President's Welcome 2007

Let me extend my thanks, too, to the Scot Pipers who showed us the way this morning. We will get to hear them once more, at the end of our gathering, and then at special occasions throughout the year. We are the Fighting Scots remember! The College has its roots in Scottish Presbyterianism and many of our values and traditions come from those roots.

I also want to extend a hearty thanks to Carolyn Buxton, Senior Associate Dean of Students, to all of the student Orientation Leaders who have been preparing for this day since last April, and to all of the Wooster faculty and staff who have put so much love and labor into preparing for your arrival.

Finally, let me express my deepest gratitude to the parents and family members for all that you have done to make it possible for your daughters and sons to join us in our work here.

What is happening here is that your daughters and sons are joining a community of teachers, scholars, and learners that has been engaged in liberal inquiry for 141 years. Though how we understand our mission has changed over time – in response to changes in knowledge, changes in the world – the earnestness of our commitment has not changed. The students you have brought to us are entering an on-going project. We have work for them to do. And we have high expectations.

There are standards for participation, standards that will challenge your children, our new students, in ways they have not been challenged before. Being here calls for active engagement. We invite them to join our work as participants, but this means they have to be prepared to work hard, to be open to challenge and change, and above all, to carry out their academic and social endeavors with integrity.

Being a student at Wooster also means, and this is a critical point, that they take responsibility for their own learning.

You can provide encouragement,
We can provide guidance and constructive feedback;
They have to discover their own sense of purpose.

I remember well when my mother and father brought me to college. My father’s departing lecture – he was a great one for these things – was about how I now had a full-time job. My studies were my work, and like all adults I had to take my work seriously. I had to make my own plans, settle my own affairs.

Then with every phone call, every letter, he would ask “Well, how’s work?” He was relentless. He knew I was spending 12-15 hours a week in class and lab and he was asking me to account for the other 25 hours of work I owed my studies. The fact is, I am 50, he is 93, and every call still includes a good measure of advice. But that is a different story.

To the students, then, I have these words of advice:

First, you cannot possibly work too hard on your academics. Part of the passage to adulthood is that you need to imagine yourself as having a full-time job, and your work right now is the extremely demanding business of liberal education. This is what you are here to do. You will be in classes, labs, and studios from 12 – 16 hours a week. I have two things to say about this:

First, never miss a single class unless a pressing conflict emerges, and then, make sure you talk to your professor. Your faculty put enormous thought into each and every class meeting: every one counts, every one matters.
Second, attending class is the mere surface commitment. Perhaps the most profound transition from high school to college is the transition of agency. In high school it was the teacher’s responsibility to provide you with what you needed to know in class; in college, you are the agent of your own learning, and most of this learning will take place in the hours you spend:

with your books,
with your papers,
through your research,
in your labs and studios,
in dialogue with your fellow students, and with your professors,

all outside of class and all of your own initiative.

You see, a liberal education isn’t something we can give you; it is something you have to pursue.

For every hour you spend in class you should plan on spending 2-3 hours reading, studying, working in the lab or in the studio, engaging in inquiry. Thus, if you are in class from 12- 16 hours a week, you should count on spending a good 40 hours outside of class engaged in academic work. Thus, your work week – your full-time job here - is 50-60 hours. Welcome to adult life.

My second piece of advice: think carefully about your time here. Thoughtfully make and revise your plans by talking with your faculty, your family, your peers. Students at Wooster earnestly go after every good thing this college has to offer, and they are transformed by their pursuits. We have a curriculum that offers hundreds of courses each semester, dozens of major and minor programs of study, a rich array of opportunities to study abroad and in our local community.

While we can provide expert guidance, it is the responsibility of every one of you to discover and craft your reason for being here, your passion, your project.

Seek out the advice and counsel of your faculty advisor. This is an extremely important relationship and it is just one of many you will have with faculty who will help you chart your course through here.

Everything I have been talking about is really about the ethics of being here. It is an ethics of commitment, and ethics of engagement. This institution exists for one reason: your liberal education. We are very earnest about this mission but it can only be realized if you each do your part.

Third, remember that liberal education is about acquiring knowledge and skills, but it is also about developing character. Learning takes place on many different levels and in every nook and cranny of your college experience. You are learning and questioning and growing in classes, on athletic fields, in labs and studios and rehearsals, in conversation with your peers, and alone at your desk. Wherever you are, integrity matters.

The Wooster Ethic reads:

I hereby join this community with a commitment to the Wooster Ethic upholding academic and personal integrity and a culture of honesty and trust in all my academic endeavors, social interactions, and official business of the College.

Having said all this, let me shift the focus for a moment before closing. I am encouraging you to take this opportunity with all of the seriousness it deserves, but I also want you to be open to the profound joys of liberal learning. This is serious business, but it is also a whole lot of fun. Ask you parents or family members what they would give to be able to spend four years reading, spending hours exploring in rehearsals, laboratories or studios, learning. Liberal arts colleges are one of humanity’s great and noble inventions, and now you get to call one home for four years.

A liberal education is an expansion of consciousness; every book you read, every natural or social system you grasp, every theory you learn how to employ, will make you a person with greater scope and agency. You see, nothing you learn here is irrelevant. Every book or poem, film or equation, image or idea that you contemplate, expands and complicates your soul and enlarges your capacity to make meaning of the world around you.

To fuel your imagination, let me share with you four short stories of some of the things your college mates have done with their time here:

Patrick Midgley ’07 came to Wooster with a passion for theatre. A history and theatre double major, he plunged into performing from the moment he arrived on campus, including starring roles in Tartuffe and Mrs. Warren’s Profession. He wrote his Junior Independent Study on playwright Adam Rapp and, with the encouragement of one of his professors, presented a paper on Rapp at a conference in Los Angeles.

In Patrick’s senior year, the theatre and dance department decided to stage Rapp’s Nocturne, a harrowing drama that had never been performed by a college troupe. Patrick landed the starring role.

In April, Nocturne was one of four plays selected from a field of 400 nationwide to be performed at the 39th annual Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival in Washington, D.C. Patrick was named Outstanding Actor for his performance.

Patrick is pursuing an M.F.A. in acting at Purdue University.

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Juliana Anquandah ’06 always wanted to be a doctor, but when she came to Wooster, this Ghanaian native (whose family now lives in Columbus) also developed an interest in research. Majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology proved the perfect match for her mix of interests. During her four years at Wooster, she sought out research opportunities, including a 10-week stint one summer at Case Western Reserve University studying a protein associated with cardiovascular disease.

Her Senior I.S. explored why a particular group of enzymes that play a critical role in storing and releasing energy in the muscles is more structurally complex in humans than those that perform the same function in animals. Her research established that the more complex structures help facilitate the process more efficiently. Juliana and her faculty adviser co-authored a paper on her discovery, along with another Wooster student and a researcher at Case, for publication in a scientific journal.

Juliana also became interested in the study of other cultures while at Wooster, an interest that prompted her to add an anthropology minor and spend part of the summer before senior year working at a hospital in India. “Understanding other people, other cultures,” she says, “can help you be a better doctor, a better scientist.”

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Stephen Poprocki ’07 says Wooster “took a chance” by admitting him after having completed the equivalent of junior year in high school through home schooling. If so, it’s a chance that has paid off handsomely for all concerned. Fascinated by mathematics and physics from an early age, Stephen was able to give free rein to that fascination at Wooster, where he double-majored in the two subjects.

His Senior Independent Study project dealt with Einstein’s 1916 theory of general relativity; specifically, with the question of whether gravitational waves are created when two black holes collide. With financial support from the college’s Copeland Fund, he traveled twice to Caltech to collaborate with a research group.

This summer, Stephen was named one of six finalists for the American Physical Society’s LeRoy Apker Award, which recognizes outstanding achievements in physics by undergraduate students. (He’s the second Wooster student in the past five years to be so honored; Jeff Moffitt was a finalist in 2003.)

This fall, Stephen begins working toward a Ph.D. in theoretical physics at Cornell, with the goal of teaching at the university level. His chances look pretty good.

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There are dozens and dozens of these stories I could share with you. In fact, at Wooster, each of your fellow studnes is a story in the unfolding. You will have one, too. Keep this in mind as you start your college career. This is the work in front of you. It is a precious opportunity, and it is time to get to it.

I now invite the Scot Pipers to lead us onward.

Thank you.