“Renewing our Mission: Celebrating our Future”
Christopher Blake – Inaugural Address: October 27, 2006
Chairman Rohde,Trustees, former President Pearce,Congressman Leach, themany members of the MountMercy community, my dear family and friends, andDistinguished Guests. I enthusiastically embrace your calls to service as the eighth president of MountMercyCollegeand I pledge my humble best in fulfillment of that responsibility. Today we celebrate that inaugural occasion when our College enters a new chapter in its noble history. Let us together enjoy that celebration and savor aunited moment of happiness. And tomorrow let us begin our work in earnest to write the story that will unfold in this next chapter of MountMercy’s history. Let us take our calling and mission to a new place and a new level, a place as yet unknown but surely as necessary and as powerful and as inspired and as merciful as that left to us by those who have walked before us in living out their calling on this hill, in love of God, in service to others and in the sustenance of the common good. Let us rightly celebrate now, not focused on the leadership of one individual alone, but instead on a collective future of hope and aspirations, because today we commit to a renewal of our mission as MountMercyCollege.
How is it that a first-generation immigrant from England, who came here with Moira, his wife and companion, is called to this community and called to lead a new generation of scholars and students in shaping the world around the Mount Mercy mission? Believe me, there have been moments of quiet reflection when I have asked myself that question and pondered at what point will my new colleagues realize how little I know about this wonderful country, this great state of Iowa and this fine academic institution. To lead when one is not a native of this state or countryis indeed a humbling and daunting prospect. So it is time to “fess up,” as my children might put it. I have much to learn about this place, its people and its traditions. My sons will confirm that, lest you think otherwise. A true and humbling story: two years ago in Pennsylvania, Lewis informed me he would be taking the “Iowa tests” the following week at school. Somewhat taken aback, I asked,“Why on earth would you be doing that when live in the state of Pennsylvania?” Indeed, a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing! So I deeply thank many of you at Mount Mercy and in Cedar Rapids who recently have taken me aside, and with gentle and hospitable Midwestern charm helped me and my dear family, Moira, Lewis and Sam, begin that process of adjustment and engagement with our new lives at work and at home here in the Midwest. Indeed, as a College, that is the reason we exist: to build community together and to embark on a journey of change for each member of that community, a journey that expands mind, body and spirit. As I begin that journey with you here, I am reminded of the motto of my alma mater, the University of Oxford: Dominus Illuminatio Mea – The Lord is my Light. Perhaps I did not appreciate the significance of that truth as an 18-year-old as I do this day.
Today we are joined by many friends on the platform and in this arena who share in that journey and support. I thank each of you, whether you have traveled from near or afar, for being partners with me, my family and MountMercyCollegetoday at this personal and institutional milestone and on a road of change that is a hallmark of all our lives. The inauguration committee has worked tirelessly and diligently, not only in making the arrangements but in helping educate the campus about this moment in our history: to those colleagues, I express my sincere gratitude and respect for your leadership. On a more personal note I am touched that my sister, Carolyn, has come here today from England, a testament to my family connections that were built on the love and security and faith of our parents. She is representing our family and my in-laws who would have liked to attend. My father is unable to travel here this day, and my mother is in her greater glory, but I know their love and their pride is present with us on this occasion. And to our dear friends from Maryland and Pennsylvania, you too must know that a part of my heart and soul will always belong to you. At TowsonUniversityin BaltimoreI found my first working home in the United States: there you taught me knowledge of American higher education and the values of public service and social inclusion, values that lie at the core of American democracy. At Mount St. Mary’s University in MarylandI found my first working home in Catholic higher education: you reminded me that faith and reason are twin pillars of the search for truth and that a liberal education is the best one for responsible citizenship. The roots that have been established by family, friends and colleagues, in worlds old and new,will never be uprooted, and daily I am inspired by the memories and continued relationships from my years with you. I applaud you for being the people you are and I thank you for being an example and inspiration to me andothers.
And so we should be comforted in knowing that change and growth are not only expectations placed on a new President, but are also a calling to all of us in higher education as we fulfill our individual institutional missions and our collective responsibility to educate the next generation and to preserve civilization. That is not an overstatement. Our societies are fragile organizations, needing brave and honest men and women to defend them against the ravages of ignorance, deceit, prejudice, violence and hatred. We at MountMercy have an example in the life of the founder of the Sisters of Mercy, Catherine McAuley, and in her heir in the United States, the indefatigable Frances Warde, after whom our first building is named. Relying on three themes of divineProvidence, the mission of Jesus, and gratitude for the Mercy of God, these women lived out the gospel calling and changed the world. That gospel drives us toward an imperfect world through acts of love and service and mercy. And these womenof our heritage did this in a patriarchal age and in a patriarchal Church that stacked the odds against them being of much value or effect. Their lives and characters have been an inspiration to the thousands who have joined the Sisters of Mercy and the millions whose lives they have touched and improved. They have lived out the timeless calling that the Old Testament prophet called his people to fulfill: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
This message and traditionof engagement is one that MountMercyupholds in its mission and it is one that I am proud to be associated with. We belong to a tradition of Christian witness and cheerful optimism and merciful action that 175 years ago reached out as Sisters of Mercy to the “poor, sick and ignorant” of Ireland, and now empowers women in 44 nations in their work in colleges, schools, hospitals and clinics for the poor, the uneducated, the sick and the dying. The corporeal works of mercy, etched on our chapel stain glass window, are more importantly etched in the lives of those who belong in the Mercy tradition, whether religious or lay, whether a Sister or a friend,whether a woman or a man, whether a scholar or a student. The ideals and practices that the Sisters have shown us are indeed about educating the next generation and preserving civilization and we stand center point within that tradition. Or at least we should.
We should because our world needs education and civility as much in this age as any: perhaps even more so, because the consequences of failure can be all the more catastrophic. Our time indeed poses unique challenges. Various terms abound in popular culture in trying to understand the complexities of human life on the planet in 2006. One only needs to venture into the nearest bookstore to find any number of expressions in the textsto describe our world today. Blogged, post-modern, digitized Gen Y students now inhabit a flat, globalized, consumptive, eco-unfriendly planet. And they do so under the shadows of increasing inequalities, ethnic strife, fear of terrorism, nuclear proliferation at home and abroad, and a daunting recognition that humankind, acting like a brutish infant,has taken our ancient planet earth in a cosmic blink to the edge of environmental catastrophe. Today’s students are living in a world of extraordinary change, and a pace of change that even their 20th century parents did not imagine or experience. In this context the 4000 colleges and universities in the United Statesface the primary burden of transitioning 14.6 million high school graduates through their gates and into the world of adult life and work with that change disposition and capacity as the primary outcome of their educational program. For the 200 institutions upholding Catholic higher education, that change disposition has to be wedded to our unique intellectual tradition and our faith-based values. The need for such education, drawing on the liberal arts, promoting spiritual inquiry and preparing the body politic for productive, democratic citizenship, remains an imperative for the defense of human liberties and opportunities in new ways today: ways which are as much threatened now as they were for our fathers and grandfathers who were called to confront and defeat the great tyrannies of the 20th century, through paying the ultimate sacrifice.
At MountMercy we have successfully embraced that tradition of engagement through learning, empowering our students to acquirethe knowledge, skills and dispositions to become upholders of human dignity and achievement and greatness. On the College seal behind me the Latin words can be translated, “Learn to love peace and truth.” This College motto is no bland statement. It can be tracedthrough a long Judaeo-Christian heritage that was inspirational to the early Christian bishop and martyr, St. Cyprian, and also to St. Thomas Aquinas. The phrase tells us that our life’s calling, centered on peace and truth, cannot be simply appropriated or assented, but is only achievable through a process of personal engagement and development. In short, we have to struggle to become the people we need to be, who can bring peace and truth to the world. To do so means stepping up to the plate, rejecting pragmatism as the only sensible outlook on life, aspiring to something greater than we findin the status quo around us, and taking the risk of seeing the world afresh. That is no easy task, not for us and not for our students. In an age when militarism is the norm, when celebrity matters more than dignity, when the voice of the faithful is shouted down by the religious bigot and extremist, when our knowledge of our complex world is parceled out in simplistic media sound bites, and when rational discourse is replaced in the public and political arenas by discordant accusation – when these conditions are all too evident, the call to learn to love peace and truth is a life-altering, personally empowering, socially subversive and an infinitely good way to lead one’s life. It is also a terrific way to understand the purpose of a college education for the 21stcentury citizen of this state, this country and this world. It is a call to a way of life that is hard and complex and protracted and empowering and changing. It is a call to a way of life that Mahatma Gandhi so succinctly expressed over a half-century ago when,at the birth of Indian independence and the creation of the world’s largest democracyhe called on his fellow countrymen to “be the change you wish to see in the world.”
These ideals and purposes of liberal learning and the colleges that uphold them are not, however, necessarily guaranteed an appreciativereception by those whom we serve outside of our walls and off our campuses. Higher education is under the spotlight and its integrity is currently under question on many fronts. Indeed there is little public sympathy for higher education and the challenges are growing each decade. Resources are scarce, meaning that our institutions of higher learning are increasingly competitors rather than collaborators. Our landscape is changing fast: changes in society accelerate; global economic pressures escalate; demographic trends shift, in ways that Iowa is beginning to appreciate; technological and scientific knowledge leaps at an extraordinary pace; lifestyles and ethical decisions become increasingly complex. In this context higher education is being asked to be more accountable and responsive to society. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has recently sounded the call for more accountability, more affordability and more transparency in colleges and universities, and the Spellings Commission Report poses fundamental questions about the role of academia in a modern democracy. Of course, criticism of the academy is not new or unhealthy. William Hazlitt, the 18th century British political writer, and sympathizer of the American Revolution, wrote nearly two hundred years ago about my alma mater, “You will hear more good things on the outside of a stagecoach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass a twelvemonth with the undergraduates, or heads of colleges, of that famous University.” Hazlitt’s critique of elitism has echoes in today’s critics, who see a slow, unaccountable system failing to provide the right level of quality and service. Much of that criticism is wrong, but it is far better for us to put our own house in order than have others do it for us. Recently a paper entitled, “Addressing the Challenges Facing American Undergraduate Education” was jointly issued by six national organizations promoting private and state higher education, including the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, to which MountMercybelongs. That paper challenges us to re-frame our priorities before it is done to and for us. You will be relieved to know that I shall not expand on these challenges in detail now, but I will list them summarily here and I hope you will read the paper in due course. They are: to expand college access to low-income and minority students; to keep college affordable; to improve learning by using new knowledge and technologies; to prepare secondary students better for higher education; to increase accountability through outcomes; to internationalize the student experience – a favorite of mine, you might surmise; and to increase opportunities for lifelong learning and training. MountMercy is positioned absolutely to connect and to embrace with these challenges. We do not wish to be Oxford, or Harvard or Dartmouthor the University of Iowa. We do wish to be a beacon of hope and opportunity and a learning community here in the Midwestwhere mental, physical and spiritual development will enable our graduates to embrace the world with love and with change. We need to engage in our own process of reflection in the face of these modern challenges, and we are surely up to that task.
One hundred years ago that task was indeed acknowledged here. One hundred years ago the Sisters of Mercy recognized the challenges of education and service in this city, and in April 1906 they came to this hill because they had a calling and a vision of doing good work, God’s work, in Cedar Rapids by providing education and nursing care. One hundred years ago they started a tradition of Mercy training of nurses in the hospital, a tradition that is now continuing through our own nursing program. If you build it, they will come, so the movie saying goes. And so in 1924 the Sisters had enough funding to build Warde Hall, and our physical presence as an institution on the hill and in Cedar Rapidsgrew - and our lives have never been the same since. The learning, life and significance of the years since then are inestimable. One brief story that captures the joy at the heart of MountMercy can be found in John Fialka’s work, “Sisters: Catholic nuns and the making of America.” After Warde Hall opened for business in the 1920’s he tells that us that “on snowy winter nights recreation took place on Mount Mercy’s splendid toboggan run. Then the neighborhood echoed with the shrill screams of excited young women as they shot down the hill and threaded their way through the trees. At eight-thirty there was lights out and no more talking until dawn, a period known to Mercies as the Grand Silence.” Would our current student body please take note!
Anyway, the rest, as they say, is history: from girls’ academy, to two year women’s college, to co-ed four-year baccalaureate college. And this summer we are co-founders of a brand new partnership with seventeen other Mercy institutions in the United States, the Conference of Mercy Higher Education, becoming the second largest group of Catholic colleges and universities in the nation, after the Jesuit schools. Our pathway stretches back over many years, and who would have predicted the vistas it has encountered. In 1928 we opened our doors to a group of women who heralded a new start for education in Cedar Rapids, and began a legacy that has changed the city, state and nation forever. We are united with that generation in our calling, yes, but also still in person. One member of that originating, first ever graduating class is with us today. I present, honor, and congratulate Sr. Kathleen Saunders for beginning that journey many years ago for her generation and for ours and for helping guide us to this day. Please stand Sister Kathleen: we thank you.