Words of Welcome
Rev. Edward Glynn SJ
Aug. 31, 2002
My comments to you this morning will be, first, brief words of welcome, of congratulations and of encouragement and, lastly, lengthier words of introduction telling you who we are and introducing to you the long and rich tradition of educational excellence that is John Carroll.
We at the university are proud of this tradition. We take this tradition seriously. On behalf of all the members of the student body, faculty, administration and staff I welcome you to John Carroll University. In welcoming you I can assure that the reason John Carroll exists is to serve you. We exist institutionally to assist you in your education and to assist you in fulfilling your responsibility to yourselves to grow and become all you are capable of becoming. We look forward to working with you on the project that is your education --a project that is in fact the life that you are in the process of creating.
In addition to welcoming you, I congratulate each of you for being admitted to and for enrolling in John Carroll University. You are at the threshold of joining a very distinguished group--distinguished nationally and internationally. To be a graduate of John Carroll University is considered around the state of Ohio and our nation a distinction. To be a graduate of a Jesuit school, you will discover, is considered around our nation and the world a distinction.
John Carroll University shares the more than 450 year old Jesuit tradition of educational excellence with such schools as Georgetown University, Boston College, Holy Cross, Fairfield, Fordham University, the Universities of St. Louis, San Francisco and Seattle and the Loyola Universities in Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans and Los Angeles. You are on the threshold of entering this distinguished group of Jesuit graduates. My congratulations to you.
I have specific words of encouragement for you. I encourage you in fulfilling your responsibility to yourself to begin immediately to prepare for classes, to begin immediately to do your assignments, to begin immediately to complete your readings, etc. I urge you to begin immediately to make use of the Universities facilities and resources and to begin immediately to make use of the faculty, administration and staff. We are here to assist and serve you. I especially urge you, if you begin to have academic or personal difficulties, to go to your professors and counselors for assistance. We want to help you. We want you to succeed.
Now to my words telling you who we are and introducing you to the long and rich tradition of educational excellence that is John Carroll's. What John Carroll University has been doing for more than 100 years and still does today is educate young men and women for vision, for hope and for responsibility under the integrating influence of the Jesuit philosophy and practice of education.
John Carroll is one of 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States. You are familiar with these institutions. I mentioned some of them earlier. The educational tradition that motivated the founding of these institutions and that has shaped the curricula of these schools is older than these individual institutions and older than the cities in which these schools exist. The Jesuit educational tradition with its emphasis on philosophy, theology, the arts, science, excellence in oral and written communication and involvement in the intellectual and social issues of the contemporary world has since the 16th century earned an international reputation for excellence through the schools founded by Jesuits, first in Europe and then around the world.
At the heart of the centuries-old tradition of educational excellence is the conviction that a strong liberal arts curriculum is the soul of the institution and that the long term educational health and success of the institution as a Jesuit educational institution depend on the strength and the quality of the liberal arts tradition permeating all curricula of the institution. By the liberal arts tradition you are provided the educational opportunity to foster the life of the human spirit, to nourish that life so that wisdom may be attained, to expand your vision of the possible, to clarify your own basis for hope, to come to an appreciation of the critical importance of affirming and preserving values in all relations--individual, family, local, national and international relations; and to come to an appreciation of the consequences of failing to affirm and preserve values.
Both by affirming and preserving values and by failing to do so we shape the world we live in for better or for worse, for ourselves and for succeeding generations. But to the degree a person does not understand one's life and one's world that person cannot shape them. Thus the Jesuit tradition seeks for its students excellence also in areas of specialization for professional careers in law, medicine, science, engineering, business, etc. The Jesuit tradition strikingly manifests this commitment to specializations and to career education through the establishment of various curricula and schools in the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States.
But the Jesuit tradition also equally strikingly manifests the conviction that the liberal arts tradition is to permeate these schools and curricula of specialization. The failure to do so leads to specialization without vision and thus to persons, institutions and ultimately to cities, nations and a planet without vision.
It is in this context of educating for vision, for hope and for responsibility that I place before you as students entering John Carroll University a norm by which to measure how well the University succeeds as a Jesuit educational institution. The norm of measure is service. Four years from now how well you are qualified to serve others and how intensely you are motivated to live a life of service of others will reveal in your case how well John Carroll has succeeded as a Jesuit educational institution. If at the time of your graduation you have attained a degree of excellence in oral and written communication, a degree of excellence in your area of specialization for your life's work, and yet have not found the motivation to consciously live a life of service of others, then John Carroll University, precisely as a Jesuit University, has failed you.
For the motto of the Jesuits and the vision shaping a Jesuit institution of any kind is Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam--For the Greater Glory of God. An education shaped by this vision always gives rise to the question: where and how can I provide the greater service of God and my fellow men and women? Where and how can I provide the greater good, the more lasting good, the more universal good and thus the greatest service.
The John Carroll education, to the degree it is a Jesuit education, will create a desirable restlessness deep within the hearts of the men and women who study here, a restlessness not just during your lives as students but during the whole of your lives--a restlessness caused by that haunting question: where and how in this particular place and this particular moment can I with my life provide the greater service of God and my fellow men and women?
What John Carroll University has been doing for more than 100 years and still does today is educate men and women for vision, for hope and for responsibility under the integrating influence of the Jesuit philosophy and practice of education. The most eloquent public testimony to this tradition of educational excellence is the lives of the graduates of John Carroll University scattered across the state of Ohio, across our nation and across our world: physicians, dentists, lawyers, ministers of the gospel, educators, elected officials, accountants, business leaders, public servants, fathers, mothers: dedicated to their work, their families, their country, their church, their God--dedicated to working with others to build a better world for all.
Welcome to John Carroll University. Congratulations. Do well.