University
of New Hampshire Commencement Remarks 
Dr. Ann Weaver
Hart
Saturday, May 22, 2004
Good morning everyone. Thank you for joining us on this wonderful occasion. This is the 134th commencement for the University of New Hampshire, and it is an honor to welcome you here today to recognize the members of the class of 2004 and to celebrate their many achievements.
We are very proud of the nearly 2,600 students who will become our newest alumni within a very, very short time. We salute 40 new Ph.D., 3 certificate of graduate study, 553 master's and 2,000 baccalaureate degree recipients. You represent excellence in scholarship in more than 150 major programs; you come from 31 states and 21 countries; and you range in age from 20 to 68.
You have logged thousands of hours of community service during your time at UNH. Examples of your dedicated service include: assisting at Ground Zero in New York City following the 9/11 attacks; raising over $10,000 for local charities with your performance of "The Vagina Monologues"; serving many locations across the country through the Alternative Break Challenge; tutoring math to local schoolchildren; and founding and organizing a New Hampshire Chapter of Winners On Wheels, a social group for children who use wheelchairs. Your service to others has been remarkable.
You have achieved in research. Seven seniors here today were recipients of International Research Opportunities Program (IROP) grants last summer. These students conducted independent research projects on wide-ranging topics: they studied BBC news coverage, the relationship of diabetes to adolescent drinking, the taxation system in Bulgaria, waste management in squatter settlements, an earthquake's effects on an Italian community, the regulation of gene expression in muscle cells, and AIDS orphans. These seven then brought their research back to UNH from London, Melbourne, Stockholm, Sofia, Assisi, and Dar es Salaam to share with students and faculty in their home departments at the UNH Undergraduate Research Conference. So impressed were the folks in the Stockholm lab where one of our students, Kathy Hooke, worked, that they have invited her back this summer: an IROP boomerang.
Our students are the recipients of Fulbright Awards, the Boston College Book Award for Scholastic Excellence, Army Commendation Medal for Service in Bosnia, and many more. Our Environmental Engineering and Business Student Team took first place in the international competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy at New Mexico State University. In addition, they won the coveted Intel award for their innovative technology and teamwork.
And finally, at April's job fair, we tripled the number of employers attending who wanted to recruit UNH students. Why? They told us that UNH has a proven track record of providing their workforces with highly trained students who also are steeped in the tradition of a broad liberal arts education.
This is the day when we officially step away and relinquish our places in the structure that has framed your studies over the past several years. We hope that the discipline you have acquired at UNH will carry you forward, for there is no luck except where there is discipline.
During your time at UNH you have undergone a transition from student/apprentice to colleague/journeyman. We hope you have acquired a strong sense of the role you personally play in your own learning and growth.
In the Spring 2004 issue of the journal Proteus, novelist Farah Nuruddin described his own experience with education and books as he, like you, struggled to understand his place in the world, as well as the ways of knowing that best guided him in finding his way to that place. Describing his experience growing up in Ethiopia-occupied territory as a Somali,
"...As a child I was dissatisfied with my relationship with the adult community and...this is the genesis of a mild form of dissent, that of a child sitting in judgment on adults over whom he has no power. I found adults lacking in originality, incapable of providing answers to the pressing questions which I had; with them it seemed, most human activities were devoid of sense. When I wondered how children were born and why; when I asked how come my mother was pregnant or why a neighbour had aborted; when I saw meaning in the movement of a vulture's head; when I inquired as to the significance of the quick descent of a hawk on its prey; when I asked about a crow hopping about as though something were the matter with one of its feet; when I lighted on a new idea—when I asked such things I was told to be quiet. My parents loved me but I got no solace from them; so I sought answers elsewhere, in books. One of my elder brothers was fond of remarking that books were friendlier, wiser and more humane." (From "Childhood of my Schizophrenia" in Proteus, Spring 2004, pp. 1-2.)
Questions, debate, books, inquiry, a way of approaching a better understanding in your life—these are the things we hope you found at UNH.
Our distinguished commencement speaker, Dr. Mae Jemison, gave sage advice in her book, Find Where The Wind Goes. She said, "Pay attention to and learn from all the adventures you have in life, big and small, for within each there is valuable insight to help you throughout your life."
Thank you.
