President's Welcome by Dale Thomas Knobel, B.A, Ph.D.
University President
This is the 162nd Commencement of Denison University, and like all those before it, it is a celebration of a passage in life. "Passages" acknowledge that change has and is occurring, and if our graduates sometimes find it hard to identify all of the changes in themselves that have taken place since their arrival as First Year Students in August 1999, the parents, family members, friends, and faculty who surround them today are surely aware of them.
University President Dale T. Knobel extends his welcome to the large crowd in attendance at Denison's 162nd Annual Commencement.
It is important to note that Denison University has not stood still either during these four years, and maybe just a few highlights of the changes around them will encourage members of the Class of 2003 to reflect on the changes they, too, experienced. Since you arrived on campus, Class of 2003, 1,500 or so others who you shared this campus with in 1999 have graduated in the Classes of 2000, 2001 and 2002, and a like number have taken their places in the classes that are behind you. While we are at any point in time a college of about 2,000, you've actually crossed paths with more than 3,500 other Denison men and women during your years here.
Change has come to the faculty during your time at Denison, too. Not only have there been four years of retirements, including the distinguished professors who we will recognize a little bit later this afternoon, but no fewer than 32 new instructors have joined the Denison faculty since you arrived. Think about it; you have had learning experiences with professors who none matriculating at Denison after this year will enjoy. In turn, those students who are on campus in the fall will begin to work with professors unknown to you. We will have 15 new faculty colleagues in Granville by September. A college is, indeed, a living organism!
When you arrived on campus there were no apartments for student living save in Stone Hall plus a few in Taylor and the "Satellite Houses." Sunsets A through C were suite-style without kitchens and D not yet complete. Electronic classrooms were relatively rare; they're now commonplace. Full Internet connections had just been completed to each desk in each residence hall room the year before you arrived; but for you the Internet is ubiquitous on campus. You connect to the world through the "My Denison" portal and even vote for campus officers on-line.
Nor will the campus encase itself in a cocoon and preserve itself unchanged as you move from student to alumnus. Remember those fifteen new faculty I mentioned? There'll be more after that! And, of course, soon there'll be the several hundred members of the Class of 2007, men and women a little like you were in the fall of 1999 but different, too, members of a whole new student generation with their own character and perspective (doesn't that make you feel old?). When you come back for Homecoming next fall (you will be back, won't you?) Samson Talbot Hall of Biological Science will be in full use, as will the Burton Morgan building and the Campus Common between them. Mulberry House will have been converted to a computer and computer graphics center for the Fine Arts departments of the lower campus. There'll be a complete campus road loop so that those of us who live and work here and visitors alike can stay on campus while on campus. And the ground floor of Slayter will have lost its decidedly 1960s look and have been expanded and reconfigured to better meet students' needs in the 21st century.
But these are just roadmarks of the changes that have come to you. There are certainly many more profound indicators of those changes in the collective accomplishments of the Class of 2003. You number 482 graduates in all-and you will earn 485 degrees today (Stephanie Fraker, Meredith McCoy, and Jonathon Siegel have assured that by variously combining a B.A. or B.S. in biology with, not a second major, but an entirely separate degree in, respectively, psychology, German, and economics). The Class of 2003 will leave campus today with 10 Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, 86 Bachelor of Science degrees (a 27 percent increase over the Class of 2002!), and 389 Bachelor of Arts degrees.
There is not one by two valedictorians to the Class of 2003. Rohit Bansal, a double major in computer science and economics and Tamara Carty, earning a degree in philosophy, share that honor. But there is just one salutatorian, Nicole Pukay-Martin, graduating with a mathematics-economics interdisciplinary major and another in psychology. Actually, 124 of you have prospered so well in your studies that you are graduating with Latin honors — the various notations of cum laude listed in your programs. And yesterday morning, I observed the induction of no fewer than 29 members of the Class of 2003 into Phi Beta Kappa, the historic academic honor society, joining Tamara Carty and Rohit Bansal, who had the extraordinary honor of being inducted last year as juniors.
On Friday, I had the pleasure of joining Dr. Marlee Meriwether in recognizing 57 graduates who went an extra mile by fulfilling the graduation requirements of Denison's interdisciplinary Honors Program. I know these graduates, as well as my faculty colleagues, share my gratitude to Professor Meriwether who came out of the History Department this year to lead the Honors Program, as she has before, in a time of transition. And just a few weeks ago, 81 of you — with great sighs that I could hear in my office across the hall and through a couple of doors from the place where you submitted them — completed senior honors projects, which are the result of sustained independent scholarship and close collaboration with faculty mentors.
Several of you have represented your classmates especially well by attracting national attention for your academic achievements. Joseph Halaas and Michelle Shipman will both spend next year in France as Fulbright teaching assistants under the auspices of the Institute of International Education. Michael Khoury not only was named to a rare Congressionally-sponsored Goldwater Scholarship in Science and Mathematics while he was a sophomore, but this year placed among the top 20 in the North American Putnam Mathematics Examination competition (John Nash, portrayed in the film "A Beautiful Mind," only wished he'd placed that high!). Brant Eutzy received a National Science Foundation fellowship which funds three years of graduate study. Recognition of a different sort was earned by Daniel Fall who earlier this graduation weekend participated in a ceremony commissioning him a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. And just a few weeks ago, Greg Holden was unanimously elected by the members of the Denison Board of Trustees to be their colleague for the next three years as the "Recent Student Trustee," representing current students and new graduates.
As these last recognitions indicate, members of the Class of 2003 have seized opportunities to challenge themselves out of the classroom as well as within. Many of today's graduates participated on one of the more than two dozen committees of the Denison Community Association, providing this year alone more than 13,000 hours of off-campus service to central Ohio communities and agencies. Graduate Thomas Charlton was recognized by the Granville Area Chamber of Commerce with the annual Kussmaul Award for distinguished service to the local community for the leadership he exhibited as a Fire Department volunteer.
Just a few weeks ago, with the cooperation of the Panhellenic Council, the Student Activities Council, WDUB, the Denison Lecture Series, the Interfraternity Council, the Denison International Students Association, La Fuerza Latina, and the Bandersnatch Coffee House, hundreds of Denison students, including many members of the Class of 2003, participated in Denison's first Relay for Life, raising an astonishing $50,000 to support the activities of the American Cancer Society. The State Director of the Society reported to me that he expected a campus of our size would normally be capable of raising about $10,000. Graduating senior Kat Stewart played a pivotal role in carrying this off. Representative of the commitment of Denison students to contribute to the quality of life worldwide is the initiative of a student group — H.O.P.E., "Help Our Planet Earth" — which has given graduating seniors and other participants in these commencement ceremonies the opportunity to voluntarily affirm their intention to consider the social and environmental implications of the lives they lead, an affirmative signified by the wearing of green ribbons like this one on my gown.
On the strength of conference championships this spring in softball and women's tennis, and other top-three finishes in baseball, men's and women's lacrosse, men's tennis, men's golf, and women's track and field — helping college teams achieve a total of 16 top three finishes throughout the year in 22 varsity sports — Denison is expected to win a record sixth consecutive North Coast Athletic Conference All-Sports Trophy. We consistently lead our conference of 10 fine national liberal arts colleges because we scrupulously observe the founding principles of the conference which call for equitable support of women's and men's teams and proportional support for all squads rather than emphasis upon a couple of marquee sports. This year, men's and women's cross country, men's and women's swimming and diving, women's tennis, golf, and — prospectively — baseball all progressed to NCAA Division III tournament play.
Members of the Class of 2003 provided leadership to many of these accomplished teams. Meghan Overom, Jared Smith, Ryan Hite, Kelsey Ill, Ryan Mills, and Lindsey Fischer were all named to district, state, or national scholar-athlete rosters for their academic and athletic achievements. Sarah Finke was placed on the Nike/National Soccer Coaches' Association Division III Women's Soccer Team, and Kyle Brockett, Ben Douglass, Jared Smith, Dustin Pfeif, Deb Janssen, and Erin Stanley, seniors on the men's and women's swimming teams, were identified as College Swimming Coaches Association All-Americans. Other spring season athletes are candidates for honors still to be announced. Sarah Forbus, who served on the national NCAA Student Athlete Advisory Committee, earned a highly sought-after NCAA Women's Enhancement Scholarship for graduate study.
Many Denison students thrive upon the combination of academic challenge, performance in the arts, off-campus service, athletic activity, and campus leadership in different proportions appropriate to the individual. Some pursue these combinations with such remarkable results that they earn the acclaim of faculty, college staff, and fellow students alike. The exemplars of this are recognized as President's Medalists. The Class of 2003 sports six honorees, who were formally recognized at the Academic Awards Convocation in April. Representing the highest levels of achievement and leadership at the college are graduates-in-waiting Tamara Carty, Meghan Coil, Greg Holden, Michael Khoury, Ryan Mills and Anand Sokhey.
As a class, 2003, you have accomplished much at Denison — much that builds in the rest of us an expectancy for your impact upon the years ahead. Those of us on the faculty and staff of the college and certainly you, yourselves, recognize that you do not come to this day of passage entirely on your own. Consequently, before we move on to the next events in this ceremony I'd like us to recognize a large and very special group of people who have made this day possible. We honor them for their commitment and sacrifices and thank them for their sustained love and support. We also dedicate this day to the memory of those parents, family members, and friends whose loss during these college years inevitably makes commencement less complete for some of you.
Members of the Class of 2003, would you please stand, turn toward your families who are here to celebrate your achievement, and join me and the faculty in expressing our appreciation to them with our applause.