FALL CONVOCATION
August 28, 2006
Delivered by Clark President John Bassett
Last Friday Professor Jude Fernando and I participated in a stimulating discussion by some twenty entering students of Tracy Kidder's book Mountains Beyond Mountains. Like many of you we found ourselves moving away from the question of whether Paul Farmer is a hero or heroic to questions about making a difference. Why do the health problems Farmer is addressing exist on such a large scale? What motivates someone like Farmer to try to make such a difference? How do all the players contribute to the difference being made? How many ways are there to make a difference in such a situation?
Clark University's primary value statement speaks of providing a transformative education for its students and producing new knowledge that has a positive impact on our world. That is, the faculty and staff at Clark seek to make a real difference in the lives of students, to "change lives" as Loren Pope says it, while also-through faculty and students-to meet real-world challenges through our research and application of that research. Then again by graduating students committed to those same values we also make a difference that goes on like ripples in a pool.
So with that in mind, I am here to welcome you to the Fall 2006 convocation of Clark University. Convocation is one of those ceremonial occasions on college campuses that remind students and faculty alike of the significance of what they are about. It is like Commencement in the spring, a time when on the surface it seems we are celebrating the culmination, the end of four years of work. In reality at Commencement we are celebrating the students' readiness to "commence" or to begin their lives as educated contributors to their society.
Many Clark students, of course, by the time of Commencement, have already become contributors to their community, for making a difference-a positive difference-in their world is part of their identity as Clarkies. But here as we get ready to enter the month of September and as we have already started our studies, we now have a "convocation"-a calling (vocation) together (con) of all students and faculty who share certain values about their education-even though these people may vary greatly in their political and religious and social values and priorities. We call ourselves together to reconfirm our commitment to important educational values and to commence our new year.
One of those values is rigor and intensity. Serious study is hard work, and those best prepared to learn-like those best prepared to perform in Carnegie Hall or Fenway Park-are those who have all along demanded the most from themselves. There are probably easy shortcuts to get through college; there are not easy paths to being an A+ performer after college. A second value is a spirit of free inquiry, tolerance for divergent viewpoints, and an eagerness to learn from new perspectives. In recent years Americans have listened more and more only to those with whom they agree and to live in communities with only people like themselves. Our new Ford Foundation grant for a "Difficult Dialogues" series is a symbol of Clark's commitment to bridging those gaps and to make our society a stronger and better community. A third value is access to education for qualified students whatever their economic status. Unfortunately, national policies and the practices of many colleges are limiting such access for those without privileged backgrounds. But our founder Jonas Clark always wanted to build a college where those without such resources could get a first-rate education, and we are committed to embodying that value. A fourth value is, as I said before, making a difference, and a belief that a rigorous liberal arts education really does play out in the real world in quite practical ways.
Clark students and faculty are helping people in developing countries grow economically while sustaining their environment. Students and faculty are improving public education in Worcester in ways that can over time change high-school education in America. Students and faculty are doing research to address the ravages of major diseases. Students and faculty are studying the causes of genocidal murder with a goal of eliminating genocide. Students and faculty are learning about problems in human development and testing interventions to address such problems. Our students and faculty do remarkable things in the arts; and they are doing a lot more, as they strive to develop a successful career and a meaningful life while also making a difference in the world.
When I ask students, at Academic Spree Day, whether they really do see how their amazing projects might actually affect the way people look at their world and the way people live, a surprising number eloquently answer me in a way that suggests the maturity of their understanding of the issues behind their projects.
You may become an entrepreneur whose creative idea not only makes a good life for yourself but also provides jobs for other people. You may be an environmental scientist whose creative insight clears up polluted streams in a community. You may be a city manager making people's lives better, or a teacher giving skills and hope to young persons. In all these cases and others you can make a good life for yourself and also make a difference in the lives of others. I have always been proud that Clark is featured in Loren Pope's book Colleges that Change Lives, but as I said before I have always read more into the title than Pope intended. Clark changes the lives of the students who come here, but also the lives of thousands of others with whom those students throughout their lives interact.
Prepare yourself to make a difference, seize opportunities that your years at Clark provide-in the classroom, on the athletic field, in the theater, with your friends. You will learn from all of it . And you will go out to make a difference in a world changing very fast around you. What you learn will be important; knowing how to keep learning amid change will be just as important.
Let me briefly remind you of only a few challenges we all face. First is the increasing economic disparity between the haves and have nots, the systemic problems tied to poverty, and the bad healthcare, nutrition, and education that accompany it. Second is our environment, devastated in so many ways by careless development, greed, and ignorance; we only have this one world but we still seem bent on destroying it. Third is a whole set of new ethical and economic dilemmas that surround the marvelous biomedical discoveries of the last forty years. We simply have not yet begun to answer the toughest questions about benefits that go with new choices, higher costs, and increasing life expectancies. Fourth is a whole new kind of violent conflict that after the Cold War has broken out in the forms of terrorism and ethnically or religiously based civil war that political leaders in the developed world just do not seem to understand or know how to handle. The tragic war in Iraq, again whatever one's politics, has been accompanied by several different kinds of inexcusable ignorance.
I could go on, but let me close by affirming as I always do each fall certain keys to a successful Clark education. First, we live in a global economy and society, and however one feels about the WTO, CAFTA, or immigrant labor, you cannot "make a difference" in the next forty years without an international and intercultural perspective on experience. Second, make your learning an active experience, one in which you learn how to apply some of your education to real-world projects or the development of new knowledge, do something special that really excites you. Third, remember that you will get your education in pieces-a history course, a chemistry course, a role in Twelfth Night, an article you write for The Scarlet, an economics course. Each of you individually needs to put those pieces together. We will all help you do it, and you will learn as much from your fellow students as from us; but your real education, to be transformative, comes from putting together lots of pieces into a whole. Then you are different when you graduate. When you solve problems in the outside world, they will not be divided into categories like departments and disciplines. Fourth, remember that unless you can write and talk effectively about a topic-in effect unless you can teach it to someone else-you probably do not understand it. Communication-written, oral, multi-media -will be as important as content. To be effective in or out of college, you must be an effective communicator about what you know, think, and believe. It is hard to imagine a career any of you might enter where that will not be true.
And so we welcome you to the 2006-2007 academic year, the 118th year of graduate education at Clark, the 105th year of undergraduate education, the first year at Clark for some in the audience, the last year for others. Best Wishes!