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A Message from Dean
Welcome!
The faculty, staff, and students of Russell Sage College are delighted to welcome you to our community. One of the first steps in joining that community is participating in the Dean’s Read—a book shared each year with incoming students, faculty, and staff. Before you even arrive on campus, it gives us something in common: a set of ideas, questions, and conversations that will continue throughout your first semester at Sage.
This year’s Dean’s Read has also inspired our fall theme, New Beginnings in a Changing World. Throughout the semester, the theme will connect a series of events, discussions, readings, and experiences designed especially for first-year students. Together, these programs invite us to think about how individuals begin new chapters in moments of social, technological, and cultural change—and how we shape our lives within a rapidly evolving world.
Our theme is inspired by this year’s Dean’s Read, How to Start by Jodi Kantor. This summer, all incoming first-year students will receive information by email about how to access the book digitally in preparation for your first fall course at Russell Sage College, Thriving at Sage (RSC101).
An investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Kantor has spent her career examining questions of work, opportunity, power, and the forces that shape people’s lives. Known for her groundbreaking reporting at The New York Times, she turns in How to Start to a question especially relevant to students beginning college: how do young people build meaningful lives and careers in a world marked by rapid technological, economic, and social change?
Kantor acknowledges the uncertainty many young people feel today. In an interview with The Guardian, she reflected on “the constant stream of negative news” about jobs, the future, and the impact of AI, while reminding students that “you’re not a statistic… you’re still the author of your own life.” Rather than offering simple career advice, How to Start encourages readers to think more deeply about resilience, curiosity, purpose, and the ways individuals can shape their futures even amid uncertainty.
As you begin college, these questions become immediate and personal. The transition to college is not only about choosing a major or preparing for a career; it is also about discovering new ideas, challenging assumptions, building relationships, and imagining the kind of person you hope to become. In that spirit, our fall theme and shared events are meant not simply to introduce you to campus life, but to invite you into larger conversations about identity, agency, history, technology, and the future.
How to Start does not offer a perfect roadmap. Instead, it encourages readers to see beginnings not as moments of certainty, but as opportunities for exploration, growth, and possibility. We look forward to beginning that journey with you at Sage.
Welcome to Russell Sage. We’re so glad you’re coming!
First Year Events
*First Year Convocation
Wednesday, August 26, 10 a.m.
Schacht Fine Arts Center, Troy Campus
Your college journey begins not with a single step, but with a choice: to see yourself as someone who shapes the future, not just someone shaped by it. At First Year Convocation, President Shaftel, Provost Hand, Dean Robinson, and the faculty of Russell Sage College welcome you into a community of learners, creators, and changemakers. Together, we’ll launch this year’s theme—”New Beginnings in a Changing World”—and ask the questions that will guide your next four years: How can your Russell Sage community help you achieve your goals? How will you use your education to build a future you envision?
Light and Transient Causes
September 17, 2026
Opalka Gallery Exhibition celebrating the 250th anniversary of Declaration of Independence featuring writer Suketa Mehta
The Declaration of Independence begins with a bold act of starting: declaring that “light and transient causes” are not enough to justify revolution—only deep, enduring principles. 250 years later, Suketu Mehta’s This Land Is Our Land demands that we reckon with who built America, who was excluded, and who deserves a new beginning now. As you start your college journey, you’re entering conversations that will define your generation. This exhibition and book talk won’t give you easy answers, but they will give you the tools to ask important questions: Whose stories matter? Who decides? And what will you do with your voice?
*Dean’s Read Lunch & Learn
October 7, 2026, noon
Armory, Albany campus
Jodi Kantor’s How to Start offers a blueprint for taking action in uncertain times. Through real stories of people who launched movements, careers, and change, you’ll discover that starting doesn’t require having all the answers—it requires bringing your craft to a need you care about. This book invites you to see yourself as someone who shapes your own future, in college and beyond. Having explored these ideas in RSC 101, join this lunch conversation where you’ll share insights with the entire class of 2030 community, faculty, and special guests.
Franny
By Barbara Gural ’72
A play about A.I., caretaking, and the future of humaneness
Theater Institute at Russell Sage
Performance schedule tba
As artificial intelligence reshapes how we care for aging loved ones, who decides what “good care” means? This play explores the ethical choices we face when new technologies meet timeless human needs. You’ll leave asking: How will your generation start solving problems that didn’t exist a decade ago?
*RSC 101 Showcase
November 18, 2026, 10 a.m.
The Armory, Albany Campus
The RSC 101 Showcase celebrates your learning in RSC 101! First-year students, faculty, staff, and peer NaviGators will come together to hear your reflections on your first semester and your future.
At the beginning of the semester, you explored Jodi Kantor’s question: “How to Start.” Now it’s time to reflect upon Kantor’s final question: “Why to Start.” What is your “why”? What “craft” are you developing here at Russell Sage College, and how does that craft connect to a real-world need? Finally, what does the theme “New Beginnings in a Changing World” mean to you?
*Required for all students in RSC101
Past Dean’s Reads
Dean’s Read 2025
By: Ayana Elizabeth Johnson
All incoming First Year students CLICK HERE to access the book and your first college assignment.
All incoming transfer students, and members of the RSC community CLICK HERE.
Outcasts United: An American Town, a Refugee Team, and One Woman’s Quest to Make a Difference
By Warren St. John, 2009
All current RSC faculty, staff, and students can click the below link to read the book.
Dean’s Read 2023: They Called Us Enemy
They Called Us Enemy is a graphic memoir by George Takei, an author, activist, and actor best known for his role as Hikaru Sulu on Star Trek. Created in partnership with Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott, and Harmony Becker, the book is a firsthand account of Takei’s childhood, years of which were spent in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II.
The memoir depicts his life “behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother’s hard choices, his father’s faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.”
Check out They Called Us Enemy Online: Borrow a digital copy using the Libby app. You will need to log in with your Sage username and password.
Takei’s book is important for many reasons. He tells a crucial story of United States history and helps readers understand how those events affected many people, then and now. His family’s story is one of trauma but also persistence and resilience, as they found ways to stay together and help each other, and eventually to help the rest of the country recognize the profound injustice they suffered. This is a story of both how democracy sometimes fails, and how citizens can speak up for the truth and for each other. Courage, love, justice, democracy, truth – all these themes are present, as well as bullying, racism, and fear. The form of the book, a graphic memoir, might remind you of Art Spiegelman’s great graphic novel of the Holocaust, Maus, which I encourage you to read as well.
“It was those after-dinner talks with my father that informed so much of my worldview … Together we can initiate change in Los Angeles … and instilled in me a desire to share our story with as many people as possible.”
George Takei, from “They Called Us Enemy”