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Lewis M. Duncan, Rollins College
August 24, 2004
Women and men of Rollins College, welcome!
I stand before you today privileged to serve as the 14th president of
Rollins College, and unarguably the most senior member of your entering
class. Just as you have these past few days, in my first weeks as president,
I have been learning about Rollins and its many traditions. The ceremony
today is our tradition of convocation, an affirmation of purpose that
celebrates the beginning of another academic year and that marks your
formal matriculation into the academic community of Rollins College. Its
complement will be your commencement ceremony upon graduation, when your
class banners will again frame the stage and the historic book that serves
as symbol of the educational purposes that bring us together today will
again rest before the podium.
It is my special pleasure to welcome you, the Class of 2008, and all
other new students who are entering this year. You bring much to us, to
enrich our lives and learning. We are delighted to have you join with
us.
A recurring theme throughout Rollins College’s history has been
its attention to excellence and innovation in liberal education. Seventy-five
years ago, Rollins hosted a national conference on the liberal arts curriculum,
chaired by the legendary philosopher and educator John Dewey of Columbia
University. Our College’s visionary eighth president, Hamilton Holt,
drew national attention to Rollins by implementing a student-centered
curriculum that emerged from that meeting, linking the classic ideals
of liberal learning to the contexts of social responsibility and global
citizenship in a modern world.
As Dewey described, “The problem of securing to the liberal arts
college its due function in democratic society is that of seeing to it
that the technical subjects which are socially necessary acquire a humane
direction.” To this end, under the Rollins Conference Plan, faculty
were no longer constrained alone to the sterile delivery of lectures,
but also engaged students openly in shared debates, encouraging you to
challenge assumptions and to think creatively and critically in the dynamic
forum of seminar discussions within and beyond the classroom. This distinguishing
innovation inspired the Rollins Conference Course developed more fully
under the leadership of President Thaddeus Seymour, and which serves today
as the foundation for your own first-year curriculum.
Furthermore, declaring that “It is the professors . . . who make
a college great,” President Holt populated the Rollins faculty with
“golden personalities,” thought leaders and master teachers.
These exceptional scholars, and those who have followed in their footsteps,
established Rollins’ reputation as an institution of higher education
whose foremost commitment is to student learning. As you have heard from
Dean Casey, the faculty who will be instructing, advising, and working
side by side with you as co-learners, reflect and sustain this Rollins
tradition.
We expect foremost for you to assume responsibility for your own academic
growth, for ultimately all education is self-education. Take fullest advantage
of the enormous opportunities for learning to be found among our many
faculty scholars.
Woodrow Wilson described, “Contact, companionship, familiar intercourse
is the law of life for the mind. The comradeship of undergraduates will
never breed the spirit of learning. The circle must be widened. It must
include the older men [and women], the teachers, the men [and women] for
whom life has grown more serious and to whom it has revealed more of its
meanings.”
And so seek out our faculty, as teachers and scholars, as fellow intellectual
explorers, and as role models of lifelong learning.
Derek Bok, president of Harvard, conceded, “Only in colleges where
teaching is the dominant concern of the faculty is one likely to find
a large number of professors making a sustained effort to connect different
fields of learning.” So it is here at Rollins. We call upon you
thus not to become narrowly focused on preparation for profession, nor
merely to be the devoted disciples of any one discipline, adhering blindly
to the doctrines of any singular school of thought. But rather, we call
instead for you to become broadly learned, preparing to become informed
participants in the great debates that define our times, willing to ask
the most difficult questions and to acknowledge the enrichment of ideas
that follows from diversity of thought and differences of perspective
and experience. As steadfastly as Rollins stands as physical shelter in
times of nature’s storm, we also stand as sanctuary to the refuge
of ideas that in debate and discourse define our enduring sense of civilization.
Immerse yourself in the life and ideas of our shared academy.
As we step together across this threshold into the 21st century, with
its technological imperatives and accelerating rates of change, never
more than today has a truly liberal education been more essential to navigate
the inevitable convergences of human conflict and competition, of commerce
and cooperation. The most challenging societal issues escalate at the
intersections of our traditional disciplines of study. They are a tapestry
woven of many threads, of history and culture, of politics and philosophy,
of ethics and economics, of theology and science. The world we soon bequeath
to you is a complexity of constant change, demanding no less than your
commitment to lifelong learning.
In 1997, Rollins’ 13th president, Dr. Rita Bornstein, convened
another national conversation about the liberal arts curriculum –
The Rollins Colloquy. This consideration of the role of a practical liberal
education for the 21st century drew key leaders in higher education, including
nearly 200 college presidents and educators. The very concept of a liberal
arts curriculum that is also practical to the modern world has been rejected
by many to be a radical departure from the Platonic principle of purity
of thought. Yet we aspire for you to become graduates who will be not
only reflective human beings, but also reflexive individuals stimulated
to engage their lives in service to community and the improvement of our
human condition.
Our mission, as affirmed within our ongoing Quality Enhancement Plan,
is “to enhance student learning by developing an institutional culture
that embraces integrity, strength of character, respect for others, leadership,
and global citizenship.”
As the poet Mary Oliver implored:
When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
If I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
Or full of argument.
I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.
She speaks of a life fulfilled with engagement. And so, too, you must
be more than just a visitor to Rollins. Engage deeply and responsibly
in the social life of our residential campus. Attend also to your physical
education, and care for your health and well-being, as you also attend
to your intellectual studies. And embrace this invitation to become an
integral member of our community of learners. Live of this world, not
merely in it. For ours is an education at Rollins of mind and body and
heart. As you find your passions, throughout your time here with us, as
throughout your life, engage them with courage and conviction.
And now, will the members of the Class of 2008, and all new students,
please rise. Today, you are of Rollins College. Rise together as newest
members of our academic community, arise standing on the shoulders of
generations of proud Rollins graduates who have come before you, rise
up supported by generosity of the many benefactors most of whose names
you will not know, rise uplifted by the labors of our staff and the efforts
and high expectations of our faculty. Rise together, and in your time
here, may you soar to the heights of your own abilities, energy and imagination.
Rise up. Rise up together, no longer as visitors to our Rollins campus,
but as new citizens of our academic world. Find your future among us.
Accept the challenges and the opportunities of your days and years here,
as we now welcome you warmly into our academic home.
This ceremony marks your formal matriculation into Rollins College. The
matriculation certificates you have signed, presented earlier by Dean
Erdmann, will be affixed in the book that stands before the podium. As
you so begin today, you are of Rollins for your lifetime.
By virtue of the authority vested in me by the Board of Trustees and
on behalf of the faculty of Rollins College, I do hereby matriculate you
as candidates for the degree, Artium Baccalaureus.
Congratulations.
Please be seated. I welcome you again into the Rollins family, and declare
the College to be in session for the 2004-2005 academic school year.
Convocatum Est. We are convened.
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