Good afternoon, everyone.
As we seal this time capsule, we are doing something both simple and remarkable: sending a message to students we will never meet, in a world we can only imagine.
To the students of 2126: greetings from the year 2026. I am Cheryl Hanley-Maxwell, dean of the College of Applied Health Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Our world today is deeply connected, yet deeply divided. We carry powerful computers in our pockets and communicate instantly across continents. At the same time, we still face health inequities, inadequate support for people with disabilities, mental health struggles, loneliness, climate change, and barriers to education and opportunity.
In Applied Health Sciences, our work begins with a simple belief: every person deserves the opportunity to live a meaningful, healthy, and dignified life. Our students study movement and health, communication, recreation, sport, tourism, and disability. They become researchers, clinicians, educators, advocates, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Most importantly, they learn to ask not only, ‘What can we discover?’ but also, ‘Whom can we help?’
This is a time of tremendous change for universities. We are still learning from the COVID-19 pandemic, which reshaped our understanding of health, science, public trust, and community. Artificial intelligence is transforming classrooms, health care, research, and daily life. Our students learn in person and online, collaborate across the globe, and wrestle with questions of ethics, sustainability, belonging, and the responsible use of technology.
And yet, some things remain timeless. Students still study together late into the night. They cheer at athletic events, form lifelong friendships, and search for purpose. Faculty devote themselves to discovery and mentorship. Universities remain places where people imagine—and begin to build—a better future.
When this capsule is opened, I hope inclusion and accessibility are no longer aspirations, but ordinary features of life. I hope disability is fully recognized as part of human diversity, and that health is understood not simply as the absence of illness, but as the presence of opportunity, connection, movement, dignity, and hope.
Perhaps you will have conquered diseases that challenge us today. Perhaps your technologies will enable forms of communication and mobility we can barely imagine. Whatever has changed, I hope the spirit of this university endures: curiosity with humility, innovation with compassion, and knowledge in service to humanity.
To the students of 2126: thank you for carrying the story forward. You are part of a long continuum of learners, dreamers, teachers, and builders who have passed through this university. We send this capsule—and our hopes for your future—with confidence in what your generation will make possible.
Thank you.