Baccalaureate Welcome

by University President Dale Knobel

Welcome to Denison Baccalaureate! The word baccalaureate is old and of European origin, but baccalaureate ceremonies like this one are more of an American invention. We all sense, even if we don’t know the precise linguistic history, that “baccalaureate” and “bachelor,” as in bachelor’s degree, share common roots. In fact, in higher education, we often use baccalaureate and bachelor’s interchangeably to describe the fundamental undergraduate curriculum. Tradition — and, honestly, more tradition than certain knowledge — has it that beginning at Oxford in the fifteenth century, the young men who were candidates for their first degrees — the “bachelors” — were required to present a sermon in Latin as part of their graduation requirements. Hence, “Baccalaureate.”

Whatever the origin, the baccalaureate tradition caught on in America where, beginning with Harvard in 1636, for two centuries or more American colleges typically were founded by religious denominations with a need for an educated clergy. It made good sense for young candidates for ministry to offer a trial sermon before heading out to careers. Early Denison graduation ceremonies in the first half of the nineteenth century followed this form, the college having been led in its early years by graduates of Rhode Island’s Brown University, an institutional descendant of the famed Roger Williams’ dissent from the theocratic traditions of New England Puritanism.

Ah, but I betray too much my profession as a historian. Contemporary Denison — like the larger number of American colleges and universities — is today no longer connected with a particular religious tradition, and we enroll students with many faith and intellectual backgrounds and experiences. Yet, here as elsewhere, the broad form of the baccalaureate remains and continues to be important to us. Why?

Perhaps it is because it is the most tangible expression of community in the Commencement exercises. We will all be together tomorrow, of course, for graduation itself, but graduates will be sitting together in one block, faculty in another, and families spread about our Fine Arts Quadrangle. But today, we are together — mixed — as we should be, sitting, on the one hand, with family and friends who are important to us and, on the other, with people we may not know, who have not been assigned to their seats by alphabet or by role, but who represent the richness of backgrounds and experiences that make this college such a vibrant place and, for that matter, who represent the richness of the world’s people whom graduates will go out to live among.

Perhaps we continue the tradition of baccalaureate because this occasion, this place, this style of ceremony are adapted especially for reflection. Tomorrow will have its reflective moments, too, but here we have a little more “interior” time — I mean of the mind, not that we’re cosily indoors — encouraged by setting, by word, and by music to focus on the significance of this passage in life, a focus that graduates, parents and grandparents, friends, and faculty and staff of the college all find meaningful.

And it is certainly because this is a ceremony of celebration, drawing upon religious, artistic, and academic traditions of several kinds. A celebration which acknowledges achievement. A celebration which, as Chaplain Mark Orten, reminded me on this occasion several years ago, ventures to offer, as he put it, “something elevated, something inspired and inspiring for ‘bachelors’ — today, men and women alike — who have qualified themselves to enter the ‘civis’ — the civilized, self-governing community — as informed and responsible citizens, as knowledgeable leaders,” and, I might add, as empathetic adults who have grown wiser in their understanding of themselves and of others.

Now, I invite you, to join together, reflect, wonder, celebrate!