Happy New Year, and welcome to 2026!
Before we look ahead, let me pause to give thanks for the blessings of 2025. It was a year marked by concerted efforts, resilience, creativity, and countless unseen moments of dedication. To our staff and students, thank you! Each person carried the weight of deadlines, the pressure of expectations, and the demands of excellence with dedication and commitment. Our achievements as a university were neither accidental nor a stroke of good luck. They were the natural outcomes of intense preparations and hard work put in on the fronts of teaching, research, and innovation. For that, I thank each and every one of you!
In keeping with our tradition of letting each year’s theme guide us for two years, we will continue to live out the theme of Personalised Attention throughout 2026. I hope this renewed emphasis will help deepen our relationships and enrich our daily interactions, allowing us to care for one another with greater intentionality. As Simone Weil, an early 20th-century philosopher, reminds us, ‘To pay attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.’ May this spirit of attentive presence continue to shape how the SU family sees, listens to, and serves one another in the year ahead, in whatever role one serves on a daily basis.
While last year, we planted the seed of Personalised Attention, I hope it will blossom, and its roots will deepen this year. Not as a slogan. Not as a campaign. But as a cultivated habit that is steady, instinctive, and unmistakable. A way of being that moves from intentions to actions, from conversations to a lived culture. In the words of St. John Paul II, I challenge us to make a conscious decision to see, understand, and recognise that each person we encounter is a singular being, unique and unrepeatable.
Like all institutions of higher learning, Strathmore has the responsibility to form people fully, humanly, and deeply. Personalised Attention is the lens through which this formation becomes real. It is that conversation with a student after class. The thoughtful reply to a parent. The extra minute taken to guide a visitor on campus. The quiet willingness to help a colleague even when it’s inconvenient. These are not grand acts, yet they shape the character of individuals, leaving a lasting imprint on the people we serve.
As we begin 2026, let us recommit ourselves once again to the simple but transformative power of paying attention. When we listen with intention, respond with kindness, and act with care, we build a university where people feel seen, valued, and supported. Let the year 2026 be a testament to the kind of community we aspire to be – where personalized attention is not something people hear about, but something they experience in every hallway, classroom, office, and interaction. Let us start the year ahead with a renewed resolve to serve one another with generosity, dignity, and love.
“To pay attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.” ~ Simone Weil
Happy New Year!
Dr. Vincent Ogutu,
Vice-Chancellor,
Strathmore University.
