2025-2026 Year in Review

From the Desk of Vice Chancellor Brandon Frye

Colleagues and Friends of Student Affairs:

This edition of the On Deck with Student Affairs newsletter is our divisional year in review for 2025-26.  Producing this publication is important, as memorializing our past successes and challenges creates a document that we can reflect on and utilize to help us better plan for and navigate the future.

The 2025-2026 academic year was a busy, robust, and successful one for our division. I note a few highlights below to set the stage for the broader report that follows:

• The Student Government Association (SGA) made a generous contribution to the Lil’ Pirate Pantry to support Parenting Pirates in caring for their children. Located in Umstead Hall, the Lil’ Pirate Pantry is operated under the Office of the Dean of Students and provides enrolled Pirate Parents with essential items such as diapers, wipes and other family necessities, helping reduce non-academic barriers so that student-parents and their families can thrive. This donation helps Pirate Parents gain equitable access to vital supplies, fosters a family-friendly campus environment, and directly contributes to the academic success and wellbeing of student-parents at ECU.

• Multiple departments within Student Affairs partnered with faculty and staff across ECU’s campuses for the second annual ARRRGH™ U OK? Day, which was a part of You Matter Week, focused on student well-being and mental health.

• Mental Health continues to be a top priority facing college students.  The division hosted numerous programs and initiatives for faculty, staff and students to better understand the challenges students face as well as sharing all of the available resources to support them.
• The first 6-8 weeks of each fall semester, known across higher education as the Red Zone, is a time where students are developing new networks, celebrating the start of their college journey, gathering at parties and creating social norms and habits.  But first year students are also vulnerable during these weeks as they are away from home, for many, for the first time.  Student Affairs expanded Pledge Purple activities to begin early in the fall and concluded in late October for Pledge Purple week.  The goal of the Pledge Purple Programming Series was to educate students about healthy relationships, consent, and bystander intervention, empowering students to create a safer campus environment.
• One classic Pirate tradition wrapped up with the 30th and final Polar Bear Plunge.  Nearly 700 students, faculty, staff and alumni hit the 44-degree waters for the last plunge before celebrating with food, games, trivia and other activities inside the Eakin Student Rec Center.

I encourage you to read this special edition to learn more about how the Division of Student Affairs played a critical role in advancing student success over the past year at ECU.

In closing, I want to thank the Student Affairs team for all the work you completed this past year. I also want to thank our campus and community collaborators for being great partners and supporting our division and our students.

~Purple and Gold