_{September 16, 2025}

Dear Alumni,

We hope each of you had a great summer. As another semester begins, we trust your career opportunities are blossoming and that your children continue their education, perhaps engaged in college-level STEM studies. We want to update you on two important matters, but purposefully will keep this communication short and to the point

First, the day-to-day management of Renew Rensselaer has been passed (from Criss, Mirczak and Vanderzee) to younger alumni. Bill, Ted, and Peter intend to stay affiliated as advisors and cheerleaders, but decisions, especially for website content, will be made by the new team.

We continue to emphasize RR's remaining nine Platform issues—We all agree Martin Schmidt was a wise choice to lead RPI into its 3rd century and we remain committed to supporting him. However, recognizing that our nearly 2000 Supporters have remained loyal—some for almost 8 years—we feel that Renew Rensselaer must continue to stress the importance of addressing the nine remaining, unresolved issues from RR's Platform. These issues were carefully crafted after much study and supported by each of you that were willing to sign up. Because Platform issue #10 has been resolved, does not mean the other Platform issues should be abandoned.

Martin Schmidt continues to dodge our meeting requests—Bill, Ted, and Peter have asked various persons on numerous occasions to suggest President Schmidt meet with us (in Troy at our personal travel expense) for several hours to discuss the remaining Platform issues. So far, Marty has refused to meet with us, for an unknown reason. However, we do not think giving up is the right response nor what RR's two-thousand Supporters expect.

RPI needs committed alumni to press for important changes—So, we ask that each of you (as you deem fit) to please open the RR website (www.renewrensselaer.org) and click on the Call-to-Action button which provides suggestions for contacting various RPI officials to express your opinions on the remaining nine Platform issues. When you click on the “Contact RPI officials” bullet, you will see email addresses to send your thoughts/opinions. Be professional in tone.

In closing, we are exceptionally grateful for your ongoing support of RR for many years and the efforts we expended in bringing attention to the Platform issues. We (especially Bill, Ted, and Peter) commend each of RR's Supporters and wish you the very best as we end 2025 and look forward to RPI accelerating its return to a highly-recognized, world-class, STEM university.