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, with one of those challenging
looks on his face, 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. They help me tell you some
things about St. Lawrence that I think you should want to know.
First, St. Lawrence is the American liberal arts college located closest
to the capital of a foreign country. [pause] This simple fact of geography
has had very important consequences for the University. Long ago—at
least from prior to the second world war—St. Lawrence faculty began
to take advantage of the nearness of Ottawa, Kingston, Montreal, and even
Quebec City, to introduce a first hand comparative dimension to courses
in a number of disciplines. One could, for example, contrast the U. S.
Congress and the Canadian Parliament and then show students a parliament,
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 at the time stung by the “Ugly American” tag,
earned because of the visible and frequent misunderstanding of other cultures
Americans abroad seemed to exhibit with alarming frequency. It was clear
to many, and especially to the St. Lawrence faculty, that having many more
college graduates 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 about 40% of any given class studies abroad in
one of our 13 programs or an approved program of another college or university.
And over 50% of the faculty have significant international training and
expertise. The curriculum is full of international and intercultural studies
in a great variety of disciplines, including the sciences.
My wife Ann and I had the distinct pleasure of visiting two of our best
overseas programs about a year ago. 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 two years
ago, 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 in 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 these homestays 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 is also clear 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 the wisdom of prospective students considering
St. Lawrence, 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 were being affected profoundly by their experience,
which focuses on early and modern British theater—including Shakespeare
in Performance, which they actually took at the Globe Theater 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, including science and mathematics.
To give just one example of the latter, 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. His fellowship
is part of our University Fellows Program, through which a growing number
of students work with faculty on research. He is just one example of this
combination of serious academic focus 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. Research shows clearly that 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 proportionately
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.
This was a season that saw our women’s team play for the national
championship in the first ever women’s Frozen Four, and included
another ECAC tournament championship and NCAA tournament appearance for
the men.
I suspect you already know that. What you probably don’t know is
that 15 of the 26 women on this team had a grade-point average last semester
of 3.0 or higher, and 2 had perfect 4.0’s. The men’s grade-point
average was lower, but above the all-men’s average. The top two scorers
in the ECAC in men’s hockey, both on our team, had grade-point averages
of 3.4 and 3.5, respectively. 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.
In the last three semesters, when compared to men and women in the same
class, the overall grade-point average for male student-athletes was higher
than the student body as a whole all three semesters, while for female
student-athletes it was higher for two semesters and almost exactly the
same the third semester. We expect student-athletes to be serious of purpose
in their academic work and their athletic involvement, and they are.
Hockey, of course, is only one small piece of a comprehensive program of
intercollegiate and recreational sports opportunities that we provide for
our students. Our women’s field hockey team also won the ECAC championship
this year. Indeed, we field teams in 32 intercollegiate sports for men
and women—among the very highest number at any liberal arts college
in America.
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 academic experiences these departments provided me were enriched
tremendously by my participation in varsity soccer, basketball, and baseball.
At the same time, 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 pioneering and very successful First-Year Program, 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.
The attitude I want St. Lawrence to have as it works with the great students
we have here, and in many ways the attitude I’d like our students
to carry away with them when they graduate, is described in the epitaph
on the gravestone of Eben Holden, lead character in that great novel of
the North Country by the same name, now almost 100 years old, and written
by our own Irving Bacheller, Class of 1882. Eben Holden’s epitaph
says this:
I AIN’T AFRAID.
‘SHAMED O’ NUTHIN’ I EVER DONE.
ALWUSS KEP’ MY TUGS TIGHT
NEVER SWORE ‘LESS ‘TWAS NEC’SARY,
NEVER KETCHED A FISH BIGGER ‘N ‘TWAS
ER LIED ‘N A HOSS TRADE
ER SHED A TEAR I DIDN’T HEV TO.
NEVER CHEATED ANYBODY BUT EBEN HOLDEN.
GOIN’ OFF SOMEWHERES, BILL—DUNNO THE WAY NUTHER—
DUNNO ‘F IT’S EAST ER WEST ER NORTH ER SOUTH,
ER ROAD ER TRAIL;
BUT I AIN’T AFRAID.
It’s about being confident and instilling
confidence, and about integrity. 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!
