Inaugural Ceremony Archive
Mary Lyndon Shanley
Professor of Political Science on the Margaret Stiles Halleck Chair, Vassar College
It is a great honor for me to greet Catherine Bond Hill - Cappy - on behalf of the Vassar faculty.
From the faculty's perspective, Cappy, your presidency has gotten off to a most auspicious start. Now let me be clear that I would not ordinarily presume to say "from the faculty's perspective," as if there were a single perspective. But I am emboldened by the fact that as part of the presidential search, the faculty held a series of extraordinary meetings in which we discussed our vision of the college and the qualities a president might possess to foster that vision.
I want to focus on one matter that came up repeatedly: Vassar's place in the communities of which it is a part, from the neighborhood to the nation and even to the world. Not only do we want our student body to reflect the increasing diversity of our nation, but we recognize that our students are, more than any previous generation, going to live their lives as global citizens. We spoke of curricular changes that respond to this new reality, of our hopes for increased enrollment of students from abroad, and for our own students and faculty to study in other countries.
And the faculty also spoke clearly about our aspiration for Vassar to deepen its long-standing commitment to and involvement in our local communities of Poughkeepsie and Dutchess County.
Given this aspiration, you will understand how pleased the members of the faculty were when, from the barrage of invitations you received to meet with one group or another as soon as you arrived, you accepted the invitation to attend a weekly lunch of our Community Fellows, a group of 20 Vassar students who spent the summer working in a variety of local human service organizations, ranging from the Children's Media Project to the Family Partnership to the Rural Migrant Ministry. At lunch you urged the students to keep you informed. And Laura Burnett and Emma Peterson invited you to join them and the first-year students during Orientation Week in a project in the community -- painting the lobby of the YMCA.
And so there you were, on the Sunday of First-Year Orientation, in the company of 15 incoming Vassar students, putting paint on the walls. And not just a symbolic stroke or two. Dedicated and determined administrator that you are, you said you would stay until the job was done, and done correctly. We on the faculty are extremely diverse in our talents, interests, and opinions. But while our passions are widely different, we all experience the vocation of sharing these interests with young people on the cusp of adulthood.
Before incoming students had their first official class, you taught them by example as well as by word. Not simply that community service is good (and it is), but that the classroom is not the only place that they will learn during four years at Vassar. Understanding requires not only engagement with the accumulated wisdom of the ages, but also reflection on and experience of our very complicated world.
As you bent your head in conversation over lunch and wielded your paintbrush that first week of school, you manifested the vocation of your faculty. And in those moments, we recognized in you a true colleague in the enterprise that is at the very core of Vassar's mission: engagement with young people to help them develop their powers of understanding and to take their place in the world. Cappy, we welcome you most warmly as our president, and we pledge to you our best efforts to animate our common endeavor.