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JoAnne M. Podis, Ursuline College
August 18, 2002
Good afternoon! It is an honor today to add a warm welcome from everyone
in Academic Affairs to all of you—new students, family, and friends!
Students, you are entering the academic community within which you will
be spending the next few years of your lives. I hope that you will find
them to be challenging, productive, and enjoyable.
It would have been difficult, perhaps impossible, just one short year
ago to imagine how different the start of this academic year would be
from all those that have come before it. In August 2001 we welcomed another
class much like yourselves, but in September 2001 our Ursuline College
community, along with the rest of the country—and the rest of the
world—was irrevocably altered.
For the first time in nearly two hundred years our shores were invaded,
and the deaths of thousands will be forever etched in our collective national
consciousness. Since that tragic, horrific morning, when the bright blue
skies and bright sunlight of Manhattan made a vivid contrast to the darkness
of the evil that was at work, much has changed. Our country has launched
a military offensive, and many on all sides have perished; the stock market
has fallen spectacularly, recovered modestly, and fallen again; the Catholic
Church continues to address a crisis; CEOs who should have known better
have been filmed in handcuffs as police escort them away.
Amidst chaos and conflicts of global proportions, what is the place of
the liberal-arts-based education you are here to receive?
In August 2001 I would have begun this speech with data regarding the
economic value of a bachelor’s degree. You have no doubt read recently
published statistics to the effect that over a 40-year period graduates
of four-year colleges will likely earn a million dollars more than those
who stopped with a diploma from high school. Those who continue to graduate
and professional degrees stand to earn a great deal more.
In fact, jobs and/or promotions may very well be uppermost in the minds
of many of you—and in the minds of your families as well. As the
parent of a college graduate myself, I assure you that our daughter’s
job status has always been a topic of keen interest to her father and
me!
I submit to you today, however, that the worth of the education you will
be receiving at Ursuline College transcends economics and short-term benefits.
As a favorite colleague of mine was fond of saying, “College is
short, and Life (if we are lucky) is long,” and the Ursuline Studies
Program, our core curriculum, seeks to prepare you for success in life.
At the same time, its outcomes are consistent with what the world of work
demands.
You have already received information about our liberal arts core, and
all of you are probably registering for at least one core course or satellite.
Regardless of your individual program, you must complete the core’s
requirements. In this way we hope to ensure that every Ursuline College
graduate receives the benefits of its learning outcomes.
First and foremost among these are two that should stand you in very
good stead in the face of the uncertainties and challenges that I have
noted above: making decisions based on values and taking responsibility
for society. Taken together, these two outcomes of our liberal arts core
should enable you to become the kind of leader that our country, and the
world, so desperately needs. The CEOs of World Com and Adelphia Cable
became billionaires and supposedly led their companies to become the envy
of their respective industries. In the process they apparently entirely
forgot about the ethical dimension of leadership; they strayed far indeed
from the concept of social justice. We hope that as you earn your degree
here, you will never forget either one. Certainly the core courses you
take will guide you toward identifying and confirming your values, thereby
making them the centerpieces of your decision-making process.
It is important to emphasize at this point that an Ursuline College education
does not teach you what values you must espouse. Rather, the Ursuline
Studies Program encourages you to identify and shape your own values in
the hope that you will use them to act in a socially responsible manner
and work toward a just, peaceful society for all.
In today’s climate, with widespread calls for greater ethical awareness
on all sides, including President Bush’s call for business schools
to add ethics studies to their programs, a values-based education such
as Ursuline College provides you, is consistent with what organizations
will increasingly be demanding. Moreover, the other outcomes of the core
curriculum are equally consistent with the demands of the new marketplace.
For example, your course work should develop your critical thinking and
communication talents, as well as your problem-solving and analytic abilities.
Most of all, you should be learning how to learn. What I hear again and
again from the many community leaders with whom I come into contact is
that what their organizations need are employees who possess those very
qualities. One who is truly educated can always learn even more, and leaders
of organizations know that in order for their companies to become ever
greater, their employees must be able to welcome change and to be able
to learn the new skills and acquire the new knowledge that change inevitably
brings.
Depending on the program you select, you may or may not graduate from
Ursuline College with the exact skills you need for a specific position,
but regardless of your major you should definitely graduate with the capability
to apply your education to learn the skills that a particular job requires.
Again, I would emphasize that employers in all fields agree that industry-specific
skills are easily taught on the job, if, and this is an important distinction,
the employee is ready to learn them. In other words, even if your skills
help you land a position, it is your education that will enable you to
keep it and ultimately to prosper in your chosen career.
Similarly, if your goal is graduate or professional study, the outcomes
of Ursuline’s core curriculum should prepare you well, since the
same critical thinking, analytic, and communication abilities that are
needed in the world of work are needed to an equal extent in graduate
study. Moreover, no matter what your ultimate goal for your Ursuline College
education may be—career enhancement, preparation for graduate or
professional study, or personal development—we hope that you will
find the core equally valuable in enriching your life apart from work.
A former president of Dartmouth College was recently quoted in an essay
in the Plain Dealer as describing a liberal- arts-based education as one
that prepares “students to answer questions we haven’t even
thought of…” Here at Ursuline we hope to instill in you that
sort of exciting creativity—that energizing sense of your role in
creating a socially just future—and we hope that the Ursuline Studies
Program, together with the other courses you take, will assist you in
achieving that goal. Good luck to each and every one of you. I look forward
to watching you cross the stage to receive your baccalaureate degree in
the not-too-distant future.
Thank you and may God bless.
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