Secretary of Education Arne Duncan addresses the 102nd graduating class
Closely identifying his personal experiences serving Chicago’s poor with the prevailing ethos of service at Saint Michael’s College, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan exhorted the graduates at the 102nd Commencement on May 14 to be active agents of accessible education, which he called “the civil rights issue of our time.”
Strong, cool and damp winds blew across the quad under gray clouds as the Class of 2009 made their traditional march from Alliot Hall to Ross Sports Center for the morning ceremony, led by bagpipers and mace-bearing Grand Marshal Joseph Kroger, professor of religious studies.
Along with honorary degree recipients and their sponsors,
key college administrators and trustees, Edmundite leaders and Alumni Association President Gerry Gould ’76, the dais party included Emeritus Detroit Bishop Moses Anderson, SSE ’54.
Valedictorian Megan Denardo, a biology major with a 3.984 Grade Point Average grew up on a Rutland dairy farm. Karen Talentino, vice president for academic affairs, got a good laugh when she described Denardo’s favorite T-shirt with the words, “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the precipitate.” Jeanne Marie Nauheimer ’09, the senior class speaker, spoke to enthusiastic applause on the theme of figurative and literal “open doors.” “Take up the role of educators — pass on your experiences,” she said.
Nauheimer’s theme foreshadowed the central message delivered by Secretary Duncan, whose mother ran a Chicago tutoring program for 48 years that exposed him firsthand from a young age to the doors that education opens for children in challenging situations, given the successes he witnessed. “Because of education’s power to break the barriers of poverty and ignorance that divide us and deny us the promise of our future, education is the civil rights issue of our time,” Duncan said.
“Education equates to freedom,” he continued, describing the Obama administration’s specific initiatives and its ambitious agenda in this area. “You wouldn’t scale back your ambitions. You wouldn’t cut your dreams in half – and you shouldn’t. And neither will the president,” he said.
Noting that nearly three-fourths of Saint Michael’s students engage in some service activity before graduation, the secretary said “Your founders established a legacy of working with people in need and today, Saint Michael’s is a national model for responsibility and citizenship, producing not just smart people, but good
people, too.”
John J. Neuhauser, president of the college, reflected on the ways a liberal education proposes to change students: by fostering understanding from several different perspectives: by developing “virtue in the classical sense,” instilling habits of mind and behavior” that “instinctively promote good in yourself and others”; and by imparting the ability to make moral choices, wrapped in an aura of kindness. “This work of helping you choose wisely is unfinished, for it is the endeavor of a lifetime, but we hope it has been done well here at Winooski Park,” the president said, inviting the class to “please return to this college on a plain below a mountain next to a lake, as often as you can. You are always welcome here.”
“Now, go and change the world,” he said.
