Campaign Kick-Off Remarks

October 29, 1998

I hope you all had a terrific time today and that you are refreshed in your connection to the College. In fact, I would like to speak tonight about "connection."

Many factors make up the mystique of this College: its beauty, its history, its curriculum, its academic excellence, its legacy of leadership, the people who have been here and who are here.

But, if I had to isolate one thing that gives Mount Holyoke its distinctive edge and sets it apart—and if there is one reason why, among all the worthy causes vying for your time and money, you should support this College—I would say that one distinctive thing, and that one compelling reason, is a powerful and pervasive sense of education as connection. And, in a world of daunting disconnection, this is a priceless commodity, one that we must continue to advance.

Whence does this idea of education as connection come? From Mary Lyon, of course, from whom all good things flow.

I thought it might be instructive to compare Mary Lyon's ideas of education with those of another (almost as) famous person living during her time, a rather formative thinker himself, over on the eastern side of the state: Ralph Waldo Emerson.

It so happens that the same year Mount Holyoke was founded, 1837, Emerson addressed the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard and there characterized the student, or the "American scholar," as he called him, as "Man Thinking." Above all, the scholar-student trusts in himself, in his own critical thinking. He is, according to Emerson, "that man who must take up into himself all the ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the future. He must be a university of knowledge. If there be one lesson more than another which should pierce his ear, it is, The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature; it is for you to dare all."

Well, stirring as these sentiments are, for me, at least, something about Emerson's assertions do not ring quite true. For one thing, we women feel uncomfortably excluded from this universal man, and indeed at this time, 1837, women were not admitted to Harvard, nor were they eligible for Phi Beta Kappa. But, more than that, Emerson's assertions about the sanctity of the individual are so absolutist and untempered by an awareness of otherness, difference, social complexity, and community: they are so lacking in human connection.

Compare that with Mary Lyon: She's equally bold in her educational expectations for her aspiring scholars. She trumps Emerson's "dare all" with her clarion cry: "Go where no one else will go, do what no one else will do." She too is a proponent of rigorous study, the university of knowledge. But there the similarities end and the Mary Lyon revolution began.

What is revolutionary about her thought? A number of key things: that women mattered; that they would profit every bit as much as men from rigorous study in all fields, including the sciences; that the end of knowledge was not man thinking, but women and men doing; that education, in other words, was preparation for a life of purposeful engagement; that education was of the whole person connecting mind, body, and spirit and connecting the individual to the larger human community, indeed, to the larger world community; that the end of education is not to aggrandize the individual but to encourage her to make a difference in the world.

These are big, bold, ambitious ideas which grew out of Mount Holyoke's original purpose: to train teachers and missionaries. In the evolution of the institution over the years, especially through such visionary leaders as Mary Woolley, Mount Holyoke was shaped by a strong faculty of scholar-teachers and the great tradition of American liberal arts education. Indeed, the vital connection of these dual strains—excellence in the liberal arts, on the one hand, and purposeful engagement in the world, on the other— gives Mount Holyoke's mission its distinctive resonance and power.

This mission continues to enable and to inspire students with a force that is at odds with some of the other dominant currents in our culture. In fact, while American culture, including its institutions of higher education, has profited enormously from the emphasis on individualism and Emersonian self-reliance, this emphasis has not, perhaps, been sufficiently balanced with communal values, and so it has helped to produce a culture of competitiveness, fragmentation, isolation, narrowness, me-ism. That happened, it could be argued, in part, because of the bifurcation along gender lines of leadership in our culture. It is not surprising, then, that the tradition of women's leadership started by Mary Lyon should stress values that have been traditionally associated with women: connection, caring, community, self in relationship, service, social responsibility.

A sense of connection is what is passed down that laurel chain of Mount Holyoke women generation to generation; that connection has brought us together—men and women—today.

From her very first day, the Mount Holyoke student is inducted into the history and tradition and essence of this College. She learns quickly that there is something ineffably exciting about being connected to this 162-year history of women's education, women's leadership. Students are proud to be at a place that is first for women and puts women first, proud to be in line, as it were, with the powerful women who have come before us and those who will come after us. Many are first-generation college students and all are too aware of how shallow are the roots of women's education, how undervalued still women are in the world, what a privilege it is to have the opportunities afforded by a place like Mount Holyoke.

Equally important is the sense of connectedness that comes from being part of the serious learning community. Through a rigorous liberal arts curriculum, students are connected to the great intellectual traditions—the best that has been known and thought—and to cutting-edge research and the most up-to-date technological innovation. They are mentored by a faculty that partners with and challenges them in a way you just don't find at many schools. While in some quarters a certain sterility has set in in higher education, a scholarly professionalism that is disconnected from undergraduate learning, that is not the case here. Faculty mentoring has a transformative effect on young women, many of whom are being taken seriously for the first time in their lives and are discovering in themselves the capacity for leaps in understanding and self-confidence they could not even imagine before.

The faculty, too, is committed to making connections: between research and teaching, between disciplinary and interdisciplinary work, between the student's acquisition of knowledge and her development of literacies or skills that will allow her to negotiate the world with confidence and competence—the skills of speaking, arguing, and writing, critical analysis, aesthetic appreciation, scientific understanding, environmental awareness, ethical discrimination, leadership, and public interest advocacy.

For just as Mary Lyon expected her daughters to go out and do something constructive with their lives, so do we today have those same high expectations. A large measure of idealism pervades this college campus. I can assure you that this is not the case on many college campuses today. Here you find few naysayers or cynics or self-absorbed people. Rather, it is the norm to want to make a difference, to try new things, to give back, to care about justice, to embrace diversity and to work towards greater mutual understanding and a more inclusive community. In impressive numbers our students and our alumnae do all of these things and more.

In short, a Mount Holyoke education energizes and engages and, above all, "connects." As our alumnae know, it is an education that sustains and enriches for a lifetime.

But nothing I can say about the power of a Mount Holyoke education can hold a candle to what our students say themselves. I, like many others (including the reaccreditation team last fall), have been bowled over by their often spontaneous testimonials. Let me give you a recent example.

Last week I had a meeting with members of the debate society who are an impressively international group of young women: from Russia, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Romania, England, the Philippines, and the U.S. We talked about why they took up debate and one wrote me an e-mail later elaborating more fully:

"When you ask people in our organization why they do what they do: It's because they want to debate issues like the pros and cons of replacing Boris Yeltsin, of human cloning, of legalizing homosexual marriages. We like intellectual sparring. We enjoy arguing about ideas. We love the fact that in competitions, we get to be matched against minds that are better, sharper than ours—and learn from them, learn from the challenge. We love the fact that after constant practice, constant reading of everything from The Economist to philosophy books, we become much better, more critical, and more educated people. We love the fact that in a liberal arts college where you still have to do a major debating allows you to have a fuller, more complete education—because you force yourself outside of the boundaries of your major, to understand issues in politics, in international relations, in environmental studies, in econ, which you otherwise would not understand. We have a brand-new generation of debaters. We try to let them feel that the range of what they can accomplish, if only they persist, is unlimited."

Yes, that's it exactly. This, I think, is the greatest feeling that any organization or people can impart to anyone: the sense that they have potential and that potential is unlimited. What we want students to learn is that they have potential and that potential is unlimited. And, in remarkable numbers, Mount Holyoke students do learn that.

We score at the very top in surveys of graduating seniors, year after year, in measures of student satisfaction with their college experience, at the top of a cohort of thirty-one institutions that includes Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wellesley, Smith, Stanford, and Duke, among others. In fact, last year we got a call from Duke University, where our son happened to be a student, asking us for the scoop. What is it about Mount Holyoke that elicits such high levels of student satisfaction?

Well, I hope you had a chance to talk with students today and to hear their eloquent answers for yourselves. We'll introduce you to more students in the campaign video we'll unveil in a few minutes. These students are our best ambassadors. They compel our support.

A legacy of educational leadership as effective and distinctive, as bold and ambitious as ours, demands an equally bold and ambitious campaign. And this 200 million dollar campaign, the highest goal ever set by a women's college, is just that. This campaign stresses the themes that have been central throughout Mount Holyoke's distinguished history. Mary Lyon knew the indispensable value of the endowment and so do we, and that it why it is at the core of this effort. First-rate science has always been a distinctive feature of Mount Holyoke's identity, and we are committed to continuing that legacy by building a state-of-the-art science complex. Leadership, environmentalism, the arts, internationalism: these are ideas that are the very essence of Mount Holyoke and so they resonate in the campaign.

If readiness is all, we are ready! We have pulled our community together around a bold and ambitious plan for the future, The Plan for Mount Holyoke 2003. We have taken significant steps towards a realization of our goals. We are energized. We are on the move. Our considerable recent success demonstrates that our trajectory is upward, our spirit strong. We have enlisted wonderful leadership in this cause. We have a sizable nucleus fund as a down payment on this effort. And we have this awesome resource out there in the world: people like you.

If there is one thing that Mount Holyoke women have been taught since Mary Lyon's day to the present, it is that one person can make a difference. That person is you. Your engagement, your continuing connection make all the difference. Help us to connect to others who can make a difference. Mount Holyoke can and must continue to send out into the world young women emboldened by a powerful sense of connection. The positive effect of graduates of this institution upon the world must continue to belie its small size. Together, we the Mount Holyoke community can advance our distinctive and invaluable legacy of leadership. Mary Lyon would expect no less from us.

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Permanent link to this story: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/stories/5683107