Editor’s Note: Welcome, Panthers!

Michelle Marchante/Editor-in-Chief

Welcome Panthers!

My name is Michelle Marchante and I’ll be your PantherNOW Editor-in-Chief for the 2018-2019 school year.

In this special edition of PantherNOW, you’ll find various content ranging from back-to-school related pieces to the latest news regarding the University’s Student Government Association and our Panthers’ football team.

To start off, we’ve got exclusive letters on pages 5 and 6 from President Mark B. Rosenberg and Jefferson Noel, the president of the Student Government Council at the Biscayne Bay campus.

PantherNOW’s special “Back to School” edition magazine. Cover designed by Editor-in-Chief Michelle Marchante. Cover photo by Gerard Albert/PantherNOW’s Cover Photographer.

And if you were curious about why we wrote the number 15 on our cover, then head on over to page 6 to find out if it’s true that freshmen gain 15 pounds during their first year.

Members of The Roar, our student-run radio station, also curated a Back-To-School playlist on page 11 to help you get excited for your first week on campus.

If you look at page 2, you’ll find that the University’s two Student Government Councils will be merging into a single SGA and if you want some international news, then make sure to check out page 4 to learn about the agreement President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un made.

And for all our sports fans out there, make sure you check out pages 12-15 for everything you need to know about our football team.

A new year also means a new us, as you’ll notice we’ve taken an online-first approach with our content. So, what does this mean?

We’ve combined our Panther Press newspaper and our Panther Magazine to create what you hold today, PantherNOW, a mixture of news and themed content. We did this to help connect our website PantherNOW.com with our physical publication, but also because of our digital-first approach.

While our PantherNOW magazine will be published every Wednesday during the Fall and Spring semester, you can also expect daily online content.

So, whether you’re a brand new Panther or a returning Panther, from our family to yours, we just want to say “Welcome” and we look forward to going on this FIU journey with you.

Note: This Editor’s Note first appeared in the physical copy of PantherNOW’s Back-to-School issue, which was published on Wednesday, June 20, 2018.

Feature Image by Michelle Marchante/Editor-in-Chief