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President Bogart's Convocation Address

Below is the 2010 Convocation Address, given by Maryville College President Dr. William T. “Tom” Bogart, on Aug. 26, 2010 in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts.

 Opening Convocation -- Fall 2010
President's Address
“Moving, Dwelling, Waiting"

Scripture: Hebrews 11:8-10

[8] By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went.
[9] By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:
[10] For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.

{Moving}

Good morning.  Convocation is a time of beginnings, and because this is my first one at Maryville College, I’m acutely aware of starting something new and doing it in a new place. Some of you know exactly what I’m talking about, because you are beginning this year at a new college in a new place.  But I want to suggest that this idea of beginnings goes beyond that simple idea that the new students, faculty, staff, and I have in common.  The story of Abraham is instructive in this regard, although (despite the delusions of grandeur that college presidents might be prone to) I usually don’t compare myself to Biblical patriarchs.

Abraham was called and went out, not knowing where he went.  In fact, he was called twice, first from Ur to Haran, and then from Haran to Canaan.  It is over 600 miles from Ur to Haran, and over 500 miles from Haran to Canaan.  This distance resonates with me because it is about 550 miles from York, PA to Maryville – the move I made this summer.  That’s a long day by car, so I can only imagine how arduous the trip would be by camel.

We learn from archaeological records that there was thriving trade in the area through which Abraham traveled.  In fact, some scholars believe that Abraham was from the ruling family of the area.  Thus, it was not the case that he was lost.  What then, does it mean that he didn’t know where he was going?  Let’s look at another traveler before addressing this question.

I’m not the first president of Maryville College to make the journey from Pennsylvania to Tennessee.  Isaac Anderson founded the college in 1819 after unsuccessfully trying to recruit ministers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to minister to the pioneers on the southwest frontier – where we are now.  He felt a calling to serve this area and wanted to help others to do so as well.  Since he couldn’t persuade others to come, he decided to help educate those who were already here.  So he started the college and taught here, while also pastoring both New Providence Presbyterian Church in Maryville and Second Presbyterian Church in Knoxville.  Whenever I’m tempted to think my schedule is full, I always remember President Anderson – who did all of this before there was a bridge over the Tennessee River.

Like Isaac Anderson, and because of his hard work and that of the many people who followed his example, all of us here today have heard and responded to the call to Maryville College.  And like Abraham, we do so not knowing where we are going.  Yes, we know where Maryville is, especially since all we had to do was enter the address into GoogleMaps.  But the Maryville College that we have come to is not necessarily what we expect it to be.  A vital part of the liberal arts experience – for faculty and staff no less than students – is to broaden our horizons, to “stretch our minds.”  As we do so, we will discover that our view of Maryville College – and of the world – is different than when we arrived.

The world will be different not only because of what we learn but also because of what we do.  We have widespread recycling on our campus thanks to the initiative and persistence of students.  Not far from my house, the community enjoys the Pistol Creek Wetlands Project, which included faculty and student leadership alongside volunteer efforts.  Some of you are Bonner Scholars who have already demonstrated service to others and who will be given the chance to build on the already strong legacy here. All of us will be challenged, in the words of our Mission Statement, to “search for truth, grow in wisdom, work for justice, and dedicate a life of creativity and service to the peoples of the world.”

Faith, as the author of the book of Hebrews says earlier in chapter 11, is the “substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”  The experiences we will have at Maryville College, the friends we will make, and the legacy we will leave – all these things are hoped for and as yet unseen.  Like Abraham, we are guided by our faith to move.

{Dwelling}

Now that we’re here, how do we live?  Again, like Abraham, by faith.  Also, like Abraham, we dwell together with those who are heirs of the same legacy.

Once Abraham made it to the land of promise, he didn’t get to settle permanently, instead dwelling in tabernacles.  Another word for tabernacle is tent, which emphasizes the idea of impermanence.  Even though Abraham got to live in the land of promise, he wasn’t permitted to get too comfortable.

As you know, the residences here at the college are not tents. But there was a time when tents would have been a step up.  When Professor Thomas Jefferson Lamar refounded Maryville College on September 5, 1866, he convened the first class of 13 students in “a ruined, windowless old building” in what is now downtown Maryville (Maryville College: The Founding Story, p. 11).  From that inauspicious beginning, the college developed rapidly.  By 1870, a new campus had been purchased and Anderson Hall had been constructed.  Now we will be renovating the interior of Anderson Hall as soon as we can, so you may be asked to be flexible at times.  It is important to be resilient as the construction occurs and other changes happen on campus.  After all, we’re not living in tents, and we don’t have cows poking their heads into class, as Professor Lamar did in 1866.

Instead, we get to gather here for the opening of the academic year in an incredible new facility, the Clayton Center for the Arts, where our big problem is accommodating all of the faculty, student, community, and national touring groups that want to use the space.  The Clayton Center for the Arts is a joint venture with others, so like Abraham, we will dwell together with the joint heirs to the promise.

Because we are dwelling together, we need to respect the differences among us.  One laudable piece of our history is our long commitment to doing so, even during difficult times and when this commitment was not necessarily in fashion.  For example, in 1867, the Board of Directors declared, “We deem it much to the credit of this institution that it has from its very existence stood upon a broad Christian basis excluding none from its benefits by reason of their race or color.” (Founding Story, p. 12)  In 1868, the Synod adopted a motion from Professor Lamar that “no person having the requisite moral and literary qualifications shall be excluded by reason of race or color.” (By Faith Endowed, p. 101)  This laudable openness was the basis for attacks on Maryville College, especially because the college was also coeducational.  Even within Maryville College there was not unanimity, so we should not be too swift to congratulate ourselves on our virtue.  Rather, we should be challenged to live up to the high ideals of our history, so that 150 years from now we are remembered as doing the right thing.

While some of the dimensions of intolerance have changed, we still today are challenged with the question of whether and how to interact with people who are different than us.  Find people you don’t agree with or look like and get to know them.  You will be amazed by what you discover –you’ll learn you definitely have something in common.  That doesn’t mean abandoning your beliefs or even changing your mind, but it does mean remembering that everyone you meet is a unique creation of God, just as you are.

In our Statement of Purpose that your student government president read earlier, we are reminded to “listen attentively and humbly to all human voices so that [we] may hear the call of God no matter how God may speak.”  Sometimes the voice of God will come in ways we expect, such as in Chapel or in prayer.  But often it comes in unexpected ways; such as the creative resolution of a hallway dispute over noise, a conversation in Isaac’s with a new friend, a sudden glimpse of a beautiful mountain vista, or maybe even working on statistics homework.

{Waiting}

Abraham was promised a child, but the promise went unfulfilled for a long time.  We read in Genesis 12 that he departed Haran when he was 75 years old, and in Genesis 21 that his son Isaac was born when he was 100.  A lot happened in the intervening chapters and decades, and there were times when Abraham questioned whether the promise that he would be the ancestor of a great nation would be kept.  In Habbakuk (2:3), we are told “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.”  Moving from the Bible to a popular song (albeit one more familiar to those of us of a certain age), we learn from Tom Petty that “the waiting is the hardest part,” and even he recognizes that “you take it on faith, you take it to the heart.”  Waiting is hardest, and that is why we take it up last.

Waiting decades for promises to be fulfilled has also happened to Maryville College.  We waited from 1901 until 1954 for racial integration to once more be legal in Tennessee.  How did we wait?  Not passively.  When the legislature made our integrated classrooms illegal, we awarded an honorary degree to William Henderson Franklin, class of 1880, the first African-American to graduate from Maryville College.

On top of that, the Board gave over 10 percent of the endowment to support Swift Memorial Institute, Franklin’s school for African-Americans, which served as our sister school during the era of segregation. This move was an important act of faith at a time when Maryville College did not have abundant resources; but we had plenty of resources to do the right thing.

We also waited by staying committed to the diversity that was still legal, enrolling women, international students, and students from a wide range of socioeconomic and geographical backgrounds. By actively waiting in this way, President Lloyd was able to capitalize immediately on the opportunity provided by the Brown v. Board of Education case.  This might sound like ancient history to those of you born in the last decade of the 20^th Century, but these are events easily within the living memory of people.  I’ve already had the pleasure, for example, of meeting Nancy Smith Wright ‘60, who was the first African-American woman to graduate from Maryville College after we reintegrated. By being prepared, we were ready to do the right thing, even at a time when it was difficult and not universally popular.

Waiting on the Lord means continuing to do our work even if the reward is delayed.  Malcom Gladwell, in his book Outliers, asserts that 10,000 hours of focused study is required for someone to become an expert.  Assuming a 40 hour work week, 10,000 hours is the equivalent of working full time for about 5 years. During that period of time, progress might not always be discernible, but the end result is amazing. Note that this is a period of time longer than the four years of your college experience.  In addition, during your time here you won’t be specializing in one thing, so you might not finish your 10,000 hours during the time on campus.  These facts are why the idea of lifelong learning is so important.  Your time here at Maryville is not isolated from what you learned and experienced before your arrival and it is connected to everything you will do after you leave here.

Not all of us will become experts or prodigies, but we all have the ability and opportunity to build strong foundations through focused study.  I have spent the past couple decades teaching economics courses.  Economics is not a field of study that most people find intuitive right away.  However, I always assured my students that if they worked hard, concepts and tools that they had found daunting would become obvious.  The key point was that they had to work hard.  I knew this because it was my experience with studying economics, and I enjoyed seeing the active waiting of students in my courses rewarded with understanding.

Hard work is part of the Maryville College culture.  This past summer I met an alumna from the class of 2003 who has graduated from law school and clerks for a judge in Minnesota. She told me that law school was easy compared to Maryville because she had built a strong foundation here.  Her explanation was that her professors and her classmates set high standards and held people accountable for them.

I have been discussing the academic foundations that we build here, but there are other foundations as well.  Like Abraham, we look for the city with foundations whose builder and maker is God.  In our Faith and Learning Statement, we state that “[t]he goal of a Maryville education is not simply the adoption of a particular stance or worldview, but rather the search for truth, wherever it may be found, and the ability to recognize and take seriously life’s basic questions of faith, meaning, and value.”  As with academic progress, this search for truth is not limited to the time at Maryville, but is a lifelong quest.

Waiting is too often thought of in a strictly passive sense. That is to miss the full import of the waiting we are asked to do. In Isaiah we read (40:31) “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.”  This is not sitting around; it is an active preparation for what Isaiah calls (49:8) the acceptable day of the Lord.

{Conclusion}

Once Abraham had come to the Promised Land, God gave him a Covenant.  Significantly, it was after Abraham had moved, while he dwelt, and when he still waited.  In Isaiah’s acceptable day of the Lord, the covenant is renewed.  I began this address by comparing my experience to Abraham’s.  Now I extend that comparison to include all of the new students.  As a part of Maryville College you will have the opportunity to also become a person of the Covenant.  Our covenant is built upon the shared values of Scholarship, Respect, and Integrity.  The Covenant here – now in its 20^th year – is a link to an ancient tradition, and in turn it serves to remind us why we moved, how we should dwell together, and what we are waiting for.  I will have the honor of joining you as we jointly and publicly recognize our participation in the Covenant on September 24^th.  I invite everyone in the Maryville community to renew their commitment to our Covenant.  May God bless all of us throughout this academic year.

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