'We gather to celebrate the recipients of one of the College's highest honors,' President Pat White told more the 100 guests gathered in the Frank H. Sparks Center for the 2013 Honorary Degree Luncheon. Professor Emeritus Raymond Williams offered the invocation: 'Thank you for these honorary degree recipients and their long obedience in the direction of excellence and service to the common good that we celebrate today. Thank you for the good earth that sustains us, good friends and colleagues who share these tables and help make life worth living.'
President White talks with honorary degree recipient Geoff Coates ’89, Tisch University Professor of Chemistry at Cornell and scientific co-founder and Chief Science Officer of Novomer Inc., a sustainable chemistry company specializing in high performance, environmentally responsible polymers.
With a former Wabash chemistry major (who's been named one of the top 100 chemists in the world by Thomson Reuters) receiving an honorary degree, Sunday was a proud day for the chemistry department. Here Associate Professor of Chemistry Lon Porter talks with Wendy Feller, wife of Professor of Chemistry Scott Feller.
Executive Administrative Assistant to the President Karen Burger, who organizes and coordinates the luncheon, looks over name tags to see who has arrived for the event.
President White toasts the honorary degree recipients: 'Gentlemen, Wabash is proud to honor you today. You have distinguished yourself in the life of the mind, heart, and spirit we foster so eagerly at Wabash College. You have taken your commitment and your thinking into a complex world where men and women take action for the common good. 'For the courage and indefatigable dedication to the work of leadership; for your commitment to the liberal arts and sciences; for your achievements; and for your lives well-lived as models for our students, we salute you with gratitude and joy.'
Geoff Coates ’89
Bon Apetit Chefs work to get food ready, while staff members worked tirelessly to serve a three-course meal to more than 100 guests in little more than an hour.
Professor of Chemistry Richard Dallinger talks with Geoff Coates' father.
President White welcomes Coates to the podium.
Coates began his remarks noting that Sunday was Mother's Day. He paid tribute to mothers, and especially his own, who, he noted, with two sons who are Wabash alums, had now spent three Mother's Days at Wabash Commencements.
'Wabash is very very special, and I think all of us here know that, and I’d like to take a moment to talk about why Wabash is so special to me, and the most special thing about the College is the staff and faculty,' Coates said, then told stories about those who shaped his time at Wabash, including math professors David Wilson and the late Bob Cooley and chemistry professors Bob and Julie Olsen, John Zimmerman, Rich Dallinger and his research advisor Roy Miller. 'It’s a real honor to receive this degree,' Coates said, adding that this was his first return to campus in 16 years: 'Walking around campus last night I could see it’s not just doing well, but it’s really thriving.'
President White welcomes to the podium honorary degree recipient Craig Dyksta, former senior vice president for religion at Lilly Endowment and currently research professor of practical theology and senior fellow at Leadership Education at Duke Divinity School. Dykstra worked with Wabash Professor Raymond Williams in the founding of both the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion and the Wabash Pastoral Leadership Program.
'I have long considered my relationship with Wabash to be quite personal in character,' Dykstra said. 'To know Wabash College is to know it’s marvelous people and it has been a great privilege for me to work with Wabash College faculty and administrators in planning, funding, implementing the Centers here.'
Dykstra talked about Professor Bill Placher and his friendship with Professor Williams, a ‘friendship that has deepened year by year for almost a quarter of a century. ‘I have come to love Wabash College. That’s not hard to do, as you know very well. Thus it pleases me more than I can say that later this afternoon you will make me one of your own.’
President White welcomes Dean Reynolds ’70, four-time Emmy-winning journalist, to the podium.
'One of the great things about this school is that I can share a platform with people like Geoff and Craig,' Reynolds said. 'I think the mark of a great college is when an old graduate still gets emotional just talking about the place.'
'To put it into a single phrase: Wabash opened my eyes. There’s something about this place and the people who taught us that stays with me to this day. When I am working on a story I am constantly drawing on the knowledge I gained here, right here. When I write I have a body of knowledge, a reservoir that was filled right here, the seeds were sown here, and they continue to bloom like perennials all these years later. I would not be as successful, indeed I would not be as happy without the foundation that this school gave me.'
Chair of the Board of Trustees Stephen Bowen ’68 stepped to the podium to announce that President White, who leaves Wabash for Milliken University in July, was being awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters.
First Lady Chris White reacts to Bowen's announcement.
'I am speechless,' President White said. 'This is too magical to believe. I think everyone here knows my love of the College—a great college, where magical and wonderful things happen every day. 'This is an enormous honor, and I’m grateful to be with this class of honorary degree recipients, and for the four of us to have the honor to graduate with these 190 enormously talented, wonderful, and extraordinary Wabash men this afternoon.'
President White thanks Steve Bowen.
President White's son, Paddy, congratulates his dad on the honorary degree.
Graduating senior Riley Harrison Floyd urged his classmates to be empathetic listeners in the lives after Wabash College when he spoke during the College’s 175th Commencement Ceremony.
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One hundred-ninety men received sheepskin diplomas from outgoing President Patrick E. White on a sunny, cool spring day on the College Mall. Floyd and his classmate, José Daniel Herrera, were the featured speakers on a Mother’s Day afternoon that marked endings and new beginnings.
You can watch the full Commencement and Baccalaureate programs by clicking the links.
For Floyd, who earlier in the weekend won the John Maurice Butler Prize for “having the best standing in scholarship and character” in the senior class, it was a bittersweet day. He was happy to share the celebration with his mother, Lisa, but heard only voices in his mind from his father, who passed away when he was younger.
Floyd urged his fellow students to listen — to the voices of the past, present, and future.
“Wabash teaches us to discuss—our professors and our classmates have seen to that,” Floyd said. “But discussion-based classes are not just about discussion. They are about listening. When we do that, when we listen—to voices past and present—we create a more reflective imagination capable of imbuing even the toughest circumstances with understanding and tolerance.”
President White praised the graduates for their perseverance and their civility.
“You who have taken on the rigors of this great college and have thrived under the challenge of Wabash,” President white said. “You have emerged stronger for your perseverance and your courage. Wabash has taken you seriously and you have responded with maturity and commitment. It is you, Gentlemen, who have asked difficult questions and discussed them with passion and civility. You have not always agreed with one another or your faculty — or your president — but you have always been respectful of one another’s ideas and opinions even when that has not been easy.”
The College also awarded honorary degrees to a pair of alumni and a respected theologian. Receiving honorary doctorates were Cornell University scientist Dr. Geoffrey Coates, Wabash Class of 1989, award winning broadcast journalist Dean F. Reynolds, Wabash Class of 1970, and Dr. Craig Richard Dykstra, the former Vice President of Religion at Lilly Endowment Inc.
In a surprise, Stephen S. Bowen, Chairman of the Wabash College Board of Trustees, awarded President White with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree. President White’s tenure as the College’s 15th president will end on June 30.
“You have challenged Wabash students to live up to the highest ideals of our Mission Statement and the Gentleman’s Rule,” Bowen said in reading President White’s citation. “Wabash men, you said in one of your many Chapel Talks, ‘recognize that in the defining terms of citizen and gentleman lie a lifelong project of critical thinking and exploration of ethics, art, and culture reaching for a complete understanding of what it means to be a gentleman, what it means to be a citizen.’ You have modeled those high ideals; you have shown us time and time again what it means to think critically, act responsibly, lead effectively, and live humanely.”
The College’s other Commencement Speaker, José Herrera, who matriculated to Wabash from a rough, gang-infested Chicago neighborhood, thanked the many men and women who have taught and mentored him over the last four years, referring to Professor Rick Warner as a father. He also saluted his mother, Maria, wife, Maria Quintero, and his daughter, Osiris. And he challenged his fellow graduates — and the administration of the College — to continue to pursue students like him, whose path to violence and crime was clearly defined had he not had the opportunity of a Wabash education.
“It was not until I came to Wabash that I realized that living in poverty, in a single-parent home and in a gang-infested neighborhood was not the best environment to achieve anything beyond joining a gang, killing rivals, and selling drugs,” Herrera said.
“I believe in the power of education and have utmost respect for good teachers. They … are an equalizing force in our society. They empower individuals while also building a sense of community. Where else and on what other occasion will an African boy who lived near the slums of Kenya, a homosexual boy from Vietnam, a Mexican boy from the dying industrial region of Hammond, a Puerto Rican boy from the inner city of Philadelphia, and a Hoosier boy who has been home-schooled for all of his life come together for four years and leave as men who think critically, act responsibly, lead effectively and live humanely? In the classroom, the worth of a person’s argument is not gauged by the value of their trust fund. This is the power of education.”
Moments before he reached for the hand bell Caleb Mills used to call the very first Wabash students to class, President White thanked the 190 Wabash graduates for serving as his teachers.
“I thank you for all you have taught me,” President White said before ringing out the Class of 2013. “Thank you for your leadership, your commitment to the College, and your teaching of one another and all of the underclassmen. You have served as mentors and brothers to those younger — and older — than you at Wabash. We will continue to rely on your leadership and your example. I know that you are ready to take on the challenge of graduates of this great college. You know that Wabash College always travels with you wherever you are, however you act. Wabash College leads and acts through you.”
Floyd, too, called on his classmates to think as much about empathy as earning, harkening words he remembers his father telling him.
“My dad said, ‘Some people lose their breath talking to rock stars. I like people who work with dirt.’ …I can’t ask my dad what he meant. But if I could, I think he’d say that the best kind of work we can do is cooperative…. We are all people who work with dirt. And it doesn’t matter if that work takes place with a pen or a pickaxe, in dress slacks or denim. To do good, cooperative work, we all have to listen to each other. If there’s one thing with which we will all leave Wabash, I hope it is the conviction that empathy, not earning, makes our lives dignified and our communities stronger.”
Herrera urged his classmates to use what they have learned at Wabash to provide opportunities for those less fortunate.
“Gentlemen, we have the tools and character to positively influence and be a force of change in our world,” Herrera said. “The power of education and those that promote it has brought people from all corners of the world, colors and classes to our small college. We must recognize that for some, the doors of opportunity have been opened for them while others are forced to climb through a window. If we desire a more perfect world, we must remember not to shut this door we are currently walking through, but hold it open for the next person walking behind us.”
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Seriously Accomplished
The Class of 2013 includes 12 men who will enroll in PhD programs in the fall and another 20 who will enroll in medical, law, and graduate schools at universities like Yale, Michigan, Dartmouth, Texas, Northwestern, and New York University. Four men will join Teach for America, while others will serve in the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and City Year. Six men will complete the requirements to become certified teachers after completing student teaching assignments in the fall.
The class also includes the College’s only two-time national champion, track star Jake Waterman, as well as All-American football player and NCAA Postgraduate Scholarship recipient Weston Kitley.
Seriously Generous
The Class of 2013 recorded the third highest number of seniors making gifts and pledges to the Senior Gift Campaign with 125 men making pledges totaling nearly $6,000.
Seriously Smart
Twenty-three students were inducted into the Wabash chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest honorary society. Inducted this year were seniors Michael Carper (Indianapolis, IN), Anton Crepinsek (Osceola, IN), Ryan Cronin (Carmi, IL), Hung Duong (Dong Da District, Vietnam), Riley Floyd (Noblesville, IN), Alex Gillham (McCordsville, IN), Christopher Gorman (Decatur, IN), James Gorman (Decatur, IN), Joseph Granger (Celina, OH), Weston Kitley (Indianapolis, IN), William Kline (Terre Haute, IN), Wyatt Lewis (Indianapolis, IN), Tuan Nguyen (Hanoi, Vietnam), Matthew Paul (Bloomington, IN), Peter Santa Maria (West Olive, MI), Jake Schild (Indianapolis, IN), Liam Smith (Lawrence, KS), Yifei Sun (Zhengzhou, China), Gabriel Watson (Columbus, IN), Shengshuang Zhu (Chengdu, China).
Those seniors join Jordan Hoerr (Peoria, IL) and Ronald Sullivan (North Vernon, IN), who were elected as juniors last year. Junior Ryan Cloyd (Beech Grove, IN) was elected from the Class of 2014.