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People | George Davis
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An outstanding faculty is the foundation for academic excellence, attracting and educating the best undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. This holds for UA and UA South. An education at The University of Arizona must prepare students for a productive future and must be accessible to all who are academically qualified. Economic or social status must not be a barrier. This holds for UA and UA South. The University must serve as a source of inspiration that enriches and advances the collective well being of Arizona and our society. This holds for UA and UA South. |
It is one thing to aspire to these mission goals, and another thing to achieve them! How does all of this work in real life? How does all of this work in relation to UA South? How will all of this be expressed in you, the graduates, as you proceed along your respective career paths?
Many of you are graduating in Education, and are about to enter the teaching world. I would like us to think about and imagine the opportunities YOU will have to make an impact.
I can’t help but speak personally, especially at this moment in time when I am about to step down as Executive Vice President and Provost of UA, and return to Geosciences as Regents Professor. I’d like to try to describe the impact that teachers had on me, in elementary school, junior high, and high school, when I was growing up in Pittsburgh.
When I started elementary school I knew that I wanted someday to enter the field of plate tectonics, to make important discoveries in the earth sciences through field work in the American Southwest, the Andes, and in Greece. And then I would become a Provost at a major research university. Yeah….right….!
This is the point, isn’t it? As teachers, hundreds and hundreds of boys and girls will pass through each of your classrooms in the years to come, and none of these students will enter your classroom with a bar code revealing potential, capabilities, intelligence, discipline, or destination. And yet, in the spirit of the UA mission, you will strive to be an outstanding teacher, doing your best to prepare students for a productive future (without reference to economic or social status), and you will work to be a source of inspiration to enrich and advance the collective well being of our society, and individuals within it.
My story.
In Pittsburgh I moved from the city to rural “Brookside Farms” when I was in elementary school, in the autumn after the school year was underway. The school was Clifton School, a year away from being condemned and torn down. We kids could and would pull bricks out of the walls. Mrs. Grady, my third grade teacher, welcomed me into the fold with open arms, and the kids did as well. Now I realize that the kids would not have done this had not Mrs. Grady created an environment of trust and good will. I felt my life beginning at that moment. I felt for the first time that school was the place to be.
It got even better, right away. Mr. Betcher suddenly showed up in the middle of the day in the doorway to our classroom, and all of my classmates bolted out the door, even out the windows (we were on the ground floor!). What was happening?! Mr. Betcher was the P.E. teacher, and the drill that I witnessed was this: As soon as Mr. Betcher would appear, P.E. immediately began, with a race outside and to the end of the school yard and across the creek (need not take the bridge) and to the finish line at the end of the field, and Mr. Betcher would beat us there. When Mr. Betcher next appeared, I was out the window and the first one to the finish line. Mr. Betcher looked after me, year after year, called me “Georgie,” inspired me about school.
My eighth grade teacher gave me an interesting array of grades in math. Maybe I should say, I earned an interesting array of grades in math in eighth grade: C, C, A, C. When he saw the A in the third quarter, my dad concluded that I hadn’t been working hard enough in the first two quarters. When he saw the C in the 4th quarter, he took me to the principal – who now was Mr. Betcher – and asked him to tutor me in math during the summer. The gist of the conversation was that “Georgie” was not working to potential. They looked up some scores that suggested to them that I had some potential. Dad got my attention!
Miss Harpster taught me English, both in 11th and 12th grade. As a result, I love to write, and I’m good at it. She was incredibly demanding. When I first entered 11th grade, I would goof off in ways that worked for me in other classes. But Miss Harpster only had to say a couple of times: “George, let’s be a little more mature.” No other teacher could ‘right’ me like she could, instantly. And no teacher insisted on the fundamentals so compellingly, and so supportively.
Earlier this week I went back to my high school stuff from way back and pulled out two essays I wrote for Miss Harpster, one on Herman Melville, and one on William Shakespeare.
My handwritten Melville paper was simply 6 pages in length, but with 26 footnotes and 18 references. My essay starts with a quote by Melville, something he wrote at age 21: “If at my death my executors (or more properly my creditors) find any manuscripts in my desk, then I prospectively ascribe all the honor and glory to whaling; for a whale ship was my Yale and Harvard.” (I can’t help but say to you that now, at age 64, I can report that my Yales and Harvards, in learning geology, were the Catalinas, the Rincons, Bryce Canyon National Park, the Peloponnesus; Miss. Harpster gave me a peek at what was out there). No grade is marked on the paper. I forget what I got.
The Shakespeare paper I wrote was entitled “Anti-Stratfordian Views,” views that claim that Shakespeare, though a real person and resident of Stratford, was not a writer, not the author of the plays and poems attributed to him. I began this essay with a question: “How was it possible for William Shakespeare, the son of a tradesman, to achieve his unparalled scope in vocabulary (including legal, noble, and medical terms) and learning (Latin and Greek)?” Miss Harpster’s red-penciled comment in response to my opener read: “Shakespeare was also the son of Mary Arden, a gentlewoman of refinement. Abraham Lincoln, whose writings hang on the walls of Oxford University, descended from lowly stock.” I included 56 footnotes in this 15 page paper. I vividly recall that Miss Harpster insisted that, in note taking on 3X5 cards, there should be only one idea or fact to a card, and of course the reference source. Create a huge stack. And then, in preparing the paper, organize the cards in the flow of the description and arguments. I was so proud of my use of expressions like “Anti-Stratfordian,” ”Baconian theory,” “Marlowe parallelisms.” I enjoyed describing Calvin Hoffman’s theory that Sir Thomas Walsingham’s grave might contain a manuscript entitled Hamlet, by Christopher Marlowe; and that in 1956 the tomb was opened. Hoffman reported: “We found sand. No coffin, no papers, just sand.”
On the front of my paper are Miss Harpster’s conclusions: ”George. You have done a good job. Let me congratulate you! Your conclusion is well done. Learning the objective approach has real value. D.E. H." B+. ………………She held her standards very high!
And then there was my foreign language teacher, Mr. Vrsansky, whom I once interviewed and then described in an essay, again for Miss Harpster. On the third page I wrote: “One may wonder why a person would spend so much of his time and effort to master a language. Mr. Vrsansky’s source for such drive seems rather simple. He loves language and expression! He sincerely believes that language not only increases a person’s cultural values, but also develops a well versed citizen…”
So graduates, so teachers, stay vigilant, keep alert, assume the best about the future of these little kids who fool around and commonly seem so out of it. Watch them grow, feed them in order that they grow, believe in them. The beauty of this is that this responsibility – so consistent with UA’s mission, with UA South’s mission -- doesn’t just apply to teachers and teaching…it applies to every one of you…to every one of us, as we work our way through the world, impacting others with our ideas, our standards, our values, our expectations, our creativity, our imagination. I am here talking about the opportunity you have to serve others, to elevate others, and in the process do the same for yourselves, and for society. THIS is what is rolled up in the certificate you will receive this morning. THIS is what is embedded in your diploma.
Let me conclude with what anthropology professor Alice Reich said in her essay, Why I Teach. “I teach because it is, for me, the practice of what it means to be human, to have a voice that names the world in relation to one’s own experiences. …I want my students to understand that the conditions of our own humanity are the conditions of humanity as a whole, that we are essentially no freer than the least free among us, that our well-being is dependent upon the well-being of others. I want my students to believe that if they accepted those premises, they could and must work to make a better world.”
This is what graduation is about. It is the transformation from taking in knowledge, methods, skill, and experience, to extending outward, to others, all you have to offer.
You have much to offer, and you have worked mightily to achieve it.
Congratulations!
