September 27, 2024

The Opening Convocation Address

Vice-Chancellor Pearigen reflects on the importance of critical thinking and asking deep questions, in relation to both the essence of a high-quality liberal arts education and the recently completed strategic planning process that will guide Sewanee’s future.

Video

Transcript

Baffled Minds and Impeded Streams

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

These words from a poem by one of my favorite philosopher/poets, Wendell Berry, who received an honorary degree from Sewanee in 2008, remind me of one of the most important features of a high-quality liberal arts education: having the experience and developing the skills of thinking critically and courageously, of challenging assumptions and taking intellectual risks, of asking questions–deep, difficult, baffling questions.

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

During our students’ four years on the Mountain–your four years for the students here in All Saints’ for today’s gowning ceremony–, they will learn the skills and experience the benefits of thinking critically while employing their minds by asking deep, penetrating, baffling questions. Our students will also experience the joy and wonder of impediments and challenges along the path, like the impeded stream whose water comes alive as it cascades down the rocks and disturbances that produce its song.

As a result, when our students commence their lives beyond the Domain, they will continue to be intellectually curious, feeling confident in taking risks to achieve a higher level of understanding and success; they will be known not as the one in the room who presumes to have all the right answers but the one who asks all the right questions.

It was in this question-asking mode that dozens of our faculty, staff, students, and board members embarked on a strategic planning process nine-months ago in January. With the overarching goals of attracting and supporting the next generation of outstanding students and sending them into the world as informed, participatory citizens and servant leaders, we entered our planning process asking: what can we do better, differently, and new in order to improve the Sewanee experience? How can we build upon our existing and strong values and programs to advance the institution in a powerful way? What changes should be made to achieve a higher and bolder level of success? What’s next?

Well, unless you’ve been hiding under a rock the past few months, you know that our strategic planning process, built on the three pillars of mind, heart, and place, yielded a promising and ambitious plan, entitled Elevating Mind, Heart, and Place: A Strategic Plan for the University of the South.

But, while the goals of the plan have been fully established, the strategies and tactics are still being worked out, which means we must, as our poet Wendell Berry urges, employ our minds, confront the impediments, and continue to ask the serious questions that will lead to the most successful outcomes.

As we go about our work, I draw your attention this afternoon to three of the most exciting and consequential features of the plan.

MIND

First, originating in the pillar of “Mind,” we will create a new and cohesive first-year experience for all new students that builds upon the strengths of our current programs (like PRE and Finding Your Place) and integrates the liberal arts with big questions and contemporary challenges, from the local to the global. This new first-year program will elevate our efforts to combine curricular and co-curricular experiences and emphasize the transition to college, academic exploration, experiential learning, and community building. It will also introduce our students to our extraordinary Domain, our 13,000 acre laboratory, playground, and sanctuary as an inclusive and multidimensional living and learning environment.

Yet, the details of this new first-year experience are anything but settled, and the questions that must be posed and answered in the coming months are numerous and complex. Questions like:

  • What will be both common and variable in the experience and how can we match the experience to the individual interests of our students?
  • How do we preserve the value of existing programs like PRE and FYP and the necessity of things like varsity athletic practices while carving out the time necessary for this new experience?
  • How will we support our faculty and staff in effectuating the program in the midst of their other demands?
  • What role will student mentors play in the new program?

While the questions are many, the evidence throughout higher education is that first-year student programs are one of the most high-impact practices that colleges can adopt to help new students in the transition to college, in their sense of belonging, and in their long-term success. And, when you layer into this program the existing features of the Sewanee experience that already support these goals, we have every reason for being excited and optimistic about a new, universal first-year experience.

HEART

A second important feature of the strategic plan, from the “Heart” pillar, is supporting communities of spiritual practice and discerning anew how our Episcopal heritage and identity are manifest here on campus, beyond the Domain, and in the University’s influence in the wider Episcopal Church.

No matter who you are in the Sewanee community–a person of faith, a seeker, or someone who is decidedly not engaged in the life of the church, I believe we have all experienced in some form or another the inherent transcendence this Mountain imbues in our lives. The sheer beauty of our Domain, the warmth of relationships in close community, the mentorship of our faculty and staff, the majestic sound of the University Choir; all these deeply moving features of the Sewanee experience are freely given and unfold on this Mountain every day, touching our hearts–our soul–in a profound and, I believe, spiritual way.

And, as for our religious heritage and identity, Sewanee has always held a privileged place in the Episcopal Church. We have been looked to for clergy and lay leadership. We have been known as a place where reason and faith–the mind and the heart–serve together in support of our common humanity and human longings. And this space, All Saints’ Chapel, has been a place of respite and inspiration for people of all faiths and walks. It is my hope that the pulpit here at All Saints’ will play an even larger role in the life of the church in the future, drawing voices from around the globe to offer wisdom and perspective to our community and beyond.

I recently ran across an excerpt from a sermon our dear friend, the late Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd, former Chaplain at Sewanee, preached in 2005 on the occasion of his installation as Dean of the Washington National Cathedral.

Substitute the words “All Saints’ Chapel” for his word “Cathedral,” and consider the following sentence from Sam’s sermon and its possibilities for Sewanee, today:

“I believe this Cathedral is called to be a major voice of a faith that is firm at the center and soft at the edges, deeply rooted in the tradition and radically open and welcoming, a faith that embraces ambiguity, that honors other faiths, a faith that searches the Scriptures deeply, a faith that calls us to a personal conversion, a faith that insists that Christ’s values be embodied in the social order.”

We have many questions to ask and ideas to consider as we discern anew what it means to be a premier liberal arts college and seminary of the Episcopal Church as we enter the middle half of the 21st century. But, the time is ripe, and we have an opportunity to align with the Presiding Bishop-elect, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, who has called upon the Episcopal church to think anew about its organization, governance, budgets, and strategies. That pretty much covers the field!

Other strategies within the Heart pillar are also meaningful and will make a difference in the lives of our students, including a focus on civic engagement and leadership development, the advancement of equity and justice, and the reinforcement of relationships outside the classroom and in our community.

PLACE

The final feature of the strategic plan I commend to you, from the third pillar of “Place,” is the creation of a Sewanee Environmental Institute, the activation of our Domain for research and academic use, and the requirement that all academic departments include courses that tie directly to our place–our Domain and the communities that surround us. To be sure, the use of the Domain for academic purposes is nothing new, and the University’s reputation in fields from Geology, Forestry, and Natural Resources to Biology and Environmental Studies is well-known. But, our potential is boundless, and we can go from being well-known to being a category of one among undergraduate institutions in fields related to the natural environment and environmental studies and stewardship.

Again, to achieve this leadership will require asking serious questions and responding with bold and innovative answers.

  • What will it take to realize the full educational potential of our Domain?
  • What experiences related to this Domain and this community do we wish for all students and how can they–and we all–grow through having been here, on this Mountain, at this time.
  • What is our responsibility to both the past and the future as stewards of this Domain and our broader world?

Throughout my remarks, I have repeatedly mentioned the importance of deep and honest inquiry, and I have called us to be thoughtful questioners, prepared for challenges and impediments in our personal and institutional journey.

In this vein, one of the most extraordinary “questioners” in history was Leonardo da Vinci who lived from 1452 to 1519. Best known for his paintings The Last Supper and Mona Lisa, Leonardo actually thought of himself more as a scientist, engineer, and inventor than a painter. There are some two dozen paintings by Leonardo in existence, but there are more than 7,000 pages of drawings, sketches, commentary, and questions he wanted to pursue in his hundreds of notebooks filled with studies of anatomy, flying machines, fossils, geology, weaponry, hydraulics and more.

A few years ago, I read Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Leondaro da Vinci and learned more about his imaginative mind, his passionate curiosity, and his creative blend of science and art in all he did. (Sounds like a Sewanee-educated student to me!) Of Leonardo, Isaacson said, “His goal was the one that Renaissance thinkers, himself foremost among them, bequeathed to the subsequent ages of science and enlightenment: understanding the causes and effects that rule our cosmos, ranging from the mechanics of our muscles to the movement of planets, from the flow in our arteries to that in the earth’s rivers.” (p. 246)

In fact, one of the things that fascinated Leonardo most was water and its flow. Like the flow of blood in the veins of the human body, he considered water an elemental source of life, and he spent decades trying to understand its source, its movement, and its relationship to the environment, admitting, in the end, that his early assumptions about water were wrong, sending him back to his observations and sketchbooks to work out alternative hypotheses. One entire study of water was done on the effects of impediments placed in the way of flowing water. With his scientific and artistic brain at work, Leonardo closely observed and then sketched out both the empirical realities and consummate beauty of flowing water, undisturbed and disturbed, concluding that when water is deflected or impeded, it changes path, shape and sound, but it always remains the same volume. (p. 431)

This brings me back to the quotation from Wendell Berry:

“The mind that is not baffled is not employed
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

From my own experience as a Sewanee student, a Sewanee parent, and many years as a Sewanee professor and administrator, I know that our students are forever shaped by this place, and my prayer is that they, like Leonardo da Vinci and Wendell Berry, will continue to be constant and deep questioners, allowing their minds to be continuously employed, baffled, and amazed; and that they will, again like Leonardo and Berry, find intrigue and beauty in the song of the impeded stream.