Class Day Address

Class Day Address

by Dean Virginia Sapiro

I welcome the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences class of 2009 to your Class Day. I welcome the faculty and staff, the friends and the family of the Boston University College of Arts and Sciences Class of 2009 to this year’s Class Day.  We are here to honor and to celebrate our students who have distinguished themselves academically and as citizens of this academic community.

To those of you we honor today: You are part of a select, special group of people. You chose to pursue a Bachelor of Arts degree in the College of Arts and Sciences at BU, one of the country’s great liberal arts teaching and research institutions of high learning.

You have succeeded.  You have succeeded with bells and whistles. You may have been among those students who engaged in the ritual grumbling about studying in a university that suffers from “grade deflation.”  But you have met the challenge you took on when you came here, to stretch yourselves intellectually, to develop your minds, your senses, and your ability to live in a complex community creatively, productively, ethically.

We cannot begin here to tell all of the stories that show the ways in which you have grown and developed over these years since you attended you matriculation ceremony. But let us now give some examples, by recognizing those who have won our most distinctive awards and prizes.

Writing Excellence Awards

First on this afternoon’s program are the Alumni Association Awards for Writing Excellence.

I am proud that we, in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University recognize that one of the most important things we do as educators is to help our students develop the strong communication skills that are required in order to be sure you leave here with the tools you need for intellectual engagement and versatility; critical thinking; and informed, effective, and responsible communication of your ideas. You began this path in the writing seminars you took at the beginning of your careers here, you followed it further throughout your coursework, and we urge you to continue to develop your communication skills through the rest of your life.

I can’t tell you how many times during my teaching career, when trying to improve the writing of a student in one of my political science classes the student would respond, “But this isn’t an English class!”  What an idea – that an educated person only has to write well in an English class!  Perhaps your generation is better prepared to understand the need for clear, effective, communication than any previously. After all, you try to say it all in 140 characters!  No matter what you do in life, you will have to write well.

I am especially pleased at the continued progress of our Writing Program toward these ends under the fine leadership of Assistant Dean for Writing, Professor Joe Bizup. He has a special mission of reaching out across the disciplines to make sure our graduates will be skilled communicators regardless of the walk of life you choose.

Today’s award-winners exemplify the kind of excellence in written expression we aim to foster in our students.  And, as you will hear in a moment from the faculty who present those awards, those same professors who probed, prodded, and scribbled in the margins of your papers have taken great pride in your accomplishments. Our faculty does this because they have a passion for it, and take tremendous satisfaction in your success, even if it took a little tough love along the way.  Thank them in the best way possible by staying in touch with them later in your lives. They will want to hear from you.

The awards we bestow are made possible by the generosity of CAS alumni whose ranks you will join tomorrow afternoon.  The members of the Alumni Association who chose writing as a focus for fundraising on behalf of future generations of students once sat right where you sat and, like you, they came to understand the important of writing and effective communication in all our lives, and they decided to contribute to the well-being of future CAS students by investing in these awards for writing excellence.  Although our alumni donors could not be here today, you can be sure that they will read, and relish, the winning essay.

Closing Remarks

Tomorrow by mid-afternoon you will no longer be Boston University students. You will have left Warren Towers and the BU Beach behind. Your writing seminars and major requirements will become a memory.  You will keep many of your friendships and your ties with each other. Because of our electronic forms of communication you will find this much easier than we, your predecessors did. But you will find new friends, you will develop new interests, you will make new discoveries about yourself. And eventually, you will develop grey hair. Or lose it.

But you will no longer be Boston University students in the College of Arts and Sciences. You will, however, be something that is just as important and, I hope, that will also make a real difference in your lives. You will be Boston University College of Arts and Sciences alumni. You will be part of a huge community of people who live all over the world, who work in every kind of job and profession, who make a difference in the world in a multitude of ways, and who increasingly make new connections with each other across the generations.

You are a part of the Boston University community and we hope you will continue to be part of this community. We hold events around the world for our alumni, we are offering connections for great networking, and we are finding new ways to continue you education here on campus, in venues around the world, and on line. And, if you are around New York at Thanksgiving, we welcome you to purchase tickets to see the Boston University men’s hockey team whup Cornell at Madison Square Garden.

Stay in touch. Your professors truly care what happens to you; they will be delighted to hear from you over the years to find out what you’re up to, and to share in your successes and in the challenges you all will face. Consider remaining a part of this community by continuing to serve and support it as so many of you have while you’re here. Help us recruit the next great generations of student. Speak proudly about your degree and experience. Talk to young people about coming here. And consider doing as so many people have before you, to give back to the people who have supported you, like the donors of today’s awards, by finding ways to support the future generations of young people who will sit right where you are sitting.

We know you are going out into the world at a tough time. We know it is downright scary to leave school and enter the labor market as so many of you are doing in the midst of a world financial crisis. But you have the equipment it takes to forge your way. You have an excellent liberal arts degree that was not designed to train you in some narrow field that might already be disappearing or changing so much that your training is decreasing in value. You chose a liberal arts degree, an education that gives you a broad and deep platform of intellectual and critical skills that will allow you to keep educating and developing yourself, of learning a breadth of knowledge and a breadth of ways of knowing that give you intellectual flexibility and a base from which to move in any direction, and a depth of learning in at least one major field that has given you the experience of what it means to dive deeply into a field. And you have succeeded.

Like many of the generations of BU students who have gone before you since 1839, you happen not to be leaving here in the best of economic times. But like those who have gone before you, you will make your futures in creative ways, and you will make this world better. I know it.

In a moment we go across the street to the atrium of the SMG building at 595 Commonwealth Avenue for a reception. I will ask you to remain seated until the platform party has left the auditorium. But before that, we will have one final lesson in your undergraduate education.

Tomorrow on Nickerson Field, when the speeches are over and it comes time for degrees to be conferred, Provost Campbell will call on the deans of all the Schools and Colleges, from smallest to largest, to present their graduates. You’ll have a while to wait, because they save the biggest and the best for last.

So, during that time when your classmates from the professional schools are whooping it up, I want you to do something for me and for yourselves:  I want each of you to think back over your college years and pick out a memory—one memory—that, more than any other, you want to hold close and carry with you far into the future.

And then, when it’s my turn to present all of you for the BA, I want you, and I’m counting on you, to show your CAS spirit—to make sure they hear you loud and clear, and to make sure the CAS alumni all over the world hear you coming.

Let’s try it.