Welcome – Admissions Luncheon
Saturday, April 8, 2000 – Daniel F. Sullivan

Hello and Welcome! I’m Dan Sullivan, St. Lawrence Class of 1965 and President of the University. It’s great to be here with you today. It’s something made even more meaningful to me because I sat where you sit in 1961, trying to decide among St. Lawrence, Cornell, Rochester, Oberlin and Colby. I chose St. Lawrence, and I’ve never looked back. It was one of the most important decisions of my life, and a decision I have never regretted even for a moment. I hope you feel the same way many years from now about the college decision you are about to make. I’m glad you’ve decided to spend this day with us.
Not long ago, someone asked me out of the blue to list three things that make St. Lawrence unique among American liberal arts colleges. This was a trap, of course. Liberal arts colleges typically have distinctions, or special strengths, or unusual qualities, but are hardly ever unique in anything that matters very much. For a strange reason that I do not yet understand, I had actually been thinking about that question in the weeks before, fearing that someone might ask it, and so I was ready for him. As it happens, there are in fact several very significant things that are unique about St. Lawrence. Here are the three that I came up with that day.
First, St. Lawrence is the American liberal arts college located closest to the capital of a foreign country [pause]—and that has had very important consequences. Long ago—almost from the beginning of the university around the Civil War—St. Lawrence faculty took advantage of the nearness of Ottawa, Kingston, Montreal, and even Quebec City, to introduce a comparative dimension to courses in a number of disciplines. One could, for example, contrast the U. S. Congress and the Canadian Parliament first hand, because Ottawa is only about an hour and a quarter away. Over time, our experience of using Canada in this way led more generally to a heightened readiness on the part of the faculty and the university to seize the opportunity presented by the Cold War in the 1960’s to develop programs of study abroad.
As a nation we were stung by the “Ugly American” tag, earned because of the visible and frequent misunderstanding of other cultures Americans acting abroad seemed to exhibit with alarming frequency. It was clear to many, and especially to the St. Lawrence faculty, that having many more people who understood something about cultures other than our own would be in the national interest. St. Lawrence plunged in early and with vigor, so that today 30-40% of any given class studies abroad in one of our programs or an approved program of another college or university. And over 50% of the faculty have significant international training and expertise.
My wife Ann and I had the distinct pleasure of visiting two of our best overseas programs in the last few weeks. Our program in Kenya has been in place since 1974 and is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuing overseas program in all of Africa. In celebration of its 25th anniversary last year, 75 alumni of the program gathered on campus during reunion to learn about the program of today, and to share the ways in which their experiences in Kenya changed their lives.
Since its 1974 founding, almost 8% of all St. Lawrence students have been to Kenya on our program, studying issues of economic and environmental sustainability, anthropology, politics, history and many other things. As part of their celebration, these alumni donated money to build new classrooms in the primary school founded by the Samburu community in northern Kenya that has hosted our students in homestays for over 20 years. We had met the Samburu elder who coordinates our students’ homestays in his community when he visited campus for the reunion. He insisted that Ann and I attend the dedication of the school, and so we went. It would take me too long to share much of the trip with you, but I can say that it was like drinking from a fire hose—that’s how much there was to process in our short time there. It is clear that our students there are thriving, and it’s clear already that, just as for the alumni who have gone before, it will be a life-transforming experience for them.
Pakuo, the Samburu elder I mentioned, gave me this “wisdom stick” as a gift. It’s something you can have only if your children are grown, because then you have the wisdom to help others with their children. Since I received this, I have noticed a great increase in the wisdom of St. Lawrence students here in Canton, and so I believe there is something to this wisdom stick!
On our way home we visited our program in London, took our students out to dinner and then to the theater performance they were attending as part of the program. They too are being affected profoundly by their experience, which focuses on early and modern British theater—including Shakespeare in Performance, which they actually take at the Globe itself—British history, British politics, and British society.
So, the uniqueness of our location near Ottawa has led to a critical distinction—a remarkable institutional emphasis and strength in a broad variety of programmatic emphases we have come to call “global studies.” It’s something I believe we do very, very well.
A second way in which St. Lawrence is unique is that we are the only college or university in America with a Caribou Coffee shop in its bookstore. Caribou Coffee, with headquarters in Minneapolis, is now the second largest chain of boutique coffee shops after Starbucks. It was founded by Kim Whitehead Puckett, Class of 1986, and her husband.
I mention Kim’s founding of Caribou Coffee here because it illustrates another important St. Lawrence distinction. A disproportionately high number of our alumni have become entrepreneurs. St. Lawrence students are creative, they are risk takers, and they are smart. Many of them use their liberal arts education to set very practical problems in a larger context. These alumni entrepreneurs, we discover, have majored in almost everything we offer, and a significant number have majored in science or mathematics.
To give just one example, one of my classmates, a physics major here who went on to get his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford, founded a computer chip making company that was acquired by Intel a decade or so back. He has created at St. Lawrence an endowed fellowship that allows science students to work with faculty on research in the summer. He is just one example of this combination of serious academic study with entrepreneurial spirit that I am referring to.
We rank 31st among all American liberal arts colleges in the number of science and mathematics doctorates earned by our alumni in the past 10 years, and over that same time we rank 5th among all colleges and universities in the percentage of our alumni who have achieved a Ph.D. in one of the earth sciences. Our success in science and mathematics occurs, I believe, because we are committed to providing science and mathematics students with a hands-on, investigative, personally meaningful, and research-rich educational experience. We know this kind of science and mathematics education works best for students, and so we are vigorous in its pursuit. The image that often first comes to mind when people hear the phrase “liberal arts college” is traditional study in the humanistic disciplines, and of course we do that well. But the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, among which St. Lawrence is one, graduate almost three times as many majors in science and mathematics as the best American research universities. The sciences and mathematics are thriving at St. Lawrence just now.
A third unique thing about St. Lawrence is that we are the smallest college or university in America with a Division I hockey program for men and women. Ann and I returned just a week ago from the Frozen Four in Providence where, sadly, we lost a very close and tough game to Boston College, ending a spectacular season. It was a season that included the ECAC regular season championship and the ECAC tournament championship along with an NCAA record four overtime win against Boston University in the NCAA quarterfinal game.
I suspect you already know that. What you probably don’t know is that a majority of the men on this team had a grade-point average last semester of 3.0 or higher—the overall team average was 3.05. On the team are two students who had a 4.0 last semester, including the senior class valedictorian. That is what we strive for here—a competitive athletic experience that is part of our educational program, and where athletics and academics mutually reinforce each other. Indeed, last time we looked, only two of our intercollegiate teams have grade-point averages below the all men’s or all women’s average—and we are working hard on those two!
Hockey, of course, is only one small piece of a comprehensive program of intercollegiate and recreational sports opportunities that we provide for our students. Indeed, we field teams in 32 intercollegiate sports for men and women—among the very highest number at any liberal arts college in America—and including this year the men’s Division III soccer national champion—a team that is undefeated in two years of play.
We have embedded these programs deeply within the overall educational mission of the university. In all cases we believe we can teach students important things through athletics that are hard to teach in the other educational programs we have. Done our way, which I believe is the right way, athletic experiences are wonderfully life-transforming and deserve our support. I was a mathematics major and an English minor at St. Lawrence. The rigorous and demanding studies these departments provided me were enriched tremendously by my participation in varsity soccer, basketball, and baseball. We try here to provide as many students as we can the opportunity to have this very special kind of educational experience. In our facilities planning and co-curricular programming we recognize the high value all of our students place on access to diverse and high quality recreational facilities and programs, and you will see evidence of that all across the campus.
There is so much more I’d like to tell you about St. Lawrence—such as about our outstanding program in creative writing, our new interdisciplinary program in science education, our strategic initiative in the arts, and many, many other strengths and initiatives. Others will fill you in over the course of your day here, I’m sure, and I’ve taken too much of your time already.
What I want to say in closing is that St. Lawrence changed my life. Many times in life you have to choose one path or another, despite Yogi Berra’s creative way around that dilemma, when he said: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it!” I chose St. Lawrence and I’ve never looked back. We’d like the opportunity to change the lives of you prospective students who are visiting with us today. If St. Lawrence becomes your choice, I can tell you that you will never regret it. We will work night and day with you to make it happen.
Have a wonderful visit. Ann and I look forward to welcoming you to our home when you arrive in late August. Thank you and good luck!