Welcome back everyone! Wherever you’re coming from, welcome back to the country, welcome back to the City, welcome back to campus. You’ll find that plenty of notable changes occurred while you were gone and plenty more are likely in store for the fall semester – and you can trust us to report on how these events and issues affect the Pitt community.

Our 2019 Welcome Back edition touches on some of the summertime happenings you may have missed reading about. Pitt declared the 2019-20 academic year the Year of Creativity in June, while a new jazz director and a new dean of the Honors College assumed their posts.  We’ve also included previews of big events this fall, including a look at Pitt football’s chances at defending its Coastal title and a lineup of Pitt Stages’ autumn productions.

The Pitt News will be back in daily publication on Aug. 26. While it’s hard to tell when news will appear or what it will look like, expect some more coverage of ongoing campus issues, like the graduate students’ and faculty’s respective unionization efforts, the search for a new dean of the School of Medicine and planned discussions between students and the administration about updating the Student Code of Conduct — be sure to read about it at pittnews.com.

Our culture section will continue rolling out new features on Pitt’s creative types and housing reviews of the season’s hottest movies, fashion trends and more. Expect our columnists in the opinions section to provide commentary on issues from the hyper-local to the international. Our sports section will again sport extensive coverage of Pitt’s evolving teams, including volleyball’s near-undefeated underdogs and the new faces of Pitt men’s basketball.

The Pitt News itself is undergoing internal changes — we’re continuing our efforts to engage our readers in more creative and fulfilling ways online. Expect a host of new blogs, awesome graphics and even more videos from our burgeoning digital team. Follow us on social media, download our app or subscribe to our e-newsletter, which rounds out the most important and entertaining stories we put out each week.

And while we want to make sure our stories are reaching you in the ways you want to receive them, we’d also love for you, our readers, to reach out to us. While all of us at The Pitt News are students, we can’t claim to know everything the rest of the Pitt community wants to read about. Message us on Facebook or Twitter, shoot a specific section editor an email or stop by our office on the fourth floor of the William Pitt Union. Give feedback, ask questions, provide tips or submit a letter to the editor. Better yet, apply to work with us — whether as a news reporter on the student government beat, a columnist with a hot new take on local politics or a videographer with an eye for important details, we’d be glad to have you.

Here’s to another big year ahead. H2P!

Janine Faust, Editor-in-Chief