Order of Ceremony Honorary Degrees Commencement Address
COMMENCEMENT 2010
ORDER OF CEREMONY
May Twenty-Third -- Two Thousand and Ten -- Three O'Clock
Newlin Hall -- Norton Center for the Arts -- Danville, Kentucky
PRESIDING - JOHN A. ROUSH, President of the College
THE PROCESSIONAL
Procesion Alegre ......................................................................................................Garry A. Cornell
VINCENT A. DIMARTINO, Trumpet,
W. George Matton Professor of Music
WILLIAM J. JONES , Centre College Organist
THE INVOCATION
JONATHAN WALTER KRATZER
Class of 2010
WELCOME
JOHN A. ROUSH
CONFERRAL OF HONORARY DEGREES
DOCTOR OF HUMANE LETTERS
WAYNE WILLIAMS MEISEL ....................................................................Princeton, New Jersey
Presented by RICHARD W. TROLLINGER
Vice President for College Relations
Investiture by PATRICK NOLTEMEYER
Associate Dean and Director of Community Service and the Bonner Program
THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
WAYNE WILLIAMS MEISEL
President of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation
AWARDING OF VALEDICTORIAN PRIZES
KEITH DUNN
Associate Dean of the College and
Professor of Chemistry
THE CONFERRAL OF DEGREES IN COURSE
Introduction of Candidates
STEPHANIE L. FABRITIUS
Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College
Dean Keith Dunn and Vice President and Dean of Student Life
William Randy Hays will assist in the granting of degrees.
BACHELOR OF ARTS
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE
RESPONSE FROM THE CLASS
CHASE MATTHEW WARNER
President, Student Government Association
Class of 2010
GODSPEED
JOHN A. ROUSH
THE ALMA MATER............................................Centre Dear.................................. Richard L. Warner
THE BENEDICTION
WILLIAM C. GARRIOTT, JR.
John Marshall Harlan Professor of Government
RECESSIONAL........................................Little Fugue in G Minor ........................................J. S. Bach
(Audience will remain seated during the recessional.)
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HONORARY DEGREE RECIPIENT
WAYNE WILLIAMS MEISEL
Since 1989, when he was 29, Wayne W. Meisel has served as the president of the Corella and Bertram F. Bonner Foundation, a national philanthropic organization that provides service-based scholarships to more than 3,000 students and works with colleges and universities to create and sustain cultures of service by building up campus-wide programs to integrate service with academic learning.
Raised in Princeton, New Jersey, Mr. Meisel graduated cum laude from Harvard University with a B.A. in government. He was named a John Harvard Scholar for high academic achievement and received a John Finley Fellowship for travel. Upon graduating from Harvard, he continued to work there, forming HAND (House and Neighborhood Development), a campus-wide service initiative linking the residential colleges at Harvard with the neighborhoods of Cambridge.
This project led him to embark on a walk from Maine to Washington, stopping at some 70 colleges and universities to champion the cause of student volunteerism. Inspired by his trek, he founded the internationally known Campus Outreach Opportunity League (COOL), a platform for students and graduates to lead, sustain, and challenge their peers to serve others and to bring about positive change.
Working with COOL from 1983 to 1989, he set the tone for youth-run/youth-led organizations. He was appointed by President George H. Bush to serve on the Commission for National and Community Service (later renamed the Corporation for National Service), serving as a principal architect of and a leading advocate for both the vision and the legislation behind the current national service policy. During his tenure, he proposed both the original concept and name of AmeriCorps. He is a founding board member of Teach for America.
In 1994, he received a national Jefferson Award - a "Nobel Prize for public service" - from the American Institute for Public Service. That same year, Time magazine recognized Meisel as one of the top-50 leaders internationally under the age of 40. He has received the highest honors bestowed to individuals by the United Way of America, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and Common Cause.
Mr. Meisel is the author of two books: Building a Movement: Students in Community Service and On Your Mark, Get Set, Go: From Student Ideas to Campus Action, as well as editor of two books of quotations: Men About Men and Light One Candle.
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COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS
Beyond the Bubble
“Anyone who has ever built an empire, or changed the world, sat where you are now, and it’s because they sat there that it was possible.” (from the film, Up in the Air)
This sounds like the opening of your routine commencement speech, but instead is a quote from the movie Up in the Air, a story about a businessman named Ryan Bingham played by actor George Clooney who travels the country to fire people.
Well I’m no George Clooney, and you’re not getting fired, well not really anyway. But when you think about it, you are about to hand in your keys and about to get a slip of paper, albeit white and not pink.
You are off to a new thing? What does that look like?
Well that is what commencement speakers are charged to do. You have had hundreds of hours of classroom instruction, thousands of hours of study time and now we are down to the last five, maybe ten minutes of your college career.
It is a joy to be with you this afternoon. When I asked President Roush how long commencement would take, he said a lot of that depends on you.
Hearing about Centre
I first heard about Centre College while I was a junior.
Clothes story (told at commencement not typed)
In that collection of over 300 pieces of clothing was a gold t-shirt that said, Harvard, The Centre College of the Northeast.
The next time I encountered Centre was when I was speaking at a community service conference organized by students from Berea. I have a vivid memory of the two vans of students who piled out and spent a weekend working with other students from throughout the Commonwealth to figure out how to launch a
state-wide student service initiative that eventually would involve thousands of students.
Historic Class
I always wondered what it would be like to be part of a “historic graduating class” you know where someone was really famous or where something extraordinary actually happens. I came close when I almost went to the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. Had I done that I would have been there when they won the NCAA men’s basketball tournament on a last second shot by a freshman named Michael Jordan. But today, by including me as one of you, I feel like I got what I wanted, to be a part of an historic class:
* You, the class of 2010, have endured perhaps the most physical transformation in the college’s history except during those founding years.
* This year marks the first graduating class of Posse members (go Celtics), and the first entering class of Brown Fellows. Both initiatives represent major innovations and standards of excellence for the rest of the country.
* You also experienced record retention rates.
* And yes, you were part of the effort that inspired the Bonner Foundation to provide over $2.5 million to endow the Bonner Program.
Centre Bubble
When you’re on campus you hear a lot about the Centre Bubble, the idea that while you are a student here, the center of the world is Centre’s campus. In one way it makes sense. You are a part of an intense academic program and you are surrounded by people who love you and who will challenge you. As one of you said, everybody knows everything about everybody; the list on the back of your class t-shirts said it clearly.
These qualities of community that you have learned here will serve you and the world well. Centre will provide you with a lifetime guarantee of support and adventure, but only if you sustain and access it. Beyond that, the environment of trust and fellowship that you experienced here will serve you and your future communities as you take with you the skill of engagement and the passion for diversity into your future neighborhoods. In a world that is becoming increasingly isolated, the Centre bubble has generated in you a powerful presence to facilitate and celebrate community building.
Bubble Busting
But, I would want to challenge the notion that the Centre Bubble is the central theme of your experience.
As a class you have one of the highest percentages of students taking at least one semester outside of the United States, a note that is well documented and affirmed by all the flags that are hung in the new commons. A pretty big bubble buster.
Tomorrow thirty students will jump in a van and drive to MacDowell County in Southeast West Virginia to spend the week living in a converted school and performing home repair and other service activities. This is something that students have done every year that you have been here.
Bonner and Centre
At the Bonner Foundation we seek to develop best practices and pursue innovations around student and campus involvement in community service and service learning. The Bonner and Centre alliance has been an important factor to our collective success. Bonner and Centre together have been able to challenge old ways of thinking and establish new levels of expectation in regard to student leadership in service and campus involvement in the community.
We find ourselves at a point in our history where many people engage in service activities, but are not transformed by them. It is my belief that we must move beyond random acts of kindness and rush toward strategic engagement for social justice.
The Bonner Foundation seeks to build the capacity of the local non-profits where we serve, not merely to show up as substitutes or day laborers. Centre College has done that at places like Big Brothers and Big Sisters. As Trina, the former Bonner Director said, “if it were not for the Centre students we could not do what we do.”
The Bonner Foundation looks to create leadership opportunities for students to not merely show up at a one-time event, but where they engage and take on roles that will call on them to be creative, responsible and effective. During your time here, students lead a drive to reclaim a park so that children of color could participate in a youth soccer league. Students surveyed local residents, petitioned the Centre SGA and contacted the city. The result was a $7,000 contribution from the students which in turn inspired an $18,000 grant from the city government.
The Bonner Foundation challenges institutions of higher learning to combine the rigors of the academy with the needs and opportunities of the community in a dignified and impactful way. Centre College does that through the Spanish Department by engaging students in ESL classes. Yesterday, I met Beth Neal who introduced me to one of “her students” who is preparing to go to college next year. She started out tutoring ten hours as part of her Spanish 220 class requirement and ended up serving more than 3,000 hours during her four years.
The Foundation is convinced that the classroom must be integrated with the world in order to be more effective agents of change. Centre College does that with classes like Rick Axtell’s Poverty Course that many of you have taken.
The Challenge Continues
As a member of this community, you have helped create and implement a best practice for civic engagement that has had a profound effect on our culture. But we are not done yet. Centre will continue to be called upon to be restless and not satisfied. You will continue to be called to innovate, implement and identify to the rest of higher education the highest levels of civic engagement and service learning.
Me
Last week I celebrated my twenty-first year of being at the Bonner Foundation. I imagine many of you have experienced your twenty-first birthday this year as well. I will be stepping down as the President of the Bonner Foundation later this summer and well, like you, I will face job insecurity and be vulnerable just like you to the fluctuation of global financial markets. So, I realized that while I was preparing words of wisdom for you, to prepare you to launch into your new life, that they were indeed words I need to not just speak, but hear and take heed of as well.
I hear that President Roush has a tradition of making three points.
Do your Best, Be your best, No regrets
I have no illusion that my words will be as memorable, but I do want to share with you three quotes that have recently been a part of my daily life.
#1) If you don’t like what you do, do what you like. These were the words I heard one young woman share at Richard Akins’ memorial service when she told how she went to see her friend’s father in the hospital. She quit the next day and took a job for less pay and more fulfillments. If we were at Stanford University and I were Steve Jobs, you would hear me say,
“Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. Your inner voice somehow already knows what you truly want to become.“
I want you to know that what you do for the next two – three years of your life will likely impact your life more than any other time. It is not when you will make the most money, or when you will achieve professional landmarks, or necessarily win the praise or confidence of a system that favors seniority or that is uncomfortable with innovation. But in the face of that:
• Don’t rush to replace uncertainty with responsibility
• Don’t fill the void of silence, with routine noise
• Don’t let the weight of expectations keep you from soaring.
You don’t have to look far for role models. Every person on this stage lives what I am talking about. Last night a blurry-eyed Patrick walked into the guesthouse, and, while he was tired, he said life and work blend together. “Most of the time I don’t feel like I’m working.” (Patrick Noltemeyer, Bonner Director at Centre College)
#2) Don’t Think You’re Special
That is the title of a chapter in a book written by Garrison Keeler, the Minnesota humorist who has performed on this stage while you were in school. He goes on to say that, “you are not so different than other people so don’t give yourself airs... The democracy of the gospel. All have sinned and come short...”
Steve Hannah, the executive director of the humor magazine, The Onion, was interviewed in the New York Times last week. The title of the article was, “If Plan B Fails, Go through the Alphabet.” In response to the question, what do you want to know about someone applying for a job, he responded,
“I want to know whether you were a kid who was entitled, whether you worked hard, whether you excelled at school, whether you held a summer job, how hard you had to work, whether you got the job yourself, whether you got promoted. I want to know if you will work hard. I absolutely loath a sense of entitlement.”
While I was saddled with the stereotype of being of the “me generation,” I recently read that someone has identified the “I’m special syndrome” as a characteristic of your generation.
The Communications Resource Center states on its Web page, “The "I'm special" person goes on and on about who he knows, what he's accomplished, and how good he is. Both approaches are driven by the same thing -- a sense of wanting to be special in one's own eyes, or the eyes of others.” The result among other things is that in effect the “I’m special person is a bore.”
I wish I could say that I don’t know what they’re talking about, but I am afraid that I do.
In my office there are about fifteen graduate students who work there part- time or as part of field education. I am genuinely fond of all of them, well almost all of them. I invite them to come to the Bonner Foundation at the beginning of the year and I take time with each one of them to try and figure out how their gifts might match the needs of what we are doing. It usually starts off pretty well. But it doesn’t take long before I begin to hear the grumbling. I don’t like what I’m doing, I don’t like who I’m working with. Many complain about the people supervising them and they are easily offended that I don’t pay more attention to them. Meanwhile, I notice that very little gets done without asking.
Just to test my reality I will at times place a cup in a window, I lay an umbrella across a doorway or I’ll leave the trash cans out on the curb and no one ever does anything.
I noticed these things; the people you work with will notice these things. My advice - pick up the trash can, do the dishes in the sink at work (without an attitude), do what your boss asks of you (unless it’s creepy) always bring a pen and paper to a meeting. Look interested. Be interested.
Yes you are special to us , and this is a special day. But what lies out there is in special need, and especially right now.
For we need:
• Your knowledge of science to cap the oil wells from spilling into our oceans
• Your understanding of humanity to quell a 13-year-old boy’s thought of suicide
• Your quest and passion for diversity to enable us to understand our unity in humanity
So when the boss in Up in the Air (OK, it was the only movie I saw all year) when the boss tells the young employees, “it’s not a problem till there is a solution,” it doesn’t mean that things are not broken, but instead, no one wants to hear you complain or whine about it unless you have a way to fix it.
“If it were easy, someone else would have done it”
“Do your work” and
“Do it anyway.”
#3) If your world doesn’t inspire you, you must inspire your world
Maybe this bit of wisdom will work better on you than it did when I shared it with my fifteen-year-old son the other day..
Father Wally
Last week I attended a commencement at Ripon College in Wisconsin. There they honored a Ripon native named Wally Kasuboski, who is a Franciscan priest who has spent years in the country of Panama. As a priest he learned his Latin, studied theology, and was trained in pastoral care. When he went to Panama he discovered three things: that the roads were a mess, the water was making people sick and there was no hope because there were no schools. Although he was not a builder, he established a construction company to repair the roads. Although he was not a doctor he realized that clean water was the key to a healthy community, so he developed a water company. And, although he was not an educator, he built a high school.
But you don’t have to be Father Wally or Mother Teresa. Don’t think you have to have an important title or travel on an airplane or win awards to have an impact. I think of my wife who writes poetry on the sidewalk in chalk. KP is a nationally-recognized junior high school teacher who is universally loved by her students and admired by her colleagues. But life placed other demands on her, such as a husband who travels and four boys who need their mother – to make lunches, fold laundry, talk to when their hearts break. Except for an occasional substitute job, KP is a stay-at-home mom, but she still shares her love of English and teaching by writing poetry on the sidewalk.
It is fun to watch the joggers run in place so they can read the sayings and keep moving. The other day our mailman, Vince, came by and said to her "You know this job looks easy on the surface, just delivering mail, but they ask a lot of us. At the main office, they ask us to do more and more every day. Some days when I get here, I feel pretty down, pretty tired...but your writing just changes my world. It's as if it is speaking to me. It makes a difference to me, and I wanted to say thank you.”
In all my hurry with all my meetings and memos, I wonder if I ever have the impact of that sidewalk art.
RFK Quote:
You are in a unique position,
You are the result of all our wishing.
You have been the object of so many of our resources, skills and efforts… and dreams.
And it is because of this that we look to you for inspiration.
• Inspire yourself to be confident without being cocky
• Inspire others to be kind and to know the power of grace
• Inspire the world to know the promise of reconciliation and the healing and the hope that it brings.
Let this next part of your life be the time when:
• You have the stillness to listen to God’s call on your life,
• The restlessness to break down the barriers that keep you from exploring,
• And the boldness and good fortune to invest in causes and people that will demand and apply all your energy, passion and joy.
If I had chalk in hand and a sidewalk nearby, I would write the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson from his work The American Scholar:
“If you plant yourself firmly on your instincts, and then abide, the world will come around to you."
Be Well, Do Good Work, Stay in touch
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