Tuesday, November 25, 2014

My 1,000th tweet

For the past year or so I’ve been tweeting as @ChancellorJim, and I noticed Monday that I’d reached 999 tweets. That gave me pause. What should tweet No. 1,000 be?

The answer came from the intersection of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday and the news that UW-Eau Claire student Tayo Sanders II was named a Rhodes Scholar — the only student from any Wisconsin or Minnesota university selected among the 32 Rhodes recipients nationally.
 
So, here’s the tweet I decided to send: “Thankful to be the chancellor of such a special university — proud of all Blugolds!”

I deliberately wrote “proud of all Blugolds” because I’m thankful for the generous and thoughtful ways our students, faculty, staff and alumni all contribute to the amazing tapestry that is UW-Eau Claire.

This year has brought a bounty to our university in terms of seminal accomplishments, such as Tayo Sanders II being named our second Rhodes Scholar in a decade, and also in terms of transformative gifts, such as the $10 million in land and money donated by alumni John and Carolyn Sonnentag for development of the County Materials Event and Recreation Complex on Menomonie Street.

There are, of course, dozens more examples I could cite. At UW-Eau Claire we truly have a “horn of plenty” when it comes to accomplishments like these — something we must never take for granted.

I wanted to be sure my one-thousandth tweet captured my special appreciation for this place and its people — and to share that widely with others so they know how thankful I truly am.