Each Fall, we welcome new students back to campus with an opening convocation. These were my remarks to the Class of 2028 on Thursday.

Convocation means to be called together – from vocare meaning voice or calling. We are called together to signal your entry into the life of this university and to celebrate the beginning of your matriculation. It is an opportunity to declare a new beginning for all of us, to be drawn together with one voice to affirm what we are called to do.

Students, you are beginning an extraordinary chapter in your lives, but in addition to your excitement, I know you are experiencing cognitive overload. This is a moment in your lives when you are likely experiencing the most concurrent change: a new community; a new role; soon to be new classmates, neighbors, and friends; will they like you, will you like them; a new academic experience with a different kind of faculty (you’ll soon discover how great they are), and a different set of academic responsibilities. For most of you, for the first time, home has just become a place different from where your family lives.

Right now, most of you are on auto-pilot. That’s normal, and it’s okay, but I want to take a few minutes to challenge you to make the most of this opportunity, to affirm why you made such a good choice in coming to Susquehanna, and to ask you to make some commitments to your new community.

Statistically, many of you chose to attend Susquehanna because we had a major that you believe equates with a job you think you want right now, or at least you did 6 months ago. For many of you, that will change, and that’s a good thing. We will help you to develop your sense of vocation — what can you do that will be most personally rewarding? What will bring you the most meaning?

Many of you chose Susquehanna because you believe you can develop the skills and knowledge to be successful in professional life. That is a fundamental strength of this university, but we will also help you to cultivate broader skills and perspectives.

And, most of you chose Susquehanna because we made it financially possible for you to be here. We were founded to provide an education to meritorious students many of whose families could not afford a 19^th-century college degree. Today, we are all able to be here because of extraordinary philanthropic generosity that has created this beautiful campus, expanded our offerings, and has continued to grow scholarship support over the past 166 years.

Many of those gifts came from individuals who would never meet you, but who believed deeply in the promise that you would bring to this great university. It is important to acknowledge that selfless generosity and to be thankful.

I challenge each of you to make the most of this remarkable opportunity and their laudable investment.

First, a message of assurance to the parents and families of our new students. Contrary to what you often see and hear in the media about the value of a college education, according to the Georgetown University Center for Educational Statistics, the return on investment of a college degree has never been greater than it is this year. I repeat, the financial advantage of a college degree has never been greater than it is this year. That same study places Susquehanna’s graduates among the top 11% of all colleges and universities in the United States for lifetime earnings.

That should give you comfort, but it should not be the most important reason you are here.

Students, we are here, faculty, staff, and trustees to help you to become the best citizens, best neighbors, and best people you can become. We are here to help you to develop and expand your personal philosophy, to affirm those things that are most important to you, and to give you the tools to pursue them and to advocate for them. We are here to help you to chart a course that will lead you to your best life.

To help us to do that, you need to commit to practicing the habits that will make those lofty goals a reality.

First, good citizenship includes active participation in our democracy. If you haven’t registered to vote, we will help you, and we will help you get to the polls. Our Achieve, Lead, Vote initiative made Susquehanna the most improved higher education institution in Pennsylvania for participation in the 2020 election. This year, let’s all commit to surpassing that achievement.

Being good neighbors takes work and courage. We are living in a time of geopolitical upheavals and rampant incivility. We see ideologies and righteous passions quickly turn into self-righteous disruptions on sister campuses across the nation, we must continue to do better.

We are also witnessing systematic attacks on institutional efforts to create and sustain diverse, equitable, and inclusive communities. As a university, we are committed to maintaining a campus where all members of our community can flourish.

Civility, respect, and belonging are interdependent. A credal document for the Susquehanna community is our Statement on Ethical and Inclusive Living. It opens with these paragraphs.

Susquehanna University is an institution of higher education that brings learners of different backgrounds, experiences, and talents into dialogue as they pursue knowledge and wisdom together. We commit to maintaining and fostering a safe and welcoming campus environment that aids us all in the process of lifelong learning and the cultivation of good character. As Susquehanna continues its quest to embody the rich diversity of the human community, we are committed to the full participation of all persons representing the breadth of human differences.

With a long-standing ethos of collaboration, our community focuses on the development of cross-cultural relationships marked by mutual curiosity, cooperation, and respect. To that end, we must actively seek to identify and reject systemic and individual biases against individuals based on race, ethnicity, national or geographic origin, sex, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, social class, age, religion, political affiliation, and marital or parental status. Each individual’s identity is intersectional, deriving varying degrees of advantages and/or limitations from the experiences that frame our lives.

Our community relies upon teaching and advising practices and professional behaviors that promote critical engagement with diversity that seek to understand how the differences among us affect our lived experiences, the beliefs that emerge from and frame those experiences, and the impact of power and privilege on our lives. We hold up our differences as a vital asset to our success as an academic community. We pursue justice and reject injustice in all forms. This is essential for effective teaching and learning, equitable governance and decision-making, and healthy community life.

I encourage you all to read the statement in its entirety.

These commitments will help us to grow as a community and as individuals, and they will equip us to become that ideal city on the hill of which Walt Whitman dreamed when he wrote:

I DREAM’D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the

attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream’d that was the new City of Friends;

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust love—it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions…of that city,

And in all their looks and words.[1]

This is what we are called to do. This is our one voice, our vocare. This is what it means to be better.

We must be an example for our neighbors. This is what it means to achieve, lead, and serve. This is what it means to be Susquehannans.

At the laying of the cornerstone of Selinsgrove Hall in 1858, which was the founding of this great university, Joseph Casey stated, “Education, in its legitimate sense, includes not only the cultivation of the mental powers, but the proper training and development of the moral sentiments and faculties, and its true object is to ‘make us not only wiser but better…’”[2]

Today, I invite you to your graduation on May 20^th 2028. Each year, I give this charge to the graduates. Today, I challenge you to commit to doing all you can during your time at Susquehanna to meet this charge to your fullest.

Achieve all you can for good,

Lead with honor and humility,

Serve with love and pride,

And always strive to be not only wiser, but better.

Welcome home!

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[1] Whitman, Walt: from Calamus, 1860.

[2] Joseph Casey, Esq.: “Remarks delivered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Missionary Institute at Selin’s Grove, PA, September 1, 1858.”

I just spent a couple of weeks working with the American Talent Initiative (ATI), which is an effort coördinated by the Aspen Institute and Ithaka S+R and supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The ATI’s goal is to help the best colleges and universities in the country to enroll and graduate 50,000 more low- and middle-income students.

This is important because a significant majority of high-achieving, low-income students do not apply to selective colleges, even though, after aid, these institutions may be a more affordable alternative than the two-year, or less-selective four-year institutions in which they enroll.[1] Far too often, the schools they select do not challenge them.

A longitudinal study using data from the National Center for Education Statistics has shown that when students select institutions that don’t adequately challenge them intellectually, they are less likely to graduate, and degree completion for these “undermatching” students is progressively lower for students of increased ability.[2]

Degree completion is especially critical for low-income students. If they attend college, take on debt, and do not complete a degree, they are more disadvantaged than they would have been had they not enrolled at all.

This is where opportunity and mission align. Collectively, we have the opportunity to enroll and graduate more high-achieving students from low-income families, enriching the economic and experiential diversity of our student bodies while welcoming more talented and meritorious students to our campuses. Economic access was a core of our founding mission.

The ATI has 139 member schools. These include 41 public and 98 independent institutions. Of the independents, 54 are residential liberal arts colleges. The purpose of my residency was to explore how the most successful member institutions might help the entire cohort to support more deserving students of modest means. Of the 54 liberal-arts-college members, Susquehanna has the 9^th smallest endowment, but is tied for 8^th in the highest percentage of Pell-eligible graduates.

As a member of the American Talent Initiative (ATI), we have joined a group that is striving to become a community of best practice formed from the leading colleges and universities in the nation.  These member institutions have demonstrated excellence in academic achievement and high graduation rates.

Collectively, ATI members have pledged to expand access to more high-performing, low-income students to elevate their talents and to eliminate undermatching for our most promising students, and Susquehanna can serve as a model to our sister institutions for how to make a big impact with humble resources.

50,000 students is an audacious, but attainable goal. The capacities of our member institutions are varied. Working together, we have the ability to achieve a profound, positive transformation of our national educational landscape by creating access for so many more deserving, gifted, and historically underserved students.

At a time when many institutions are coming under fire as elitist, this initiative provides a powerful counternarrative that is mission-driven, connected to our history, and of immeasurable benefit to all our students.

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[1] Hoxby, Caroline and Christopher Avery: The Missing One-Offs”: The Hidden Supply of High-Achieving, Low-Income Students. Brookings: 2013.

[2] Kang, Chungseo and Darlene Garcia Torres: “College Undermatching, Bachelor’s Degree Attainment, and Minority Students,” Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 14(2), 264-277 (2021).

Many years ago, when I was a fairly new dean, I sent an email to my faculty colleagues asking what three texts they thought every student should read before they graduated college. I promised to share the results. A number of replies began with language like, “I don’t believe in canons, but here are my three choices…”

My goal was to demonstrate how decentralized our views were, but I underestimated how true that was. About sixty people responded, and the most “votes” any text received was seven. Incidentally, it was Plato’s Republic.

Many cultures and communities have canonical texts, music, art, or tropes that shape their identities and values. That shaping is in small part who or what is included, and in large part who is excluded. We can learn a lot about a time and a group of people by examining their sorting process and observing what they find to be of greatest, or most convenient, value.

Some canonical works that have stood the test of time have done so for intrinsic reasons. The Western Civilization courses of previous generations suffered from what was left out, but some of what was included is truly transcendent. The Republic continues to be deeply meaningful, and learning how it influenced successive generations’ ways of thinking is part of that meaning.

Understanding the “great works” can be a window into understanding and appreciating new works. As a musician, the canon I was taught decades ago came from composers who were dead, white, male, and mostly European (especially German or Austrian). Still, the best of those works remain windows into the capacity of creativity and the depths of what it means to be human.

As I have broadened my listening, I have learned more and more not to judge new and different kinds of music against the techniques and architecture of the foundational works of my training. I appreciate the different ways music that is new to me achieves the ineffable qualities of greatness that my canon (the works from my initial education that have stuck with me and those I have accreted through a lifetime if listening and study) has shown me is possible.

I truly believe my long and abiding communion with the symphonic works of Beethoven has enhanced my understanding of the brilliant new works of composers like Terrance Blanchard, Augusta Read Thomas, and Tan Dun. Every time I play the keyboard music of Bach (no matter how poorly), I am a little better prepared to celebrate the intricacies of West African drumming and Balinese gamelan music.

I recently visited the High Museum of Art in Atlanta on a day when the museum was teeming with student groups from elementary and high schools. It was rewarding to be surrounded by their wonderful collection, and it was fun to see the wonder the young children had for works across a wide spectrum. Their tastes were far more catholic than most adults. Sadly, nearly all the high school students I encountered never looked up from their phones.

We can learn a lot about being receptive from children. A number of years ago, my wife was teaching music in an elementary school. One of the favorite pieces of her youngest students was Morton Subotnik’s Silver Apples on the Moon, a 1967 example of musique concrète (a work of recorded sounds, in this case electronic). They were intrigued by and open to a piece most adults would complain about because they hadn’t developed the limited tastes that narrow playlists and canons can create.

There are plenty of debates going on today about curricular canons. Some state governments have eliminated DEI education, and Florida has removed Sociology from the eligible courses to fulfill general-education credit.  

Some who resist expanding our educational horizons believe this will devalue what they have learned, but truly embracing historically marginalized perspectives and histories helps us to recontextualize what we have come to believe, and it can provide us with opportunities for wonderment like those avant-garde-loving children.

There are national organizations advocating for specific curricular content. ACTA (American Association of Trustees and Alumni) publishes a grading of the general education programs of 1,100 colleges and universities. Their scoring is based upon whether seven specific courses meeting “carefully defined criteria” are required of all students at the institution.

Only seven institutions met all of their criteria, but many of the remaining institutions, including those that were given an F, offer rich, thoughtful, and transformative general education programs that just don’t happen to align with a narrow, hidebound view of what all students should learn.

In the past few decades, we have begun to come to terms with a more complete version of our histories, and we have seen pushback from many who find these truths uncomfortable. We can learn much more from understanding the real discomfort and pain of those whose stories had not been told.

I am thrilled that Nikole Hannah-Jones will be a guest speaker at Susquehanna in the Spring. Her work on the Pulitzer Prize winning, The 1619 Project, has helped many of us to recognize more fully how incomplete and biased much of our history education has been.

My formal education was remarkably hegemonic. As I have encountered new voices and new stories, I have begun to develop a richer appreciation of the complexities of our past and our present. That has included understanding that many of my historical heroes were deeply flawed individuals.

Those are valuable and important lessons. Just like the heroes of Greek tragedies, some of the greatest achievements of our past have come from some of our most complexly imperfect forebears. Understanding this doesn’t negate their achievement. It does affirm that they possessed and struggled with the human frailties each of us confronts.

What can we learn from a fuller telling of their lives, good and bad, that will help us to become better, and how can we celebrate and benefit from understanding the daily heroism of the countless individuals who navigated the wrongs of history and whose stories are waiting to be told?

Without all of our stories, none of our stories is complete.