Good morning! On behalf of President Brown and Provost Morrison, it is my great pleasure to welcome you all to Boston University. I’m delighted to see you here so early in the morning, coffee in hand. A special welcome to those of you who are on campus for the first time. I arrived at BU just two years ago (just finishing my sophomore year), and I hope you are as excited as I have been to enter this lively, challenging and warm community. My two years here have taught me that we have both made an excellent choice.
To you parents here, I look forward to getting to know the exceptional young men and women you have raised, and to providing a setting for them to learn, to grow and to think about their place in the world. More immediately, I also look forward to talking with you again later this morning.
To the class of 2018 (can you believe that?!): I’m here to say a few introductory words about the center of your BU experience—the intellectual adventure you are about to undertake. As one of the nation’s leading private research universities, BU offers more than 130 undergraduate majors in fields as diverse as philosophy, biomedical engineering, political science, and musical performance; nearly 75 minors (how about Arabic, or Environmental Analysis and Policy, or my own field, English literature?), and hundreds of courses from which you will choose to create for yourself an education that is right for you.
As you meet with your advisors, select the courses you will take this Fall, and begin this journey that will stretch your mind and shape who you will become, I encourage you to go forth in a spirit of exploration. This is your chance to make the rich variety of BU’s intellectual opportunities matter to you and your life! Try new things: choose provocative classes that expose you to new ideas and alternative ways of thinking. Venture out, study abroad, take intellectual chances. BU even has an award to recognize students who take intellectual risk in their first two years—the Provost’s Scholars Award. Students who win the award get a fund of $1000 to further their intellectual adventure by traveling to archives and exhibitions, attending a conference, purchasing supplies for a research or creative project. So start now. Push yourself beyond what’s familiar. It should be scary, and thrilling: that’s what education is. Education: from the Latin e ducare—to lead out.
You have chosen to study at a research university: so, what does that mean for you?
The heart of BU as a major research university is a culture of inquiry. As faculty, we are hired to ask questions and to explore possible responses—in collaboration with our colleagues here and at other universities, with our graduate students, and with our undergraduates. The products of our research are new inventions (in engineering and other fields), new discoveries about how the natural and physical worlds work (in the sciences), new knowledge of human behavior (in the social sciences), new understandings of the record of human achievement, of who we are and what our lives mean (in the humanities), and new expressions of the human spirit (in the arts). We register patents, begin start-up companies, deliver papers, write articles and books, give performances, mount exhibitions, and teach courses—all ways of taking our new works, our new ideas into the world, with the aim (and it’s a lofty one) of improving human life. This culture of inquiry is the culture into which you are entering. You can sit on the bank where things are familiar, comfortable and dry, or you can open your eyes and jump in. Inquiry means asking questions.
You have gotten here in part by becoming excellent at answering questions; we’re now asking you to learn to answer questions. To explore possible answers. To ask more questions. And, perhaps hardest of all, to hold off the impulse to supply quick answers, to learn to live in the suspense of not knowing. As you progress in your major, participate in original research yourself by working on a professor’s research in a lab, say, or pursuing an independent project under the guidance of a faculty member—maybe an exploration of a favorite painter or writer, or composing a new piece of music—all forms of original research and creative activity. Funding for such projects—for supplies, for a summer stipend so you have time to immerse yourself in a project– is available to you through The Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (or UROP) which granted three-quarters of a million dollars last year to more than 350 students for research that resulted in hundreds of presentations, publications and abstracts. Look out for the UROP Research Symposium on Parents’ Weekend. You, too, can do that at BU.
BU’s incredibly talented faculty will be your guides and allies on your journey of inquiry. They are the university’s greatest resource. The scholars here are leaders in their fields and are applying their expertise through scholarship, research and real-world practice to address the most pressing challenges of the day. Get to know your professors – talk to them after class, seek them out at campus events and during office hours (they are there waiting for you to come talk), engage them in discussions about their research and about your own ideas. They will guide you and open doors to new possibilities.
You have come to Boston University. When you step outside of the studio or lab or classroom, not only will you discover a campus that is teeming with activities – student organizations, clubs, athletics, exhibitions, performances, community service programs – you will find the whole city of Boston at your doorstep. The courses you will take and the professors you will get to know enliven, and are enlivened by, the rich and vibrant culture of the university and the great city of Boston. I urge you to immerse yourselves in the unrivaled wealth of culture and activities you will find. Your experiences are part of your education—not in addition to it– and essential to your discovery of how to take your new knowledge, interests, passions, and skills into the life you live in the world.
Finally, I would encourage you to take advantage of BU’s status as one of the world’s premier international institutions. Just as our connection with the City of Boston gives the university its unique flavor, so too, we derive our vision of the future from a long history of students and faculty who have looked beyond our campus boundaries and engaged internationally through one of the most globally connected private universities in the world, and from a long history of faculty and students from around the world who have come to BU to study and pursue research. BU offers an immense array of opportunities to create a truly global education, by, first, getting to know – really know – your fellow students. Look around: the world is here. To our international students: reach out, as difficult as this is when you are in a strange place where everything seems, well, really strange. Ask questions about how things work here; don’t be afraid to show you don’t know; make the effort to make real friends with students from the US and other countries. US students, I say the same: step outside your national borders here on Comm. Ave, and welcome your fellow students from around the world. Don’t just say “hi,” spend time with them. Ask how things are done in their countries. Find out about their lives, their ideas, what matters to them. Then have the courage to take the plunge they have already taken: go abroad, go to conduct international research, perform overseas, or engage in public service around the world. It will be challenging. It will change your life.
As you set out on the incredible journey that will help to shape the thinkers, workers, citizens and difference-makers you are destined to be, I would invite you to consider the difference between education and training.* Here is a fact: you are going to live 60-70 years after you graduate from BU – that’s an astonishing number of years, during which a lot will change, and in ways we don’t know. The only thing we know about the future is that we don’t know much about it. Training, from the Latin “to drag,” to pull after, is preparation for the known; education, again, “to raise up” and “to lead out” is preparation for the unknown. Preparing for your first job is important— and you will find here plenty of support for that—but much more important is educating yourself broadly across the range of human interests and endeavors so that you are ready for 70 years of intelligent, informed, creative, compassionate engagement with the unexpected.
I want you to know that the entire University community is here to support, sustain, and encourage you as you commit to study at BU. We could not be more excited or privileged to welcome you into this vibrant learning community. It is you who make us what we are, and we look forward to the fresh ideas and energy you bring to our campus. I speak for the entire faculty, staff, and student community of Boston University in saying we are so happy you have made the decision to join us. Welcome!
* Thanks to Maynard Mack, Jr., founder of the Honors Program at the University of Maryland, College Park, for this thought, which I gladly borrow with his permission.
