University Baccalaureate Service Features Address by Jon Meacham, C’91

May 9, 2026

At the University Baccalaureate Service, held in All Saints' Chapel on Saturday, May 9, honor degrees of Doctor of Humane Letters were awarded to Joel L. Cunningham and Trudy B. Cunningham. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham, C’91, then delivered the Baccalaureate address.

Joel Cunningham has been entangled in American higher education for the last 65 years. He was a mathematics faculty member for 50 of those years, including his 26 as a university president. He grew up in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was an undergraduate at the University of Chattanooga, and earned a doctorate from the University of Oregon. Over the years he has answered to several titles: professor, dean, provost, president, vice-chancellor, and now emeritus this and that. He served in turn at the University of Kentucky, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Susquehanna University, and Sewanee. Along the way he was a leader in higher education nationally, serving on many boards and committees and as one of the founders of Campus Compact and the Network for Vocation in Higher Education. He is an active member of the Episcopal Church, for which he has served on several vestries and national church committees. He chaired the Association of Episcopal Colleges and is the longtime treasurer of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion. He’s a life member of Sigma Chi Fraternity and was once its international president. Trudy and Joel married 61 years ago, shortly after graduating together from college. Their daughters, Nancy and Susan, and their grandchildren, Ruth, Anna, Ellen, and Adam, are their greatest joys.

On the first day of first grade, Trudy Cunningham (née Bender) learned that her given name was Mary, and she remains open to surprises that change plans. Expecting marriage soon after high school, she adjusted to the challenges of leaving the suburbs of New York City for the University of Chattanooga to major in mathematics and psychology and help lead her Chi Omega sorority and student government. Trudy married Joel Cunningham and moved to Oregon to teach math and support his doctoral adventure, but his department chair insisted that Trudy enroll in graduate courses and earn an M.A. in teaching mathematics while doing it at Lincoln Junior High School and Sheldon High School. Trudy’s job in Kentucky, teaching the high school students at Midway Junior College, expanded when the college math teacher was drafted. The pattern of surprise continued when on leave from teaching eighth grade math at The Baylor School in Chattanooga and, unable to find a one-year job in Knoxville, she became a math graduate assistant at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, while completing courses for an Ed.D. Two years later, when no secondary school jobs were readily available in rural Pennsylvania, Trudy accepted a one-year position at Bucknell University and stayed 21 years, teaching mathematics and serving as acting dean of arts and sciences and then associate dean of engineering. At Sewanee, Trudy mentored the first Posse class, advised students, team-taught calculus with Joel, and welcomed students, parents, staff, and alumni to Chen Hall. Throughout these surprises Trudy has photographed her students, daughters, and grandchildren as they planned their life and prepared for it to be more interesting than the plan.

Jon Meacham is a Pulitzer Prize–winning biographer. The author of the New York Times bestsellers And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle; The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels; Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power; American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House; Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship; Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush; His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope; and The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross. Meacham is the Canon Historian of Washington National Cathedral and has served on the vestries of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue and Trinity Church Wall Street. A recipient of the National Humanities Medal, he holds the Carolyn T. and Robert M. Rogers Chair at Vanderbilt University and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians.