Welcome to new 1st year students 
Remarks - Ann Weaver Hart
August 28, 2004
What a pleasure it is for me to see you all here today. I hope that you are getting settled with your new roommates, will enjoy your activities this weekend, and are ready for your first day of classes at the University of New Hampshire. Be sure to check out the Jukebox at the MUB tonight. This convocation is the official beginning of your college education and the beginning of your new, much more independent life.
You are the newest students of a great university; THE University of New Hampshire. We mean what it says on all those banners hanging around Durham. The people of New Hampshire began to dream of having a university of their own long before the Morrill Act established the funding base for the land-grant colleges in the mid-1800s. From the beginning, this precious resource has been an investment of the states’ citizens in its future, an investment in you and students like you. Many of you have traveled far to attend UNH from homes across the United States and around the world. You add the richness of life experiences and the multitude of points of view that will help make the next four years a wonderful education for the rest of us.
What kind of education can you expect from this tremendous institution in the next few years? You can expect to receive the very best teaching from caring and attentive faculty members who advise and counsel as well as teach. Several years ago, when I wanted to know about UNH, I talked with students, faculty, citizens, and alumni. They described with conviction and affection how much they loved their time at the university. You can and should expect to feel this same pride and affection for UNH when you leave here with your degree.
You can expect to learn as much from your experiences out of the classroom as from experiences in the classroom. Your coursework is far more than listening to lectures or attending labs. UNH offers so much in the way of co-curricular learning and affiliations with those who share your passions and curiosity about the world. Please reach out to embrace the tremendous and varied learning opportunities available to you here. Find out about undergraduate research opportunities, take time to embrace an international study or research opportunity, seek out internships and community service to test your growing knowledge in the workplace and broader community, create and perform, begin immediately to give back to the university by joining in student organizations and professional organizations, play together and celebrate together in intramural athletics, and attend the many competitive varsity and club athletic events. Discover knowledge; discover yourself. We have worked to build a university that sets the stage and provides the ingredients for you to do all of these things.
UNH also gives you access to the resources, energy and excitement of superb graduate and professional programs. These programs push the boundaries of human knowledge, soaring into realms of understanding and insight that shape the future in ways we can only now imagine while grounding new knowledge in the struggles of its application human experience and ordinary life.
The university contributes to our broader communities, and you should, too. Every day, through its statewide extension programs, UNH honors its past and its future as a land grant university. Our sea and space grant designations add to this heritage. The many partnerships that are part of extension combine to make UNH an economic engine for the state, even as it serves as a center of art, music, and culture, contributing to our overall enjoyment of a rich quality of life.
During your years at UNH you will move from a novice to an apprentice to a journeyman and colleague in your mastery of scholarship and intellectual engagement. The faculty and I hope that this journey will end with your mastery of the role you personally play in your own learning and growth.
I recently read the description of a journey similar to the one on which you have embarked by a student in another part of the world that captured much of the spirit I hope you experience at UNH. Nuruddin Farah, novelist and winner of the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature—referring to his childhood growing up in Ethiopia as a Somali said:
“…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 neighbor 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 pg. 1 “Childhood of my Schizophrenia” in Proteus, Spring 2004, pp. 1-2)
We promise the next four years will answer many of your pressing questions and raise questions that you may never have imagined. I love UNH. Please feast on all that this great university has to offer you. Do not leave here regretting that you did not seize every opportunity available to you.
Welcome to our newest UNH Wildcats. You will love being here, and we will love joining with you in the fantastic experiences ahead.
Thank you.
