


Inaugural Address: ‘Unless a College’

President Mauri A. DitzlerPresident Mauri A. Ditzler


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Remarks: College, Community, and the Liberal Arts

John ChurchillJohn Churchill


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Remarks: Reinventing Our Midwestern Communities

Richard C. LongworthRichard C. Longworth


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Remarks: College, Community, and the Liberal Arts

Remarks: College, Community, and the Liberal Arts

John ChurchillJohn Churchill


Sometimes an object of comparison can be illuminating, so let me begin with one. I first saw light, and have spent most of my life, in Arkansas. Arkansas and Michigan might not, on initial consideration, seem to have much in common. But they came into the Union together, as balancing Southern and Northern states, in 1836 and 1837. Arkansas has no Detroit and no Great Lakes, but the two states have freeways, forests, factories, and farms—and small towns—in common. And in more than a few of those small towns, a tradition of fine small colleges. I spent a long time at one of those, Hendrix College, an institution that left its founding location and moved, in 1890, to Conway, Arkansas.

When the word was out that the College would move from its original home, Little Rock and a bevy of smaller burgs made bids. In Conway, a Civil War veteran and local merchant, Capt. W. W. Martin, put up $75,000 of his own money. He forced the saloons to close, promised to pave the muddy streets, and corralled the town's hogs. Having moved his store to Conway after the railroad came through town, Capt. Martin saw landing the college as critical to the future.

He was right. Conway did land Hendrix, and two more colleges to boot within a few years. Prosperity followed and prosperity continues. The interstate later traced the track of the railroad, and then came the river navigation system. Raw material now arrives in the factories from Japan. Finished product moves out to the world. I moved there in 1977 to a town of 17,000. Today Conway flourishes with 60,000 residents, with manufacturing, retail commerce, professional services, and one of the country's biggest data management companies. Capt. Martin would be pleased, and maybe is pleased, under his big rock on the Hendrix campus, under the windows of the hall where every spring, Phi Beta Kappa's Beta Chapter of Arkansas inducts its new members. By the way, I am well aware that Albion's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa is the Beta Chapter of Michigan. Hurrah for Betas!

What Capt. Martin saw in 1890 remains true today, in Michigan as in Arkansas: a fine, small, liberal arts college is a critical ingredient in a vibrant, flourishing, successful community. Why would that be true?

The best way I can answer that question is to tell you what Phi Beta Kappa is doing with our National Arts & Sciences Initiative. You know that Phi Beta Kappa's essential purpose, since 1776, has been to honor and advocate excellence in the arts and sciences. We are emphasizing now the advocacy side of that dual purpose, and we have undertaken to reshape the conversation in America about the purposes of higher education.

We have all seen the headlines about the importance of making college "pay off," and the comparisons of entry-level salaries by college major, and we have seen the not-very-subtle reduction of the purpose of higher education down to a very narrow and shortsighted exclusively economistic metric. Can this degree get you a job right now, and what will it pay?

Please understand that I understand that preparation for a remunerative career is a very important part of college. But it isn't just the first job that counts, it's the career. And there is life beyond paid work. There is citizenship, civic life, family life, and the fullness of human experience. Phi Beta Kappa's aim is to enlarge the discussion of the purposes of higher education, deepening the economic focus from the first job to the whole career, and broadening the scope of things across a wider and more inclusive spectrum of human goods.

So what are we saying? Three things. First, liberal arts and sciences enlarge opportunity. Full access to the ladder of opportunity depends not only on training for the first job, but also on education that equips people for all of life. In an egalitarian society, that means that the benefits of arts and sciences education should be as widely accessible as possible, because everyone deserves a shot at this kind of learning, and everyone can benefit in some way.

Phi Beta Kappa believes in the intrinsic value of studying arts and sciences for their own sake, but it's also important to say that arts and sciences education provides lifelong economic opportunity in a constantly shifting job market. Students applying for college today can expect to hold a variety of jobs through the course of their careers. A recent study by the U.S. Census Bureau found that young Baby Boomers have held, by age 46, an average of 11.3 jobs. We can't predict how many jobs lie in wait for current students. But we can predict that their ability to thrive professionally—and to live meaningfully—will depend on their capacity to grasp new situations, their flexibility in adapting to them, and their resilience in repeating the process. By engaging students in a variety of subject matters, disciplines, and different points of view, the arts and sciences provide education for the unpredictable. You can be trained to cope with the predictable. Liberal arts is preparation to flourish with the unpredictable.

Multiple surveys, including research sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, have shown that businesses seek employees with the skills and capacities nurtured in the arts and sciences. Those skills include communication capacities of reading, writing, speaking, and listening; critical and analytical thinking abilities; intellectual flexibility and resilience; the capacity to entertain multiple perspectives; the cultivation of sympathetic imagination; and so on.

In what human endeavor are these attributes not needed? It is time to replace the English major/barista jokes with an understanding of the great career preparation involved in acquiring these skills. I know one English major who runs a multistate service region for a major communications company whose name you see daily. Emily Dickinson helped get him there.

Arts and sciences education expands opportunity by enlarging our vision so that we can see opportunity and recognize it, by increasing our flexibility to meet it, by enhancing our creativity to deal with it in novel ways, and by making the unforeseen manageable, not upsetting. In these ways it enhances our career options, our capacities as citizens, and our abilities to seek meaning and value in a changing world. Education of this sort, and not just first-job training, should be accessible to everyone.

The second thing Phi Beta Kappa is saying, in our National Arts & Sciences Initiative, is that the arts and sciences drive innovation and ingenuity. As the national and world economies evolve, securing new jobs and crafting fulfilling lives will depend critically on ingenuity—the ability to see things in new ways, generating creative ideas, products, and services; and on innovation—the capacity and willingness to create novel means to success. Businesses competing on a world stage will increasingly need leaders and employees who can create, innovate, and collaborate at home and across cultures.

The New York Times has reported that, even before the late financial upheaval, "business executives operating in a fast-changing, global market had begun to understand the value of managers who could think more nimbly across multiple frameworks, cultures and disciplines." (Reported by Lane Wallace.)

According to a 2012 Hart Research Survey sponsored by the Association of American Colleges and Universities, 95 percent of employers said their companies put a priority on hiring people with the intellectual and interpersonal skills that will help them contribute to innovation in the workplace. The liberal arts and sciences foster the exercise of imagination and creativity, fundamental ingredients in innovation.

Success in a globalized world requires knowledge of and adaptability to other cultures. Students of the arts and sciences are accustomed to engaging with widely disparate subjects in a variety of disciplines. They are well positioned to see the world broadly and to act boldly.

According to the 2011 book Academically Adrift, students majoring in the liberal arts and sciences see "significantly higher gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing skills over time than students in other fields of study." Phi Beta Kappa believes firmly in the intrinsic value of studying arts and sciences for their own sake, but we are also keenly aware that higher education faces a crossroads as parents, students, and decision makers focus on the cost of education and the return to be expected from that investment. For that reason, in this "sound bite" culture of concise expression, we at Phi Beta Kappa are raising our voices to say to policymakers and business leaders that arts and sciences drive just the ingenuity and innovation we need.

The arts and sciences have made their mark in American business culture. An impressive number of innovative companies were founded by arts and sciences graduates. I invite you to check out a partial list in Phi Beta Kappa's infographic, called "Charts & Sciences," accessible on our website.

While some American political leaders question the value of the arts and sciences, countries like Singapore and China see an arts and sciences education as key to innovation. To produce global leaders, reformers in these countries are trying to emulate American liberal education to encourage more innovative and creative thinking. What an irony it would be if America stops cultivating its seedbed of creativity in the liberal arts and sciences, just as their power is recognized and taken up abroad.

The third message Phi Beta Kappa brings to the conversation—after opportunity and innovative ingenuity—is this: The arts and sciences are an investment in America. I have spoken so far of their economic value—investment in an obvious, literal sense. But the arts and sciences are also an investment in the country's life as a democracy. To be a participatory citizen, you need to make choices well, and you need to make good choices. Process and outcome both matter.

Several years ago, when we asked large numbers of old members of Phi Beta Kappa about what had been of most lasting value about their liberal arts experiences, they gave a consistent answer. They talked about gaining deliberative skills—the ability to think things through, critically and analytically, but also sympathetically and imaginatively. They talked about the skills of intellect and capacities for sympathy that allowed them to understand divergent points of view, even indwell them imaginatively, and cope with social terrain marked by diversity and even antagonism. If it is the dream of democracy that the great multifarious multitude should find, if not common ground, at least accommodation and ways forward through persistent difference, then the skills cultivated when people are open to the reception of facts, open to weighing what the facts mean, and open to talking that out in measured ways, are skills essential to the flourishing—maybe the survival—of democracy.

We are not through figuring out, in this country, what the grand phrase e pluribus unum quite means. It seems less and less likely that it will ever mean that difference disappears into indistinguishable sameness, and it seems unlikely that that would ever have been a good thing. But if it means finding a shared process for participation by disparate stakeholders, if it means the continuity of that process from one historic moment to the next and the next through change, and if it means recognizing that even as the process itself changes, there is a skein of commonality from the beginning, stretching into an emerging future, then realizing the promise of e pluribus unum seems uniquely dependent on maintenance and refinement of the very skills and capacities that advocates and beneficiaries alike of the arts and sciences have always claimed for them.

So what is the role of a place like Albion College, with its character, its commitments, and its history, as southern Michigan reasserts its place in a changing Midwest, in a changing world? In a nutshell, this college is a driver of opportunity. It is a wellspring of ingenuity and innovation. It is an investment in America and, most specifically, an investment in that sector of the country that is the City of Albion and its environs.

When the settlers at Spring Arbor Township, ten miles from here, got their charter from the Michigan legislature, and when Jesse Crowell donated the 60 acres that gave Albion College a home on this very ground, and made possible the laying of the first cornerstone here in 1841, surely they were motivated by the same vision that animated Capt. Martin in Conway, Arkansas, a few decades later. It is a vision of progress and community, a vision of the future and prosperity, and a vision premised on the idea that education—specifically education in the liberal arts and sciences—is a public good, an essential ingredient in the sort of place we want our hometowns, and our country, to be.

So congratulations, Albion College. Congratulations, Mauri. And congratulations to the City of Albion: you will flourish as they do.

Reinventing Our Midwestern Communities

Remarks: Reinventing Our Midwestern Communities

Richard C. LongworthRichard C. Longworth

When I was doing my research on the Midwest, I was astonished to discover that not one college or university in the Midwest even taught a class on the Midwest. The University of Michigan teaches the history and economics of Michigan, and the University of Illinois has its experts on the state of Illinois. But not one school taught or studied the Midwest itself, this region where we all work and make our lives. Try googling on Southern Studies sometime and see what you find. There are whole departments and schools down there devoted to Dixie. But the Midwest as an academic subject is all but forgotten.

I'm glad to report that that's not entirely true anymore, due to the work and vision of the man we've come to honor today. Mauri Ditzler introduced the Midwest Matters initiative while he was at Monmouth and, in the process, put to shame much bigger schools across the region. It's a distinguished program, with courses on politics and government in the Midwest, the history of the Midwest, the economics and culture of the Midwest, a study of our region through its literature. Past courses have dealt with the infrastructure of the Midwest, specifically the role that railroads played in creating this region. Some of these courses use the Midwest as a laboratory. One class right now is dealing with immigration, by studying towns and cities across the Midwest that have large immigrant populations, to see how they're coping or not coping.

Naturally I hope Albion will emulate this experience. But it all begs the question: Why is the Midwest important? Why is it a proper subject of study? What can you get from studying the Midwest that you can't get from studying, say, Michigan? And what is the Midwest anyway? And what does this have to do with Albion, as a college and as a town? How can a liberal arts college in this post-industrial twenty-first century be a leader in reviving this region?

I would argue that we can't understand Albion these days, or this part of Michigan, unless we understand the broader Midwest—its history, its economics, its political push and pull, its demographics—which is to say its people, its culture, its literature and theatre, and, especially, its ideas and beliefs.

As you'll notice, they don't teach any of these things in medical schools or law schools. All this is basically people and their communities and civilizations, where they came from and where they're going. All this is the proper curriculum of a liberal arts school. Albion teaches all this now, but I wonder if it frames this teaching in the context of the Midwest, of our special civilization right here in the heart of America.

The Midwest itself is a little hard to define, harder than, say, Dixie or New England. Does it include the Great Plains or the Upper Peninsula or the southern parts of Indiana or Illinois, which seem more Southern than Midwestern? I'd argue that the real Midwest extends from western Pennsylvania through eastern Iowa, from upstate New York through Michigan to Minnesota. It is defined geographically by the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Basin. Its people came first in the great wave of immigration from northern Europe and New England, giving us our focus on education and hard work and community, enriched later by the Great Migration from the South and the more recent Hispanic immigration. Mostly, the Midwest hangs together economically. It's the industrial and agricultural center of the nation. It does two big things for a living, which are heavy industry and intensive agriculture—and globalization has thrown both of them right up in the air.

All this is true of Detroit and Battle Creek and Albion, just as it's true of Chicago and Monmouth, of Cleveland and Dayton, of Gary and South Bend. The Midwest rose together as a region in the Industrial Revolution and the century that followed. It declined together through the Rust Bowl days and the great challenges of globalization. It will rise again economically only as a region—a region that knows we're all in this together—and is willing to combine and leverage all its strengths, including the intellectual firepower of its great colleges and universities.

Albion most definitely shares this dynamic past and the struggles of the present. It has been one of the cars on the rollercoaster ride that defines the economic history of the Midwest in the twentieth century. But we're in a new century now and, in many ways, in a new economy, a global economy. The challenge now is to take what we know and what we've learned, to let the past go and then build on that past, to build a future within which Albion—the town and the college—its citizens and its students, can join the rest of this region in the great task of reinvention.

We hear a lot today about advanced manufacturing, about STEM training and narrow expertise and specialties. Where does this leave the liberal arts? I'd say it leaves them at the head of the parade. We aren't going to understand where we've been and where we're going unless we get out of the labs and trading rooms and consider our civilization as a whole. It's useful to know how to code, but it's better to know how to think, and that's what Albion and the liberal arts are all about.

As Alexander Pope wrote, "The proper study of mankind is man." He went on to describe this mankind as

Placed on this isthmus of a middle state,
A being darkly wise, and rudely great,
With too much knowledge for the sceptic side,
With too much weakness for the stoic's pride.

That sounds a lot like where we are right now, not just in that "middle state" but wise enough to know that the history of the Midwest is not yet over and ambitious enough not to accept things as they are.

This then is the role of the liberal arts and of the colleges that make the liberal arts their mission. This mission is to tell us where we are and how we got here. The economy is part of this, and if your graduates don't understand the economy, they don't understand anything. But there's more to this than GDP statistics or unemployment rates. We're talking about our civilization here, our place in the world, about the lives that that economy pays for.

It's a fact that almost every place you can think of is there for some economic reason. Every town and city, every Detroit and Albion, was born because it served an economic purpose—as a farm town or mining town, as a port or factory town. If the reason was a valid one, then people came to work and stayed to build first a community and then a civilization, not just houses and workplaces but schools and parks and theatres and even colleges and universities. The economy supported all this, but the real point was the civilization itself.

But in economics, nothing lasts forever. The port silts up or the mine plays out or the factory closes and its jobs go somewhere else. When that happens, it's more than just an economic downturn. It's a civilizational challenge. Places where this happens can become backwaters, no longer able to support their civilizations, not disappearing exactly, but not the sort of place where you'd go to find a job or raise your family or make your life.

Or they can reinvent themselves, as towns and cities have done throughout history. They can find new ways to earn their living. With roots sunk deep into their native soil, they can build something new on the platform of the old. I know this can be done because I see it happening in old industrial areas, in the States and abroad, where people are determined to revive and rebuild.

But it takes leadership—and that leadership can and should come from the liberal arts. Not only the historians to tell us where we come from and how we got here. And not just the economists to explain this strange and rather scary new global economy to us.

We need international scholars, and we need to send our students around the world, because we're involved with that world today in ways more complicated and crucial than ever before. We have to reach beyond Albion and southern Michigan to strike alliances with other regions, American and otherwise, which are asking the same questions and facing the same problems.

The social impact of a changing economy is terrific and often traumatic for the people caught in this transformation. Might I suggest that there's a rich field of study, right here at home, for sociologists who can turn their own neighborhoods into laboratories.

This turbulence, of course, goes to the heart of a community, to its culture and its soul. We need to know how to think about this and for that we turn to our artists, to our writers, in particular. Over the past century, Southern writers defined the trauma of that region for the people who lived within it. It seems to me that the proper study of our writers and poets, our artists and dramatists, is the very human drama being played out right here right now.

Armed with this knowledge, Albion the College is perfectly placed to reach out to Albion the Town, to work together with the town and its leaders to build the future. This takes tact and diplomacy, and it may be slow going. The stresses between town and gown are real in almost every college town. In some of these towns, the colleges have almost built a moat around the campus, pretending that they are independent centers of academia, not really Midwestern, not really part of the communities that surround them. Not surprisingly, this arrogance is returned by the town—and nothing gets done.

I hope your students can be encouraged to be part of this community, to volunteer and intern there, to get to know the town and to establish personal ties that, with luck, will keep them here after graduation.

But I also hope that Albion will reach out to the other first-rate colleges and universities in this region, including community colleges, to combine your intellectual strengths, to leverage your local ties, to make common cause with other colleges and towns in Michigan and with the other schools in the Great Lakes Colleges Association. It's going to be a big job, this reinvention of our Midwestern civilization, and we need all the help we can get.

I know that Dr. Ditzler gets this because I've seen what he did in Monmouth. It's because I admire so much what he did there that I'm here today, to celebrate with you his arrival in Albion. He is a distinguished scholar, but more, he is a visionary leader. I know he is optimistic about Albion, both the school and the town, and from what I've seen and heard here, he has reason to be optimistic—as do we all.

Perhaps I can close with a few more lines from Alexander Pope to define this vision, this optimism. Nearly three hundred years ago, here's what he wrote:

Heaven forming each on other to depend,
A master, or a servant, or a friend,
Bids each on other for assistance call,
Till one man's weakness grows the strength of all.
Wants, frailties, passions, closer still ally
The common interest, or endear the tie.

"The common interest," he said. Not the narrow specialized interest, the parochial expertise that lives in academic silos, but the common interest on which sits "the strength of all." This is the power of learning and of the liberal arts, of a school like Albion, as it begins a new era in the history of this community and of all its people.

Thank you.

Inaugural Address: 'Unless a College'

Inaugural Address: ‘Unless a College’

President Mauri A. DitzlerPresident Mauri A. Ditzler

What a remarkable view from here, atop the steps of Kresge Gymnasium. Behind me is one of the oldest competition gyms in the NCAA. In front of me is one of this country's finest colleges. And in between are so many dear friends. Some of us go back four or five decades, others only a few weeks. Thank you for joining me on this day that we celebrate the storied past and bright future of Albion College and its host community.

Joining a new college is an exhilarating experience. Once again, I have been energized by discovering a community of remarkably dedicated individuals who have devoted their lives to changing the world by instilling idealism and by sharing the liberal arts.

Somewhere in this great land, there may be another community with more pent-up enthusiasm and a greater can-do attitude. But, if so, they will need a president on steroids. You folks are fired up, and I am having the time of my life trying to keep up!

The New President's Playbook calls for months of meetings and a year of planning. The meetings have been inspiring, and your message is clear: less talk and more action. I have heard you say, "Plan if you must, but we have important work to do. Let's get things done."

A fragment of poetry kept coming to mind as you described your commitment to this college. That fragment, three lines near the end of one of Robert Frost's lesser known works, was the obvious text for my inaugural address. And, the final phrase of the fragment—unless a college—was destined to be my title.

I was pleased to be able to present the title to our associate vice president for communications. I was over a month ahead of my deadline (which was today) and only four months past hers. The response wasn't what I expected. Sorry, she said, but you will need to find another—that title is already taken.

As it turns out, Sarah Briggs has a good memory; "Unless a College" was the title and theme of President Vulgamore's inauguration speech in 1983.

What Sarah, who was apparently never an analytical chemist, saw as repetition, I saw as a reproducible experiment. In fact, I am delighted that two presidents, from very different backgrounds, serving three decades apart, came to the same conclusion about the Albion community.

I'm going to ask student Mariah Phelps to assist me by reading this bit of Frost's poetry.


In 1932, Robert Frost wrote a poem entitled "Build Soil." He used it as a vehicle for attacking social policy, for praising farmers who enrich their soil by plowing under a cover crop, for criticizing writers who don't plow under enough drafts before publishing, and then, finally, to provide the inspiration for two separate inaugural speeches at Albion College.

Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any,
Join the United States and join the family—
But not much in between unless a college.

Frost didn't say join the United States, a family, and a college. With the qualifier "unless" he seems to imply that from time to time there might come along a college that deserves allegiance as much as does a family or a country. Frost spent some time at Dartmouth and Harvard but didn't stay long enough at either to graduate; apparently his standards for a college to be joined were pretty high.

It was this concept of joining a college that came to mind in my initial meetings with faculty and staff who have spent an entire career at Albion. They didn't describe a place they worked; it was clear that for them Albion College was far more than a job; it was a life-defining experience; it was a place where they fulfilled their calling. It was something they had joined and, even in retirement, couldn't leave any more than they could leave their family or their country.

Every one of us has had someone tell us that we are special. Most of us are lucky enough to have heard those loving words several times. Perhaps it was a grandmother or a Little League coach or a 4-H leader or a Sunday school teacher or a seventh-grade math teacher or a college adviser. If that person was wise, he or she also reminded us that with our special gifts came special responsibility.

Collectively, this encouragement and admonition makes up our calling. When we are able to make sense of it all, we have discerned a vocation. Albion College has always been a great place for students to discern a vocation. And, for those whose vocation includes inspiring a next generation to change the world for the better, Albion is a great place to spend four years discerning a vocation, and it can also be a great place to spend a lifetime pursuing that vocation.

An institution that allows one to find productive work and to carry it out in a manner that is consistent with a call to idealism is one of those gangs of which Robert Frost would approve.

Albion doesn't claim to be the only place that empowers its graduates and supports faculty and staff as they pursue grand dreams. But, we are among a group of colleges that have done it remarkably well. The liberal arts colleges of the nineteenth-century frontier crafted an educational philosophy that is both unique and effective. When I need a bit of encouragement I enter the phrase "distinctively American" into the Google search engine. I am inspired every time I see the first hit: Google "believes" that private, residential, liberal arts colleges are even more American than apple pie or the New York Yankees. I am convinced that we can go one step further and claim to provide an America with a competitive advantage. I believe the heavy concentration of liberal arts colleges in the heartland contributed to the economy and quality of life enjoyed by the Midwest throughout much of the twentieth century.

Now, when the world needs graduates of our distinctive colleges more than ever, and when the Midwest is struggling to regain its footing, our sector is under attack. Our graduates are held in high esteem since their accomplishments can't be denied. But our counterintuitive methods are discounted, and our handcrafted approach is seen as a luxury.

We can, we will, and we must withstand the skepticism and criticisms of those who have not experienced and do not understand the deceptive simplicity of the foundational principles that regularly produce remarkable graduates. We will thrive as long as our graduates continue to succeed and as long as those of us who are fortunate enough to have experienced a residential, liberal arts education maintain the faith.

I have a series of favorite texts that I read when I need to bolster my belief in these distinctively American colleges. Faith does, after all, need to be nourished from time to time. I have asked students to read for you six texts that are meaningful for me. Perhaps you will add one or two of these to your list of personal favorites.

The six students will read as three separate pairs; the passages for each pair are linked&emdash;at least in my mind. There are additional linkages between the pairs. I like two of these passages because I imagine that they played on the minds of our founders as they were creating this College. Three of the readings are from folks who grew up in my neighborhood. And, for the general good of the order, one brings a bit of thermodynamics into our ceremony.

Mikal McKoy and Abby Radwick will share wisdom from two of the great storytellers of all time. Jesus and Kurt Vonnegut would be on nearly everyone's top ten list of "Made Effective Use of Parables." In my opinion, they also shared an understanding of the most important principle of a liberal arts education.


Our founders were almost certainly familiar with the twenty-second chapter of Matthew. There is much good advice in the five verses I will read, but listen with particular care to the final thought; it could easily serve as the inspiration for creating a liberal arts college.

38 This is the greatest and first commandment.


Any speech by President Ditzler that is longer than a few minutes—and that would be just about every speech he has ever given—will likely include at least one thought from Kurt Vonnegut. Today's speech is no exception. In his essay entitled A Man without a Country, Vonnegut reminded us that all stories have the same, easily acquired building blocks; the challenge is understanding how to use them. In a statement that is as simple as it is profound, Vonnegut reminds us that…


I shared these passages with one of my new friends at Albion, and his reaction was, "Jesus would have made a good organic chemistry professor at Albion College."

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. Doesn't that sound a bit like a professor saying "these few rules will allow you to determine the name of thousands of compounds or predict the outcome of tens of thousands of reactions." Don't try to memorize all ten thousand; learn a few basic principles instead and then learn how to think. Understand the important principles, develop skills at applying them, and you will do remarkable things.

One of the things I appreciate about Vonnegut is his lack of subtlety. No mysterious symbolism. He reminds us that everything we need in order to tell a great story—and by extension motivate and move people—was learned in first grade. As soon as we know the alphabet and the numerals, everything else is learning how to apply these simple tools.

Perhaps one of the reasons the uninitiated are skeptical when they hear about a liberal arts education is the deceptive simplicity of what we do. Think, don't memorize—deceptively simple and, at times, oh so hard to implement.

Our second set of readers, Kevin Claucherty and Madeline Drury, will remind us that audacious dreams are a logical outcome of what we do. Our graduates are few in numbers so we must count on each of them to do remarkable things. Our founders expected Albion to change the world, and they knew just how it would happen.

The frontier version of liberal arts differed from earlier forms in its intended audience. Rather than being an education for those who were already liberated, it was designed to liberate. This egalitarian twist should inspire our work on behalf of Albion College today, just as it did for our founders.


Mikal's reading from Matthew suggested that two commandments could substitute for all of the law and the prophets. Of course, that doesn't mean we won't find inspiration in reading the advice of Isaiah or Joel or Elijah or Amos. Our founders were Methodist, so they would have embraced the sentiment in the well-known oration from the fifth chapter of the Book of Amos.

23 Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
24 But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.


Just a few minutes ago Abby read a passage from Kurt Vonnegut that, at least to President Ditzler, complemented an insight taken from the Gospel of Matthew. I will stay with this pattern of tying a bit of Hoosier wisdom to an idea from the Bible. Eugene Debs worked and agitated in Terre Haute, Indiana, only a few miles from Mauri Ditzler's childhood home. In 1918, while on trial for having spoken against World War I, Debs' Statement to the Court could have been inspired by Amos.


When we do our work well, our graduates are adept at pulling together information from a range of disciplines. This helps them to see the big picture. Because they see the big picture they can see how to change the world.

The prophet Amos criticized those who let the trees block their vision of the forest. Don't just sing and talk about justice, he argued. Set people free.

Had Madeline had time to read the remainder of Debs' Statement to the Court, we would have heard his argument for focusing on the big problems. He noted that America was blessed with bountiful resources, that creative people were building remarkable machines, and finally that there were many hard workers anxious to use those machines. But, despite this situation many still lived in poverty. He wasn't big on tweaking the system. Like Amos, he advocated a paradigm shift.

Dream big and plan to change the world in a way that most will find revolutionary. That sounds like the marching orders Albion has given graduates for generations.

Our final two readings, by Marina Baker and Zach Kribs, provide a sobering reminder that the tasks ahead are daunting. One could listen and be discouraged. Or, one could listen and realize that people can make a difference. Our handcrafted approach to education will thrive because of the cumulative impact of those who face the challenges of the day and refuse to give up.


Chemists like our president turn to the second law of thermodynamics when they want to predict the future. The second law tells us that spontaneous processes are accompanied by an increase in entropy. In other words, things are going to grow increasingly disordered. At the end of a lengthy explanation of the second law, the chemist and author Peter Atkins concludes:




My reading is from the opening paragraph of Ernie Pyle's Home Country. Pyle was an itinerant journalist from a small town "just up the road" from Mauri Ditzler's childhood home. For many, Pyle's imagery will be preferable to the authoritative scientific statements read by Marina. But even in Pyle's poetic language, the sentiments reflect some of the pessimism of the second law. I will defer to President Ditzler to provide an optimistic twist similar to the one that ended Marina's reading.


Indeed, there are lots of reasons to be discouraged. The second law suggests that our long-term prospects are hopeless. Reflections on how small we are, and how large and eternal the problems, are certainly reason to be as melancholy as the Midwestern wind.

But, if Zach had read another 300 pages of Ernie Pyle's recollections we would have learned that in every small town where Pyle stopped to write there were interesting, easily overlooked people who provide cause for optimism. And in every foxhole of World War II where he chronicled the actions of the front-line soldiers, there were unsung heroes whose actions gave his readers cause for hope.

And, I have discovered the same thing in Albion. Albion—the College and the Town—is filled with people who give us reason to hope. Let me close my remarks by sharing the names of just a few of the many Albion heroes whom I have met in only two months.

Professor Andy French and Mayor Joe Domingo were political rivals in the past election. Rather than continuing the battle after the election, they are working shoulder-to-shoulder to create a program that will make Albion College accessible to the young people who attend our public schools.

School superintendents Jerri-Lynn Williams-Harper from Albion and Randy Davis from Marshall created a smooth and productive transition for Albion's young men and women when our high school needed a partner. When others worried about the differences between the students of our towns, these two heroes focused on the students' common desire to learn.

Professor Jocelyn McWhirter had a vision for a Center for Teaching and Learning on campus. She didn't take no for an answer even when there was no money in the budget. So, thanks to her shoestring and her can-do attitude, our students and faculty are better at their craft.

Harry Bonner has repurposed negotiating skills he learned many years ago as a union steward in the local Corning factory. Now, we all benefit from his ever-present role creating consensus and getting things done for our community. Harry, I am lucky to have the counsel of one of Albion's elder statesmen.

Although retired, Professor Doug Goering continues to wear out the roads between Flint and Albion as he cheers for the Brits, supports his former colleagues, and inspires presidents in a style that is as calming as it is effective.

Elizabeth Schultheiss raises money and spirits for local causes far beyond what anyone can imagine. She continues to be an important player in helping us believe that we will soon enjoy a bustling downtown district.

Dr. James Curtis came to Albion over 90 years ago. He rode the train north as a baby, following his father who was in the first wave of southern sharecroppers to come north for a job at Albion Malleable Iron. He was educated during an era when our public schools were segregated, and he attended Albion College and then the University of Michigan Medical School as the only African American in his class. After a long and distinguished career on the faculty at a very prestigious medical school he returned to his hometown. His eighth and now ninth decades have been devoted to building social support systems for some of our most vulnerable citizens. The biography that accompanies the description of the Research Center at the University of Michigan named for Dr. Curtis describes his life as a microcosm of America. That is certainly appropriate because, with all of its heroes and opportunities, with all of its blessings and challenges, Albion is America.

We are blessed to be hosted by a city that refused to fold when the industry that drove the local economy disappeared. When so many other cities might have given up, Albion held the faith. After all, they had to nurture a distinctively American college. And because of the people on our campus and in our community, and because we have the power of the liberal arts at our disposal, we expect nothing less than a bright future for Albion College; Albion, Michigan; and all of America.

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