Speeches

University Commencement Address

University Commencement
John Barclay Simpson, PhD
14th President of the University at Buffalo
Sunday, May 15, 2005

Members of the University at Buffalo Class of 2005, I bring you my salutations and my congratulations!

“In every field and in every corner of the world, UB’s graduates transform their surroundings— locally, nationally, and globally. The world is richer and stronger for these achievements, just as it will be enriched and enlivened by your contributions.” John B. Simpson President

We are here today to celebrate you—your accomplishments, your contributions, and your future. Just as you are the reason we are assembled here today, in a larger sense, you—and all of UB’s students—are the reason that the university exists and continues to flourish. This very significant moment in your life, therefore, is a profoundly meaningful celebration for the entire UB community.

In just a moment, our university community, together with your family and friends, will bear witness as you step across this stage to receive your diploma. In the process, you will step across the threshold that separates your past from your unfolding future. Today marks the end of your time as undergraduate students at UB—and the first day of your lives as UB alumni.

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.

Let me assure you: you are joining a truly distinguished group. UB’s alumni—a group that numbers more than 184,000—live in every state in the nation, and in more than 120 nations around the world. Every day, across the globe, UB graduates make a meaningful difference in the communities we serve. Indeed, there are few arenas in which a UB alumnus has not achieved significant international distinction.

It was a UB alumnus who invented the cardiac pacemaker, and a UB alumnus who established and currently leads one of the nation’s leading film production companies. A UB alumna was one of the nation’s first women pilots, and a UB alumnus currently serves as China’s Minister of Education—the highest public office held by any UB alumnus worldwide. UB’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 public research universities!

In every field and in every corner of the world, UB’s graduates transform their surroundings— locally, nationally, and globally. The world is richer and stronger for these achievements, just as it will be enriched and enlivened by your contributions.

More than four decades ago, Chancellor Clifford C. Furnas addressed another group of individuals preparing for their transformation from UB students into UB alumni. His audience was the graduating class of 1962—the last class to graduate from UB before its own official transformation the following fall from a private institution into a public university as part of the SUNY system.

At that particular commencement, therefore, two transformations were about to take place—the traditional transformation of students into alumni, and the more unusual transformation of a private institution into a public university. Just as the process of becoming UB graduates brings with it a greatly expanded set of possibilities, opportunities, and responsibilities, so was the case with the new role for which the university was then preparing.

Chancellor Furnas defined the significance of this institutional transformation in this way: “Becoming a state university opens up for your Alma Mater the possibility and the probability of far greater service in quantity and in quality, in depth and in breadth, than has been true in the past.” With its transformation into a public state university, therefore, UB became charged with service not only to our Buffalo community, but also to the state, to the nation, and, indeed, to the world.

For us today, in the beginning of the 21st century, this charge still resonates. From its founding in the mid-nineteenth century, the University at Buffalo has always understood its academic mission to be grounded in its commitment to public service. In the years since our university officially joined the public State University of New York system, UB has continued to expand in its scope and its impact. But as has been the case throughout our institution’s 159-year history, our public university’s role in the world at large remains one of leadership, service, and the provision of opportunity.

Public higher education, then and now, is charged with acting in service to the public good, and it is through our academic strengths that UB’s commitment to public service takes tangible and meaningful shape. Our university’s research, education, and service initiatives are critical to the growth and vitality of the communities we serve, and there is likewise a critical need for supporting these endeavors. Never has there been greater demand for access to public higher education. At the same time, paradoxically, never has there been less public support—in the form of federal and state funding—for public education than there is now. What does our society now stand to lose from failing to recognize the great importance of advancing public higher education?

Looking out at such a promising group of graduates today, I would rather ask instead, what does our society stand to gain from supporting public higher education? Education is the most viable tool for addressing the issues and challenges facing our society. Education is the most enduring mode of access to opportunity. Education is the surest means by which our world will change for the better.

All of us who have ourselves been transformed by public education have a special responsibility to ensure that the transformative power of education is attainable by all who seek it. As advocates and ambassadors of public higher education, the UB community’s mission is not only to provide a world-class higher education to our students here on campus. We must also be partners in the even more arduous—and ultimately more meaningful—work of fostering the social conditions that enable equitable public access to this transformative experience.

For UB, providing access to educational opportunity requires an expansive understanding of what is meant by the term, “public education.” The public we serve comprehends not only our regional community, but all of the statewide, national, and global communities who are impacted by our contributions. In the same way, the educational community we serve is not confined only to the sphere of higher education. Our commitment to educational achievement and opportunity must recognize the integral, vital connections between all levels of education—our commitment, therefore, extends from pre-kindergarten education through post-graduate education. Working actively with educators at every level to ensure that students are fully prepared and well positioned to access the benefits and opportunities of higher education—this is the highest form of public service UB can provide, and this must be at the core of our mission as a public university.

It is through you—our students and our soon-to-be graduates—that the benefits and the opportunities of a UB education are visibly manifest. All that you have learned, achieved, and discovered during your time at UB illustrates the transformative impact education can have upon on an individual. All that you will yet achieve as UB alumni represents something even more important—the power of education to transform the world of the future.

The British mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead once noted that “So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the 15th century.” Rather, Whitehead claimed, “The task of the university is the creation of the future, so far as rational thought and civilized modes of appreciation can affect the issue.”

This university takes this notion very much to heart. As educators, scholars, and humanists, we are engaged in far more dynamic and consequential work: our business is the vital and collaborative creation, dissemination, and application of knowledge. As such, this is an unending, constantly changing process of discovery, enlightenment, and invention.

A UB education gives students the tools to discover, experience, understand, critique, and remake the world around them. The UB experience is not about ingesting knowledge, but about engaging with it, wrestling with it, and reinventing it. In presenting you with your degrees in just a moment, we formally attest not that you have learned all that you need to know for your degree—because you surely have done that—but that you are equipped for the lifetime of learning and education that lies ahead of you.

UB’s faculty have not so much passed their knowledge on to you—it is more to the point to say they have provided you with the means of discovering, creating, and sharing knowledge. They have transmitted to you not so much the fruits of knowledge, as the tools of discovery—these tools include, but are by no means limited to, an open but critical mind, a capacity for asking probing questions, and the ability to communicate, question, and debate ideas clearly and effectively, from a wide range of viewpoints.

To the members of the Class of 2005—UB’s newest alumni—I ask these questions: Now that you are equipped with these tools, what mark will you now 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 UB education?

Your education has prepared you to access the world around you, and we trust that the doors it has opened for you will lead to exciting new worlds of learning, discovery, and achievement. Yet above all, we are counting on you to help open new doors for others, in turn. As UB-educated citizens of the world, you will be positioned to provide access to educational opportunity. Commit yourselves to making the world around you one that is rich with opportunity for learning, dialogue, and discovery.

To aspire to lifelong excellence—that in itself is a noble and arduous task, and one for which you have proven yourselves capable, graduates. I challenge you, henceforth, to take this goal one critical step further—to commit yourselves not only to personal excellence, but also to helping others aspire to excellence in turn.

Taking that step beyond, in essence, is the UB mission. It is what transforms us as a university community into an active, dynamic site of lifelong learning—a site that is enriched and invigorated by every individual who is a part of it.

Class of 2005, as you prepare to take those transformative steps across the stage, you should know how very grateful we are for all that you have contributed to UB. We are full of pride in what you have accomplished as UB students—and we are full of anticipation to see what you have yet to achieve as UB graduates.

Wherever you find yourselves in the coming years, throughout your lives as UB alumni, consider what you have to learn from others, as well as what you have to teach others. For while your time as UB undergraduates has drawn to a close, education is a lifelong journey—one that you have just begun.