Remarks at Matriculation of Class of 2013
Terry Cowdrey
Vice President and Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
On behalf of the admissions and financial aid staff, I welcome you here today. You new students have honored us by choosing St. Lawrence and bringing your talent and enthusiasm to this great campus. Faculty, staff and upper-class students will introduce you to a university proud of tradition yet open to change. One tradition at this Matriculation Ceremony is an introduction of you new students to one another and to the St. Lawrence community. As you listen, make the commitment to use your time at St. Lawrence establishing friendships with and learning from one another---both those with whom you share common experiences and backgrounds as well as those whose perspectives are very different from your own.
From Casey Abribat to Casey Zuraitis, there are 580 first-year students, 307 women and 273 men. 185 members of the Class of 2013 knew that St. Lawrence was the right choice and made their commitment through applying Early Decision. There are 24 transfer students from 21 different colleges and exchange students from Japan and Sweden. New students come to St. Lawrence from 21 countries, 4 Canadian provinces, and 23 U.S. states. Some of you have traveled to Canton great distances from around the globe: from Kenya, Swaziland and Zambia; India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Vietnam; from Bermuda, Ecuador, Mexico, Trinidad & Tobago; and from Poland, Macedonia, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Finland, Turkey, Yemen and Palestine. Others have traveled only a few miles to begin your college careers; seven new students are from right here in Canton and many others are from the surrounding towns and nearby states. Three New England schools— Concord and Holderness in New Hampshire and Champlain Valley Union in Vermont—each have six graduates in the Class of 2013.
271 are the only ones from your high schools to enroll at St. Lawrence this year and seven of you are the only ones from your state or province: Saskatchewan and British Columbia, Wyoming, Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. Whether you come from near or far, many of you are already global citizens. You have traveled to France and Spain with your schools, enrolled as exchange students and hosted exchange students from around the world. You have visited family in Albania, Armenia, Grenada and Jamaica, and you have traveled with People to People to Europe and the South Pacific. You have taught sustainable farming in Honduras, worked on penguin conservation in New Zealand, and volunteered with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Brazil. Your interest in service took you to Central and South America as well as to Sierra Leone, Malawi and Mozambique. You taught English in Bali, traveled with your youth orchestra to China, to India with World Challenge, and to Japan with Youth for Understanding.
Some of you are multilingual and multicultural, encouraged to honor your ancestry through learning about your Mayan and Ukrainian heritage, speaking Patois at home, and being active in ASPIRA. You believe in the value of all human beings and have strived to bring your peers together to work to end discrimination; you were recognized for your efforts with the Anti-Defamation League Award. You have exchanged views with others through you participation in Seeds of Peace and worked on behalf of others through Amnesty International and Students for a Free Tibet. You are active with the Asian Culture Society and the Asian Cinema Club, the International Rescue Committee and Human Rights in Action, and Student Action for Global Awareness. You have interned at the American Council on Germany and at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees. You founded Allies for Racial Equality, the Gay-Straight Alliance, and the Unity Club. You organized a concert to raise money for Darfur, designed the logo for the 52 Kids Foundation working with children in Uganda, and volunteered with Orphans in Transition in Rwanda. After graduation you plan to join the Peace Corps and Doctors without Borders, and work as a diplomat and as an advocate for women.
You have prepared well for the education that awaits you by seeking challenge and following your curiosity. Your research ranges from studying the correlation between surface vegetation and permafrost depth, to analyzing the effects of arch support on lower extremity pain in female high school athletes. You demonstrated your commitment to active, experiential learning on the Maine Coast Semester, the Rocky Mountain Semester and at the Island School. You explored health careers through the New Visions program, the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine, and through internships in hospitals, a kidney research lab and with a chiropractor. One of you has already been admitted to Upstate Medical School.
Your academic interests led to involvement in activities such as FIRST Robotics, Envirothon and Science Olympiad; Odyssey of the Mind, Mock Trial, and Model UN, where you were named Best Delegate. You have worked with biologists dissecting beetles, with your local representative at the Massachusetts State House, and at science and history museums. You were a docent at the Binghamton Zoo and volunteered at the New York Botanical Garden. You competed on math teams, in Quiz Bowl, Scholastic Scrimmage, and Whiz Quiz, making it to the national tournament. More than 100 of you have earned college credit while still in high school, and many of you have tutored your peers and younger students. You were named “Most Fluent in German”, “Most Studious,” and took the top prize in a Women’s Rights Speech Competition. You have volunteered at libraries and recorded audio books for children; you were a Read Across America reader and a Homework Buddy. You have published poetry and photography, and have edited literary magazines, yearbooks, and school newspapers. You served on the editorial board of Life Behind the Wall, a magazine written by Palestinian teenagers, and were a columnist for your local paper and the national newspaper, Student Paths. You care deeply about politics—at the local, national and international levels---working on campaigns, registering voters, and taking an active role in the Young Liberals and the Young Republican Clubs; two of you attended President Obama’s inauguration. Someday you will be history and math professors, authors and inventors.
As a group you are committed to working toward improving the natural environment, and you have led these efforts in your schools and communities. You have started environmental clubs, and worked with EcoLeaders, See Green, and Students Against Climate Change. You founded Project iCup to raise awareness about consumer waste at local coffee shops, and organized the Rock the Earth concert to benefit Friends of the Winooski River. You built and maintained trails with the Student Conservation Association and Landmark Volunteers; you are involved with Moose Kissers United---working against oil drilling in Alaska. You have skippered a solar boat and, as a lake host, you have inspected boats for invasive species. You want to become geologists, climatologists, and archaeologists. You have worked with the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District to help prevent soil erosion and worked in rural fishing communities with the Quebec Labrador Foundation.
Many of you chose St. Lawrence in part because our location is ideal for continuing---or beginning---involvement in outdoor recreation: hiking, rock climbing, canoeing and kayaking. One hundred of you explored our region on Outdoor Program trips. You are veterans of Outward Bound, Wilderness Ventures, and National Outdoor Leadership School as well as the Outdoor Adventure Club, Project CLIMB, and the Anti-Gravity Club. You are snorkelers and spelunkers. You have climbed Mt. Katahdin and Mt. Kilimanjaro, and followed the trail of Lewis & Clark. One of you is an Adirondack 46er—and at least two others are well on your way. You are a Junior Maine Guide, a Wilderness First Responder and a ski patroller. Your love of the outdoors has developed through years of summer camp which, for many of you, culminated in your moving from camper to counselor where you have shared your experience with others.
Some of your time spent outdoors involves competitive athletics; 86% of you competed in at least one sport in high school; some were three-sport athletes and three-sport captains. You are ski racers, figure skaters, and snowboarders. You love riding, sailing, swimming, tennis and squash and you pass on that love by teaching others. You play ice hockey and ringette. You won state championships in skiing and golf, competed in track, crew and soccer at the Empire State Games, and played field hockey at Disney World. You have played soccer in Ireland and Brazil, and gone SCUBA diving in Indonesia and skied in Chile. You played in the Little League World Series and competed at the national level in archery. You are high jumpers (with Olympic dreams), long jumpers and pentathletes. You were named the Unsung Hero on your football team and received the Coach’s Award in volleyball. You competed in a triathlon on a team with your mother and sister; and in the Give Peace a Chance Triathlon; you throw the javelin and the discus. You stay in shape with karate, kickboxing and yoga. You surf, bowl and play Ultimate Frisbee and handball. You race mountain bikes and road bikes; and you ride a unicycle. You coach as well as compete in baseball, hockey, basketball and cheerleading. You are in the color guard, the drum line, and were your school’s mascot and Homecoming Queen. You work as lifeguards, caddies, lift operators and bike mechanics. You string lacrosse sticks and test hockey goalie equipment. You have worked for ESPN X-Games and in the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs. You are president of the fencing club and on the rifle team. You combine your love of sports with your commitment to service: collecting soccer balls for Iraqi children through Operation Soccer Ball and Kick for Nick; organizing a ski race in honor of your father to raise money for cancer research; and organizing a Pink Out at your football game to raise money for breast cancer. You volunteer at adaptive ski and therapeutic riding centers, and you have helped many Special Olympians compete. You helped out at the NYC and Boston Marathons, the Ironman Triathlon and the Pan Mass Challenge. You plan, someday, to work for the Boston Red Sox and the Pittsburgh Steelers.
You bring myriad talents in the arts to St. Lawrence with more than half of your class as musicians and over a quarter of the class involved in theater or dance. Together you could form your own concert band and orchestra; you have an experienced concertmistress to lead you. You perform with bell choirs, jazz bands, baroque ensembles, the Green Mountain Youth Symphony and the Rochester Youth Philharmonic. You play cello in a quartet at weddings and the fife in a Fife and Drum Band. You are a garage band guitarist and play everything with strings, including banjo, fiddle, viola and harp. You also sing—in a capella groups, swing and show choirs, madrigals, and a Barbershop Quartet. InAChord, the Harmonettes, the Bel Aires, and the Tartantones have all benefited from your talents. You have sung the national anthem at sporting events at your school; you have sung in the National Gallery and with the Community Christian Fellowship band. You have traveled to Europe with “Sound of America” and taught piano lessons, worked as a disc jockey, and you aspire to become a music therapist.
Your musical talents have spilled over into theater with performances in Les Miserables, The Music Man and Grease, as well as in The Sound of Music as Captain Von Trapp and Friedrich, and in The Wizard of Oz as the Tin Man and Toto. You ran the light board, led the costume crew, and managed props; and you were on stage in Antigone, Romeo and Juliet, and The Crucible. You have acted at the Mystic Seaport Museum, captained the Improv Team and emceed the Talent Show; you were named “Most Reliable Actor” and won first prize in a Lip Sync Contest. You are amateur film makers and organizers of film festivals. You were Clifford, the Big Red Dog at the Saranac Lake Winter Festival, and someday you want to write for television and design sets.
You love dance of all kinds: ballroom and hip hop; ballet and belly dance; tap and swing. You choreograph and teach dance to others; you are on the step team and honor family traditions in Irish step dance, Greek dancing, and the traditional Chinese Lion dance. Some of you are visual artists: oil painters, water colorists, photographers and cartoonists. You are glass blowers and glass artists; woodworkers and wood-turners. You have interned with a ceramics artist and worked at an art gallery and at the Fenimore and Remington Art Museums.
Internships and work experiences have been part of your education and have given you opportunities to explore your interests and to earn money for college and household expenses. More than 90% of you have held jobs allowing you to further develop habits that allow you to balance multiple responsibilities. You have sold bagels, clothing, antiques; toys, sporting goods and cell phones; you were a “clothes folder” for Hollister and “sandwich artist” at Subway. Among you, you have experienced every job in a restaurant, sold a lot of pizza, and scooped a lot of ice cream----at Krispie Cone, Bailey’s Bubble, JP Licks, and Coneheads, to name a few. You have picked blueberries, strawberries and apples, and sold cheese at the Farmers’ market; you have baled hay and milked cows. You worked at the NY State Fair: parking cars, selling food and as a stage hand.
You have painted stripes in parking lots, installed irrigation systems, sorted and packed produce, and worked in a helicopter hanger. You are groundskeepers and dock hands; launch attendants and parking attendants; nannies and mannies, baristas and bagboys. You have worked for a mining exploration company and for a concrete construction company; and on an assembly line packing chocolate chips in boxes and in a factory as a punch press operator. You have been pharmacy techs, physical therapy aides, and a hair salon assistant. You have exercised dogs, hawked newspapers, moved furniture, and cleaned houses, boats and schools. You shine shoes, repair elevators and computers, paint houses and dorm rooms. You have worked as bank tellers, bookkeepers and data entry clerks. You have interned at a car dealership, a hotel and a radio station, and with a social venture firm, an international search firm, and an architecture firm.
You have had the opportunity to learn what careers you might want to pursue and what jobs you definitely don’t want to have again.
You have worked beside your parents on your family farms, in restaurants and with your father’s construction and special effects companies. You have managed the family candy booth at the Wisconsin State Fair and harvested oysters on your uncle’s shellfish farm. Some of you chose to start your own businesses: landscaping, house painting, car washing; running a summer recreation program, working as a personal trainer and as a videographer. You have started an eBay business, run a custom skateboard business, and founded Ribbonlax, a ribbon belt company.
The initiative you showed in starting your own businesses is further demonstrated in your schools and communities where more than three-quarters of you have held leadership positions. You have brought others together for positive change through your participation in student government, and your leadership as President of the National Honor Society, the Key Club and your class. You were chosen to be Student Leaders, prefects, proctors, and tourguides. You have served on the Disciplinary Committee and the Honor Council, Youth Court and the Community Leadership Team. You served as the student rep to the Board of Education and on your town’s Youth Council. You have honed your leadership skills at Girls’ and Boys’ State, and the National Student Leadership and Global Youth Leadership Conferences. You are active with Jack & Jill of America, Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), and Girl, Boy and Venture Scouts where many of you earned the top awards of Gold and Eagle. You won the Rotary Youth Leadership Award.
Much of your leadership has been focused on bringing others together through service----through the Interact and Leo Clubs and through programs such as Relay for Life, Race for the Cure, and Make a Difference Day. You have volunteered as Salvation Army bell ringers and organized the Giving Tree. You have run, walked, danced, bowled and cut your hair to raise money for MS, cystic fibrosis and cancer. You have baked pies for Pie in the Sky, raising funds for AIDS Project New Haven. You volunteer at soup kitchens and food banks; feeding the homeless through HOPE (Helping Other People Eat) and the Sack Lunch Brigade. You co-founded Donation Nation and work with the Empty Bowl Project and Kids Against Hunger. You have been Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Best Buddies and peer educators, and have worked with TAP (Teen AIDS Prevention), SADD and Safe Rides. You have served the elderly through your work with the Glamour Gals Club— providing spa services, and by volunteering at nursing homes, with Hospice, and for Meals on Wheels. You have volunteered at an orphanage and at the Ronald McDonald House and recorded public service announcements about prescription drug abuse.
You have taught Sunday School and Hebrew school; you serve your community as volunteer firefighters, EMTs, and Red Cross volunteers. You have provided clothing to those in need through Midnight Run and Clothing Connection, and you volunteer at Rosie’s Place and with Women of Hope, helping the homeless and mentally ill. You have built and repaired homes with Habitat for Humanity, Group Workcamps, and the Appalachia Service Project; and you volunteered with Extreme Makeover Home Edition. You continue to travel to the Gulf Coast to assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina.
You have volunteered with the SPCA and Paws for a Cause, and helped build enclosures for endangered wolves. You started a chapter of The Gordie Foundation at your school to raise awareness about alcohol misuse, and you arranged a speaker to come for World AIDS Day. You founded Friend-Pal to encourage letter-writing to the disabled, and through Kords for Kids you raised money to provide music in the Children’s Hospital. For your outstanding commitment to community service, you received the St. Lawrence Book Award and the Prudential “Spirit of the Community” Award. The Canton community will surely benefit from your commitment to service.
You have remarkable talents and varied interests to share with one another: you sew, quilt and crochet; you have built boats and a 45-foot treehouse, and you cook—and are active in the BBQ and Meat Clubs. You have taken flying lessons and are restoring a 1952 Army jeep. You collect earrings, hats and socks; you juggle and do tae kwon do. You keep bees, raise llamas, and show goats and cows through 4-H; you raised and show a working steer team. You belong to the Canadian Pony Club and the American Quarter-horse Association. You founded the Animal Rights Club and the Philosophy Club. You are building a trail at a Revolutionary War site, participate in Civil War Reenactments, and you support today’s troops through My Soldiers Club. You are in the Civil Air Patrol.
In your class Emily—spelled 2 ways—is one of the most popular women’s names—there are 11 along with 3 Emmas. There are also 11 Elizabeths, two Elizas and one Liza. Six of them prefer nicknames: two go by Liz, as well as Lizzy, Libby, Beth, and Riley. There are 9 Williams in the class, though one goes by Bill and five by Will---including Will Mahoney and Will Maloney. There are eight Johns (though one prefers Rob) and eight Jonathans plus one Jack. Four of you—A.J., D.J., J.J. and P.J.—use your initials, and twelve of you prefer to be called by your middle name. Your class includes an Iris, a Laurel and a Sage; and two Jasmines, two Lilys, and two Hollys; as well as Amber and Coral; and two Kittys.
Seventy of you were born in May—more than in any other month, and if your birthday is February 7 or 22, you have six classmates who share your birthday. Four of you—Meaghan Herlihy, Alyssa Houle, Colin Kay-Tessier and Emily Marvin---are celebrating your birthdays by starting your college careers—today.
Many of you continued family traditions by choosing St. Lawrence. Forty of you have parents who graduated from St. Lawrence--for 13 of you both parents; 37 of you follow older siblings; and three have both parent and sibling legacies. Seventeen have grandparents who graduated from St. Lawrence—five of you are third generation Laurentians. One set of twins and three sets of cousins begin their St. Lawrence careers together today, and several of you are beginning school without your twin for the first time.
In your essays you wrote about your heroes—most often your parents and grandparents but also your brothers: Adam, Billy, Michael, John, Pad and Zach---and your sisters: Betsy, Cammie, Kaylene and Sarah. You wrote about how much you have been influenced by your cousin, Lee and your nephew, Owen. Some of you wrote about teachers who were important to you; for others it was coaches—Adams, Carlson, Hickey, McGovern, Stuart and Reed. The lessons you learned from these important adults in your lives will carry over to your college days as your new teachers and coaches will add their own influence. For some of you, it was your four-legged friends who inspired: your dog Casey and your horses Suzie, Grace and Bogart.
To help us understand the personal philosophies you have developed, some of you quoted those whom you admire: King, Eisenhower, Churchill, and Gandhi; Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead and Rachel Carson; Emerson, Dickens and Shakespeare. You quoted Aristotle and the Bible; Walt Disney and Picasso, Michael Jordan and Marilyn Monroe. In your essays you described your hopes and plans for the future. Whether your goals are focused, or as is the case for most of you, not yet clearly defined, you will each be well-prepared to fulfill all of your dreams because of the liberal arts education that you are pursuing here. A St. Lawrence education will allow you to be and to become anything you wish to be, provided you take full advantage of the opportunities that are here.
As you have heard, you new students represent widely varying backgrounds, experiences and interests. You bring to St. Lawrence different perspectives on many issues. As you get to know one another, your goal should be to learn from one another. Keep in mind that a successful discussion is not one where you convince someone else to take your point of view but where, instead, each of you comes to a broader understanding of the issue at hand. What you have in common is that you are all curious, motivated, and ready to meet new people and start the next chapter of your lives.
Of course you come to St. Lawrence with the talents and interests you have already developed. But it is our faith in the future--our great confidence that you will fully engage the St. Lawrence experience --that leads us to welcome you to this community today. As individuals and as a class you will make your mark on St. Lawrence. It starts now. You are responsible for creating your own future. Whether your experience is as rewarding as it can be is entirely up to you.
It is with great pride and anticipation that I present the Class of 2013 to Dean Lehr.
