Welcome and Remarks
Commencement-St. Lawrence University
Daniel F. Sullivan-May 20, 2001
Colleagues and distinguished guests, faculty, trustees,
parents, friends and family of graduating seniors and masters candidates,
members of the wider St. Lawrence family, and-most of all-graduating
seniors and masters candidates, whether you are summa cum laude,
magna cum laude, cum laude, or "thank you Lordy," a very
warm welcome to this, the commencement ceremony of the Class of 2001.
While St. Lawrence commencements have been held on this spot for
a long time, this is the first one to occur on what will now be known
as "Creasy Commencement Commons." Thanks to the wonderful
generosity of Bill Creasy '52, we now have a permanent setting for
commencement that doubles for the rest of the year as a beautifully
landscaped outdoor classroom or a common space where members of the
St. Lawrence community can gather. Bill has also provided the funding
for what will be called "Creasy Way," a park to be developed
this summer between Leckonby Stadium and the Newell Field House.
Thank you Bill, most warmly!
You seniors were the very first class recruited to
come to St. Lawrence on my watch. You arrived on campus in August
of 1997-eyes filled with enthusiasm and promise, anxious to make
your way and find your place. I hope indeed that you have found your
place, that you will think of this place as a home throughout your
life no matter where you are and what you are doing, and that you
will come back home to St. Lawrence many, many times in the years
to come.
You've spent the last week, I suspect, not just saying
goodbye, but also catching up on what each of you is planning to
do after you leave Canton today. As it happens, I spent the last
week doing the same thing by locating as much as I could about what
you've told us of your plans after St. Lawrence. Before I tell you
all what I found, I can't resist sharing part of a note Professor
Tom Berger received the other day from a former student he has helped
get admitted to a doctoral program in English. This will be stunningly
reassuring to all of the parents in the audience who remain concerned
about the practical value of a liberal arts education. Tom's former
student wrote:
After my first year in the "real world," I
have found that the only economically viable knowledge I attained
at St. Lawrence was your list of foolishness. My knowledge of the
9 muses and their respective arts and sciences won me $10 this fall.
I e-mailed Tom asking for an explanation and permission
to quote from the student's letter in my remarks this morning. This
is what I got back:
Of course you may. What is sad, well, all right, pathetic, is that I have forgotten
what he said. No, in the typing of this I got it back. I make 'em do all that
stuff, and they hate it, so much so that they can never get it out of their
minds:
1. The seven days of the week and the planets that
control those days.
2. The seven deadly sins.
3. Years of Shakespeare's birth and death.
4. Reigns of the English monarchs from Richard II through Charles I.
5. Publication date of the First Folio.
6. The seven holy virtues.
7. The three stooges.
8. The Seven Champions of Christendom, their countries, and their feast days.
9. The Three Magi.
10. The Beatles.
11. The seven sacraments
12. The Nine Worthies
13. The Nine Muses and their respective arts and sciences
14. The Seven Dwarfs.
15. The Ten Commandments.
16. The Three Graces.
17. The Three Fates.
18. Donald's three nephews.
19. The books in the Pentateuch.
20. The publication dates of the first editions of the plays we undertake to
study.
So, parents: if our graduates can convert that to
cash, you have absolutely nothing to worry about!
Your Plans
Back to you graduating seniors! Just over 50 of you have reported your plans
to us in the last several weeks someplace where I could get my hands on the
information. Six months from now we'll do our normal post-graduation survey,
after many of you who are currently unsettled in your plans have become settled,
and then we'll know something definitive about over three-fourths of you.
But today we have just these more limited numbers.
· 32 are beginning graduate or professional
school directly:
· 5 are headed for law school
· 2 are off to medical school and 1 to veterinary school (having been
accepted at 5 and the person who as a freshman talked me into starting rowing
as a men's and women's inter-collegiate sport-a very persuasive young lady indeed!).
3 others will do research in medical school settings while deciding whether to
pursue medical school; 1 will pursue graduate work in speech and language pathology;
and 1 is headed for the medical corps of the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant. Another
new 2nd lieutenant joins the armor division.
· 5 will attend graduate school in clinical or school psychology, something
a lot of our psychology majors have done historically.
· 8 are headed for masters and doctoral programs in the arts and sciences,
including chemistry, literature, French, psychology, computer science, political
economy, and applied mathematics.
· 6 will begin graduate study in education to prepare for teaching, while
9 will begin teaching directly, having already been certified or having found
a teaching job in a private school. One from this latter group will be teaching
as part of a term in the Peace Corps. You may not know this, but last year St.
Lawrence was in the top 10 liberal arts colleges nationally in the number of
its graduates in the Peace Corps.
If your class is like recent classes, more than 50
of you are or will soon be certified to teach. And almost all of
our 41 master's degree recipients here today are already working
in K-12 education or are about to. We sometimes forget how important
St. Lawrence is as a producer of high school, and occasionally also
elementary and middle school, teachers and counselors, many of whom
end up teaching or becoming administrative leaders of North Country
Schools. In New York and other states, the teacher certification
reform movement is seeking standards where high school teachers major
in a liberal arts discipline and teacher training comes on top of
that. It may seem trite to say it, but you can't teach what you don't
know. St. Lawrence, of course, has always been there. This is a case
of the world rightly following our lead.
· 5 of the group I know about will begin careers in research, in such
fields as geology, economics, and, as I mentioned earlier, medicine.
· 12 are going directly to work in business and management, in such areas
as insurance, investment banking, sales, consulting, real estate, and general
management, for such companies as General Electric, E. J. Gallo, HSBC, Deutsche
Bank, GE-Capital, Chubb Insurance, Lockheed Martin, Paine Webber, and the Nordbloom
Company.
· 1 is undertaking a year of travel/study, and 3 of you are heading off
into jobs in the non-profit sector. Thank you for your willingness to do that.
What an exciting array of opportunities this sampling from your class represents!
Proportionally, I know my sampling is not representative of the class as a
whole. For example, over half of my sample is heading directly to graduate
study. Ultimately, if your class is typical of recent classes, we will find
that only about 15% of you began graduate study right away, though within five
years of graduation something like 40% of you will have undertaken some graduate
study. Those of you heading directly to graduate study pretty much have to
have made your plans by now, whereas those of you entering the work force have
some flexibility and often take it to allow a bit of a break between college
and starting a career.
If you are typical of recent St. Lawrence classes,
by today about half of you either have a firm job offer or an acceptance
into graduate study. Within six months that will be true of 94% of
you-only 6% of you will still be in what we euphemistically call "transition" (your
parents might call it something else). And within that 6% some of
you will be in transition quite intentionally-engaging in a period
of travel or volunteering, for example. Only a handful of you, your
senior survey responses will show when we analyze them, are today
completely undecided about what you plan to do. If your family dynamics
are anything like my family dynamics, that will produce some tension-hopefully
manageable!
Very interestingly, when I went back to see what you
told us as incoming first-year students about your plans for your
education at St. Lawrence and for a career, I found remarkable and
surprising continuity-at least for those of you on whom I have data.
Typically, for all liberal arts colleges, only something like 20%
of students actually major in the field in which they intended to
major when they started as freshmen. For those of you I've been studying,
about 80% majored in the department you intended to major in as freshmen
and are heading into a career remarkably like the one you described
for yourself back then. Perhaps it all hangs together this way: knowing
your post-graduation plans well enough for us to know about them
as well may indicate a kind of focus and persistent thoughtfulness
on your part. To say it another way, perhaps knowing early what you
wanted to do and why led to an earlier resolution of your post-graduation
plans. Those of you who came to St. Lawrence undecided on your plans
may also be taking longer to sort out what you want to do now. My
guess is that for your class as a whole, we will ultimately find
much more divergence between your freshman plans and your senior
choices than we see in my sample.
At the same time, St. Lawrence students typically show
much more consistency between their plans when they enrolled as first-year
students and their plans at graduation. Roughly 50% of St. Lawrence
students major in the field in which they intended to major as freshmen
and are planning to enter the kind of career they thought they would
enter as freshmen. Compared to graduating seniors elsewhere, you
have been much more steadfast in your commitment to early goals.
We also know from some recent research on student-athletes
at St. Lawrence that they tend to resolve their post-graduation plans
earlier than non-athletes, again possibly an extension of the kind
of seriousness of purpose it takes to be a successful student-athlete
in a demanding liberal arts college. You are no exception. You can
be late to class, but it's hard to be late for the tip-off or the
face-off!
Conclusion
What I can say very proudly is that you were a most interesting and diverse
group when we first met four years ago, and you are even more interesting and
diverse today. You have used the resources of this great university well to
craft a learning experience for yourselves that is personally meaningful and
shaped by your own aspirations and goals. We are truly pleased to have had
the chance to be a part of your growth and development here.
So, from me today, no sermons, just very best wishes to the great class of
2001! You've done us proud. Thank you, and God bless you!
