed by faculty member Melanie Cotton, closed the ceremony. A community picnic followed.
New programs and enrollment
Beyond the 374 first-years, the incoming class includes four transfer students, 75 postbaccalaureate students, 11 doctoral students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and 94 students at the Graduate School of Social Work.
The social work enrollment coincides with the inaugural year of Bryn Mawr's online Master of Social Work program, a 22-month plan of study open to applicants in the Mid-Atlantic region. The program serves students in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
The college also added seven tenure-track faculty members and 37 other faculty appointments for the new year, according to a separate announcement. New hires span chemistry, theater, sociology, social work, environmental studies, history and biology.
What's next
Parade Night, Bryn Mawr's first tradition of the year, welcomes first-year students into the community on Friday, Sept. 4.
