This is the 172nd Commencement of Denison University, but, members of the Class of 2013, you are graduating in the college’s 182nd year since its founding in the fall of 1831. There were no graduates, of course, in the first years of the college’s existence and the Civil War interrupted the progress toward a degree for many students a century and a half ago—thus the discrepancy between the college’s age and number of its Commencements. On this special day we have heard the fanfare for the Class of 2013 performed by an ensemble of the Denison Orchestra conducted by Professor Andy Carlson. Graduates, you’ve heard the fanfare before; it was written for your induction onto the rolls of the college in 2009 by Dr. Ching-chu Hu of the Department of Music.

In the 182 years since its founding, Denison has evolved from a frontier academy into a leading undergraduate arts and sciences college with a national and even international reputation. It has not stood still during the last four years, either, and maybe just a few highlights of the changes around you will encourage you as about-to-be graduates to reflect upon the personal evolution you have experienced since you arrived here from high school. As I point out to graduates every year, since you arrived on campus, Class of 2013, about sixteen hundred other men and women with whom you shared this campus in the fall of 2009—the sophomores, juniors, and seniors of your first year-- have already graduated and a similar number have taken their places in the classes that follow behind you. While at any point in the last four years, we have been a college of approximately 2100 on-campus students, you've actually crossed paths with, learned with and from, and made friends among nearly 4,000 Denisonians during your four years here, and your sense of comradeship will only grow as you become reacquainted with them at reunions and alumni activities in years to come.

Change has come to the faculty during your time at Denison, too. Not only have there been four years of retirements of accomplished senior faculty and key college staff, including two professors who we especially recognize today, but forty new professors joined the permanent Denison faculty since you arrived, bringing their special skills and energies to the classroom, laboratory, and studio. And because foundations, alumni, parents, and friends of Denison have generously endowed new faculty positions, the faculty is actually larger today than when you began, enhancing the student-faculty interaction that is at the heart of a Denison education.

Although you may have forgotten it, when you arrived on campus in the fall of 2009, Cleveland Hall had just completed making its transition from a 1904 men's gymnasium to the impressive Bryant Arts Center. The construction fence that went up around Ebaugh Laboratories at the end of your first year was down when you returned as juniors and in its place were renewed state-of-the art facilities for Chemistry and Biochemistry. This fall, another new building for apartment style housing emerged out of historic Chamberlin Hall and the truly awesome Trumbull Aquatics Center and the Red Zone atrium entrance to the Mitchell Athletics and Recreation Center opened for use.

Nor will the campus freeze itself in time after your departure today and preserve itself unchanged as you begin to enjoy your new status as alumni/ae. Ten new tenure track professors will join us in the fall. And soon, of course, taking your place on campus will be some 605 members of the Class of 2017, men and women a little like you were in the fall of 2009, but different, too, with their own experiences, tastes, and perspectives.

Physical changes are coming, too. In just a few weeks, the bi-level Crown Fitness Center will open in the renovated and enlarged Mitchell complex, occupying the old footprint of Gregory Pool. It will be accompanied by new athletic training and wellness facilities, a renovated weight room, and new staging areas for intramural and club sports.

When classes resume next fall, Huffman Dining Hall will reopen with thoroughly renovated seating, serving, and food preparation areas, helping the college meet the dining preferences of our campus community. No, Denison won't be EXACTLY the same each time you return to the hill as alumni/ae. And I hope you wouldn't want it any other way; it will be better!

But these are just road signs of the changes that have come to you as women and men. There are certainly more profound indicators of those changes in the collective accomplishments of the Class of 2013. In all, you number 544 graduates and you have earned 6 Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees, 91 Bachelor of Science degrees, and 454 Bachelor of Arts degrees. Seven members of the class have earned double degrees--both the BA and the BS. And if you think you are hearing or, in some cases seeing, double as the names of graduates are called, we have three sets twins in the class: the Shobys, the Wilsons, and the Zachars.

The Co-Valedictorians of the class, who had identical 3.97 grade-point averages (drat--that pesky A-!), are Ashley Heestand, who majored in both English--with a Writing Emphasis--and French, and Katherine Waggoner, who majored in History. There is one Salutatorian, Nathanial Kell, who earned both a BS in Computer Science and a BA in Mathematics. Actually, 112 of you have prospered so well in your studies that you are graduating with Latin honors—51 cum laude, 45 magna cum laude, and 16 receiving the highest honor, summa cum laude--recognized by different color shoulder cords on each recipient's gown. Yesterday, I participated in the induction of 37 members of the Class into Phi Beta Kappa, the historic national academic honor society, joining 3 members of the Class who had the rare honor of being inducted last year as Juniors. And across the college, 49 of you are recognized for the special success of your senior research projects, which are the result of sustained independent scholarship and close collaboration with a faculty mentor.

Several of you have represented your classmates especially well by attracting national attention for your academic achievements. Post-graduate international Fulbright research awards were earned by Evan Pugh, going to Morocco to study a new soil and water conservation technique, and Annelise Thomson, working on the development of a new class of antibiotics known as thiopeptides at the University of Jena in Germany. Rachel Loper has a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Austria and Laura Saenz is an alternate for a Fulbright Assistantship in the Dominican Republic, though she also has a Fulbright opportunity in Brazil. Abdi Ali and Amy Huang earned special recognition by having their proposal to work with a women’s health center and provide educational outreach on women’s health issues in Dabola, Ethiopia funded by the international Davis Projects for Peace program.

As these forms of recognition highlight, members of the Class of 2013 repeatedly seized opportunities to challenge themselves both in and out of the classroom. Many of today's graduates participated actively on one of the 22 service committees of the Denison Community Association or in the America Reads Program, providing this year alone more than 30,000 hours of documented service to area schools, communities, and agencies. Tori Couch received a statewide Charles J. Ping Award for excellence in leadership of the Denison Community Association from the Ohio Campus Compact and Erika Johnson, Caroline Matas, and Elizabeth Shoby were singled out by the Granville Area Chamber of Commerce at the annual Kussmaul Award program for exceptional service to the local community through their work with Granville children and youth. Today, providing visual evidence of the commitment of many Denison students to preserving the quality of life worldwide are the green ribbons worn on many student and faculty gowns that have been distributed as part of a national effort to give college men and women the opportunity to affirm their intention to consider the social and environmental implications of the work they do and the lives they lead.

For twelve of my first fourteen years as Denison president, Denison student athletes have ensured that we have "owned" the North Coast Athletics Conference Dennis Collins All-Sports Trophy. Led by first place conference finishes in Men’s Lacrosse and both Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving; second place finishes Field Hockey, Softball, and Women’s Tennis; and third place finishes in Men’s Tennis Women’s Soccer, and Women’s Indoor and Outdoor Track and Field, it looks like Denison will take the trophy home in my Fifteenth and final year, too. The Men’s Swimming and Diving Team took second in the nation at the NCAA Division III meet and the women earned third in the nation. Graduating Senior Michelle Clark advanced as an individual to the national Division III meet in Cross Country.

I am particularly pleased that so many Denison student athletes were recognized at the conference, regional, or national level by placement on all-academic teams, evidence that the discipline of athletics can help prepare men and women for academic excellence. Members of the class earning national academic awards include Nat Kell, who was botha National Football Foundation Scholar Athlete as well as a Capital One Academic All-American and Michelle Clark who was a U.S. Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches All-Academic honoree. Sara Livingston, a soccer player, of the Class of 2013 earned Denison’s James T. Glerum Presidential Award for having combined academic, athletic, and leadership excellence and Nat Kell and golfer Grace Summers of were recognized with the Scheiderer and Schweizer Awards for turning in the strongest academic performance for, respectively, a man and a woman, among almost 150 graduating seniors participating on varsity athletic teams.

Many Denison students thrive upon the combination of academic challenge, off-campus service, and campus leadership in different proportions appropriate to their own individual interests. Some pursue these combinations with such remarkable results that they earn the acclaim of faculty, college staff, and fellow students alike. Special exemplars of this are recognized as Denison President's Medalists. The Class of 2012 includes seven honorees, who were announced at the Academic Awards Convocation in April and who will be the first to cross the stage to receive their diplomas today. They are Abdulkadir Mohamed “Abdi” Ali, Hannah Frank, Shiyu “Amy” Huang, Nathaniel Kell, Katherine Kloster, Sara Livingston, and Cullen Marshall.

As a class, 2013, you have accomplished much at Denison—much that builds in the rest of us anticipation for your achievements in 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 the 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. Members of the Class of 2013, would you please stand, turn toward your families and friends who are here to celebrate your achievement, and join me and the faculty in expressing our appreciation with applause.

Finally, 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 many of us. The Class of 2013 suffered the special loss during its time at Denison of two treasured classmates, Elizabeth Willis Minter and Sarah Elizabeth Starner. This day we hold Elizabeth and Sarah and their families in our hearts.