Transcript of Chancellor Martin’s address
Taken from the address delivered on Saturday morning, May 16.
What a great day, what a beautiful day for a graduation ceremony. I want to extend a special welcome to the family, the friends of all the graduates. Also to our faculty, staff and distinguished guests. Above all, I welcome our graduates, and I ask everyone to join me in congratulating all the graduates.
How excited are you?
Well, that was pretty excited, I'd say. You're completing your degrees today at one of the world's finest research universities, a university with an extraordinary combination of quality, breadth and impact. And you complete it at a time when higher education could not be more important. The education you've received here, and that you're completing today, has greater value in today's world than it's ever had before. What you've learned will never lose its value, in large part because, in the words of yesterday's honorary degree recipient, scientist Oliver Smithies, "What you've learned here is how to learn. And no one can take that away from you." It's our job to ensure that your degree retains its value, and I can assure you that we will do everything in our power to preserve the university's pre-eminence. I hope that as graduates, you'll also help advocate for this great public research university and its importance to the state, the nation and the world. It's an institution that all of you have improved by being here. Each one of you has marked out a unique path through the institution. You've demanded that we live up to our promises. And everybody in this hall is extremely proud of what you've achieved. This seems like a good time to thank all of those people who've supported you and helped invest in the education that you've received. Why don't you stand and thank your families and friends and faculty members?
Now we all know that you're about to enter a very challenging world. There's just no question about it. It's a world in the throws of an economic recession, it's marred by conflict, and a world in need of solutions to urgent medical, environmental, social and cultural problems. And a great deal is going to be required of each one of you, including, in the short run, patience, perseverance, even courage and a lot of optimism. But with the talent and creativity and public spiritedness that you've shown while you've been students at UW-Madison, we're absolutely confident that you will succeed. You'll succeed at whatever you choose to pursue. But you'll also help provide what the world needs most: wisdom in what we decide to value, respect for evidence and reasoned argument, love and respect for other human beings and for the environment, and a willingness to understand problems in their complexity with a drive to find novel solutions. Ultimately, you're not only going to succeed in existing careers and professions; you're going to create new careers and professions. You're going to create new technologies and new ideas that change the nature of work and improve the quality of all of our lives. And many of you already have a head start on doing just that. This university, with its commitment to education, has a long history of producing leaders, leaders in the environment, in health and medicine, in business and policy-making, in politics, education and in the arts and culture. UW-Madison has produced more Fortune 500 CEOs than any university other than Harvard. It -- yeah.
UW-Madison also produces among the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers and teachers for America.
The producer of The Daily Show and the Colbert Report graduated from UW-Madison.
I have the feeling that they need an upgrade and that some of you will provide it. Numerous state legislators, governors, US senators and congress people are alumni of this institution, as are many fine athletes, school teachers, nurses, engineers, pharmacists, doctors, urban planners, academics and many more. And you're going to be future leaders in all of those domains, and as I've already said, you're going to create new domains altogether. Your generation is a generation of social entrepreneurs and I really admire that about your generation. You're into combining creative ideas and new technologies with market forces to change the world and help the least fortunate among us. A lot of you helped those who were displaced by Katrina. A lot of you have traveled to New Orleans to do work there. You participated in efforts to help support victims of the tsunami in Indonesia while you were here, the earthquake in China, the floods here in Wisconsin. And with Wisconsin Idea Fellowships, many of you fought tobacco use and diabetes in low-income neighborhoods here in Madison. You created an after-school program to teach mathematics to middle school students of color. Your generation leads the way in its insistence on renewable energy, green technologies and sustainable development. We hope you continue to lead in these forms of social responsibility, and we would all be honored to follow you. You also lead the way and are the cutting edge of new forms of social networking and communications. And your influence is so powerful that even I now have a Facebook page.
There are a lot of things that you initiated and that you experienced while you were here, and I know you'll have memories of many of them. Jeopardy producers brought their show to UW-Madison while you were here. Their college championship was located here and Suchita Shaw represented the campus very, very well. American Idol showed images of our university's Idol competition from your all-campus party on one of their shows. And on a slightly more serious note, the Dalai Lama was here while you were here, right here in the Kohl Center. Barack Obama brought his campaign to this facility in February, 2008. Three-time Pulitzer Prize winner and political science alum, Walt Bogdanich of the New York Times visited just this spring. So you leave with more than a diploma. You leave with knowledge and skills. I hope you leave with lifelong friends. I hope you leave with a strong sense of place and memories that will attach you to the university forever. On a personal note, I want to say it's been an enormous privilege to work for you and with you, and to have gotten to know some of you personally. I have marveled at your talent and your creativity, your spiritedness and your willingness to engage, whether you agree or disagree. Your spiritedness was displayed for me in all sorts of ways from my -- as you know -- favorite jumparounds in Camp Randall, to your snowball fight on Bascom Hill, to your display of the Statue of Liberty on Lake Mendota again, and your alcohol-free campus parties.
I didn't see any other kinds.
I've seen the excellence of your academic work and I've seen the pride that you take in that work. Whether the research poster sessions at Great Hall in the Memorial Union where you've shown the work you've done as undergraduates, or the poster sessions at the state capitol where you showed our legislators the kinds of research you've done as undergraduates and graduate students, the displays of your work at the Engineering Expo. I even got to drive one of the award-winning snowmobiles this spring, and it's still intact. Whether listening to one of you rehearse a speech you were about to give the next day in class or being in the audience for performances by our concert choir, our a capella groups, First Wave or the marching band, witnessing your remarkable command of parliamentary procedure at student council meetings, hearing your remarks to the regents about the Madison Initiative for Undergraduates, for and against, reading your columns in the student newspapers. In all of these ways, I've been amazed by you, and I have -- as do all of the people in this audience -- great hopes for what you will achieve for yourselves and for other people. I'm going to leave you with a poem that I like to use at ceremonies of this sort, by one of my favorite poets, Archie Ammons. It comes from his very short poems. It's entitled "Salute." "May happiness pursue you, catch you often, and should it lose you, be waiting ahead, making a clearing for you." Congratulations. We wish you all the best.