Speeches

University Commencement Address

University Commencement
John Barclay Simpson, PhD
14th President of the University at Buffalo
Sunday, May 14, 2006

Good morning, and welcome, everyone.  Members of the University at Buffalo Class of 2006, I bring you greetings!  Today we assemble to honor your accomplishments, and to celebrate your futures.  I also want to thank you as students for your contributions to our university. 

“As advocates for public higher education, the UB community’s mission goes beyond providing a world-class education to our students. We must also be partners in the even more arduous, yet ultimately more meaningful, work of fostering the social conditions that enable equitable public access to education.” John B. Simpson President

You are the reason our great university exists, and so it is fitting that we turn the spotlight on you at this significant moment in your lives.  A commencement is a time for celebration, not only for graduates and their families, but the entire academic community.  It is wonderful to welcome our distinguished guests, and to see so many friends and family members here with us this morning. 

I'd like to wish all our mothers a Happy Mother's Day.  If you just now remembered it was Mother's Day, you can thank me for the heads-up at the reception following commencement!

All of you who supported your graduate with your wisdom, your time, and–yes–with your wallets, you have our thanks and our praise.  Soon, you will watch them walk across the stage to receive their diplomas.  These steps will last just a few moments, but they will demarcate the start of the next phase in their lives, one filled with promise and opportunity. 

To each of you on the floor: you will begin your walk up the steps as a student, and you will walk back down again as a graduate, and as an alumnus of the University at Buffalo.  And so this morning, rather than bidding you farewell on behalf of the university, I bid you welcome–welcome to UB's alumni family, and welcome to the next stage in your lifelong relationship with our marvelous university.

The community of alumni you now join is indeed an august group.  UB graduates are influential locally, nationally, and globally every day.  A recent UB alumnus founded China's biggest internet search engine–today, the fourth most visited web site in the world.  A UB alumna is one of the most recognizable voices on National Public Radio, and another alumnus one of the most respected newsmen at CNN. Our university's alumni have won the Pulitzer Prize, have run Fortune-500 companies, have made history-making voyages of space exploration–and have even gone on to become presidents of major universities!  In fact, there are few areas in which UB graduates have not excelled.  

It's time now for each of you to begin to plot your own course.

Commencement is about new beginnings, but it also is a time to reflect back upon what has made these new beginnings possible.  Almost a quarter century ago, Dr. Steven B. Sample, then president of UB and today president of the University of Southern California, set UB on a course toward greater academic distinction.  Building on the successes of his predecessors, President Sample led UB during an exciting period of growth and accomplishment that culminated in 1990 with an invitation for UB to join the prestigious Association of American Universities.  Membership in the AAU puts UB in the top 2% of all institutions of higher education nationwide.

We are honored today to have President Sample with us on stage.  Shortly, we will have a chance to bestow upon him an honor befitting a scholar and leader who has done so very much both for UB, and for higher education as a whole. 

The University at Buffalo has now been educating leaders across three centuries.  No one would disagree that things have changed dramatically since we were founded in 1846 as a private medical college.  The University grew to embrace other professions and the humanities and sciences, to join the SUNY system, and to affirm its public mission beyond teaching and research to include service to the community.  Today almost 190,000 UB alumni live in all fifty states and in more than 120 nations around the world.

But take a moment to think how the world has changed just in the decade since UB celebrated its sesquicentennial in 1996.  The Internet, in its childhood back then, now has brought profound changes to many aspects of our lives.  A decade ago, only a small fraction of people used e-mail.  Today, 75% of Americans are on the web, and other nations are far ahead of us in this regard.

In his important book, The World Is Flat, Thomas Friedman shows us how the technology revolution of the past two decades has leveled many geographic and social barriers, and is creating a truly global marketplace. 

But few periods of change are smooth, and this one is no exception.  Just as a more integrated world offers unprecedented opportunities for collaboration and innovation, it invites threats from those forces of hatred and intolerance who wish to do harm.  Globalization, as is true of all significant social change, will also bring a degree of disorientation–and even dislocation–that will constantly challenge us to adapt. 

The economist Alan Blinder has argued that the trends that mark globalization today–the outsourcing of jobs, and a shift away from manufacturing toward a service- and knowledge-based economy Ð represent nothing less than a new labor revolution . . . one that is every bit as important as the industrial revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Technology is changing our economy.  That economy is global and it is evolving more rapidly than ever before.  The skills, knowledge and experience you take with you from the University today will need to be refreshed to meet the demands of our ever-changing society. 

What does this mean for you, our graduates?  For better or worse, depending on your perspective–although I believe it's decidedly for the better–it means that just when many of you may have thought you completed your education, you will find that it is really just beginning.  Whether you are pursuing advanced degrees or preparing for a professional career or other goals, you have a lifetime of learning ahead of you.  Given that final exams just finished this week, you may not think this is such a good thing.  You'll have to trust me on this one!

More than ever, you will be challenged to use the totality of your education and experience: to think critically and write clearly; to weigh evidence before making informed decisions; and to use science and technology–leavened by a sense of history–to address some of the 21st century's greatest challenges, such as:  inequality, extremism, degradation of our environment, and ethnic conflict.    

Your University education has equipped you to see the connections between what happens in your own local communities and the far broader set of communities around the world.  We have seen that globalization brings both opportunities and threats, and it will create winners as well as losers.  Seeking out new ways to mitigate these threats, and to share the gains of a more integrated world is, perhaps, the highest calling of our new age.

What you do with your UB education is a question that is now before you.  The range of answers to that question is broad, and each of you will approach the possibilities in your unique way.  But remember always that your knowledge and experience can be a powerful tool for good.  Above all, do not underestimate your ability to serve as an agent of change.  When it comes to addressing the issues of this new century, our society has a great ally in its public colleges and universities. 

Many of you likely considered a range of educational choices before deciding on UB.  You won't be surprised that I think you made the wise choice.  Today, through our historic plan for growing and strengthening the university–UB2020–we are seeking to fulfill the ultimate promise of the process that Dr. Sample advanced–to move UB even farther up the ranks of the very top public research universities in the nation.

In a larger sense, I believe that our nation's public colleges and universities are nothing less than the cornerstone of our way of life, our democracy.  Our institutions of higher education now produce most of the nation's research and development for new technologies–advances that are as critical to the future of our country as they are for all humankind.  Our public universities also bear another great responsibility, which some argue is peculiarly American–that of offering universally a highest quality college education at an affordable price–for all qualified members of our society.  Providing this opportunity is a fundamental and essential value of our higher education, and it is one that we cherish at UB.  Education is the most viable tool for addressing the issues and challenges facing our society.

You are here today, in part, because you benefited from strong educational preparation for higher education.  But this preparation still is too rare.  Indeed, too many of our nation's young people arrive at their eighteenth birthdays without the preparation needed to succeed in this climate. 

As advocates for public higher education, the UB community's mission goes beyond providing a world-class education to our students. We must also be partners in the even more arduous, yet ultimately more meaningful, work of fostering the social conditions that enable equitable public access to education. 

Working actively with educators at every level to ensure that students are fully prepared and well positioned to access the benefits of higher education–this is the best kind of public service UB can provide.  To renege on this promise is to accept the unacceptable: that a segment of our population will go without the skills, the opportunities, or the expectations to secure a better life, to be defined by their commitment and their talent.

Education is not the passive receipt of wisdom.  During your time here, the faculty has provided you with the means of discovering, creating, and sharing knowledge.  They have transmitted to you not so much facts and information, as the tools of discovery.  Chief among these is an open, yet critical, mind.  If your time at UB has not separated you from some of the prejudices and judgments of your youth, then we all have failed in our mission.  You should leave here with a greater capacity for asking tough questions, debating competing ideas, and arguing your views, with both clarity and humility.

To the members of the Class of 2006 I ask these questions:

  • Now that you are equipped with these tools, what mark will you leave on this world?
  • What lessons will you seek from it?
  • What contributions will you make to it? In short, how will you use your education?

As you prepare to take these transformative steps across the stage, you have the sincere thanks of the University at Buffalo community for all that you have contributed during your time here.  You will always have a home here.  And I encourage you to stay involved, to become ambassadors for your alma mater, and to ensure that UB's doors are open to the next generation of young scholars.

Today, for the Class of 2006, one door closes while many others open.  Congratulations on one job well done, and my best wishes for your success in those yet to come.