Inaugural Address -- April 19, 1995

It is custom that brings us here today. It is tradition that binds us together. We have gathered on this radiant spring day to renew our covenant as a college dedicated to liberal learning and to begin a new era in Furman’s long and distinguished history.

Like the stately trees that grace this campus, Furman has deep roots and extensive branches. It is now almost two centuries old.

In this regard, today’s ceremony involves much more than the investiture of a new president. It also reminds us that this university is a precious inheritance bequeathed to us to protect and nurture.

The legacy we inherit from generations past is amorphous yet still tangible; it embodies all the lives, energies, and resources that have been devoted to the university over the last one hundred and sixty-nine years.

Today, therefore, we would do well to remember our anchoring principles and lofty intentions. From its inception, this institution has assumed that intellectual inquiry and spiritual reflection can thrive together. The Latin motto on the university seal declares that Furman exists "for Christ and for learning."

Over the years, Furman has broadened its mission and revised its programs—and it has been blessed by the presence of female students since its merger with Greenville Woman’s College in 1933.

Yet despite undergoing many changes since 1826, Furman has remained a college whose animating purpose is to fashion graduates quick of mind and generous of soul.

Four years ago, Furman and the South Carolina Baptist Convention entered into a tempestuous debate over the governance of the university.

That debate ended a year later with a mutual agreement to sever all legal and financial ties. As a result, we are now in control of our own identity and have the opportunity to shape our own destiny.

Our newly independent status, however, does not mean that Furman is now rudderless in a secular sea. The ideals of liberal learning, civic virtue, spiritual reflection, and social responsibility remain firmly in place and give direction to all that we do.

As the world careens toward the end of a century and the start of a new millennium, this university will continue to provide an ecumenical setting that encourages students, faculty, and staff to grow in faith as they grow in knowledge.

Such a reaffirmation of our basic mission helps to focus our vision of Furman’s future. While justifiably proud of the university’s past accomplishments, we need to challenge ourselves to improve every aspect of what we do.

In elevating our ambitions, however, we must avoid the temptation to imitate schools with more prestigious names and smaller hearts. Hear me well: we will continue to traverse our own path to excellence.

Of course, excellence is one of those words so tarnished by overuse that it almost defies burnishing. Every college claims to be seeking excellence.

For us, however, excellence is not a destination or a goal, not simply a higher ranking in US News and World Report to be coveted, reached, celebrated, and forgotten. Instead, excellence at Furman involves the very spirit in which we do things.

Several months ago, in preparing a speech for the New England Society, I read Henry David Thoreau’s account of a trip that he and his brother took in a homemade boat down the Concord and Merrimac rivers in 1836. His observations bristle with revelations about the spirit of excellence.

At one point, Thoreau describes visiting Williams College, nestled among the Berkshire mountains in western Massachusetts. "It would be no small advantage," he declares in passing, "if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain."

Thoreau did not explain what advantages a college would derive from such a location. But I think I know what he meant.

Furman, too, rests at the base of a noble mountain and in the shadow of an entire mountain range. Every day the imposing stature of the Blue Ridge admonishes us to strive for more than the merely adequate; it goads us to raise our sights, to stretch ourselves to the very limit of our potential.

Doing so will require wise and sometimes painful choices. Those choices will succeed to the extent that our facts are correct, our priorities clear, and our convictions firm.

Where does Furman want to go from here? What will be our distinctive emphases and attributes? Where do we focus our attention and how do we best allocate our resources?

Our answers to these questions will help guide us into an uncertain future. Without attempting to pre-empt the new long-range planning process we have recently implemented, I can predict this much with almost celestial confidence:

Furman will continue to be an inviting crossroads where character and characters, architecture and landscape intersect, a place of beauty and benevolence where young people are encouraged to develop a personal style and design a way of life, a college where history, civility, and concerns of the spirit and social justice still matter, a learning community where students are more intoxicated by ideas and relationships than by alcohol.

At the same time, Furman, like American society itself, is going to be more cosmopolitan in outlook, more diverse in its composition, more international in its interests, and more sophisticated about the implications of technology than in the past.

Perhaps the most exciting development at Furman in coming years will involve our approach to liberal learning itself. Although people often talk about a liberal arts education as if it were a static enterprise unchanged since ancient times, its meaning and its structure have in fact evolved with a changing society.

Over the years, new fields of study and new modes of learning have been admitted into the liberal arts curriculum with great benefit.

In this context Furman has become an exemplar of a new type of liberal arts college. While our curriculum remains grounded in the traditional humanities, arts, and science disciplines, we also recognize that selected pre-professional programs can complement the liberal arts and be of great service to the larger community.

At the same time, Furman has become especially committed to active forms of learning, both inside and outside the classroom.

An old proverb, variously attributed to the Chinese or the Sioux Indians, expresses the benefits of such engaged learning. It says:

Tell me and I forget;

Show me and I remember;

Involve me and I understand.

Like this proverb, Furman stresses that liberal learning is not simply a spectator sport--nor is it limited to the conventional classroom.

We want our students to do more than passively memorize facts and theories. We encourage them to analyze, synthesize, and evaluate information, to pose questions, challenge assumptions, form hypotheses, conduct their own research and experiments, and present their findings to others.

This interactive approach to liberal learning is helping Furman breach the walls of the ivory tower stereotype. It also gives our students greater responsibility for their own education, sharpens their self-confidence, and hones their leadership and communication skills.

Furman’s ability to sustain such an innovative approach to learning is threatened by the same turbulent forces that are buffeting all colleges.

The continuing decline in federal and state support for higher education and the soaring costs of new periodicals and books, computers and scientific equipment, increased financial aid, and expanded student services, are straining college budgets everywhere.

Because the next few years in our enterprise will be financially challenging, our fortitude in focusing on what really matters must be all the stronger if we hope to cement Furman's place among the very best colleges in the United States.

Yet there are some encouraging developments that make me very optimistic about Furman’s future. The applications for next year’s freshman class have set an all-time record in number and quality.

We are also situated within a region that is experiencing phenomenal economic growth. Financial support from the Greenville community and from our extended alumni family is at record levels. We thus have the luxury of focusing on more than mere survival; our challenge is to determine at what level we will excel.

In talking with several visiting delegates at lunch today, I heard many comments about the stunning beauty of Furman’s campus. To be sure, we take great pride in the quality of our grounds and facilities. But in fact this university’s greatest asset is its people.

Since returning to Furman two years ago, I have been amazed at the talent and the dedication of the folks populating this campus. The students have been wonderful to Susan and me. They continually lift our spirits and give us confidence in the future. We feel fortunate to associate with them.

We feel equally fortunate to work with such a gifted faculty and staff who perform the real work of the University. They have repeatedly enlarged my vision and stimulated my imagination.

As we begin this new journey together, I solicit the patience and cooperation of all the members of the Furman family. Of course, I will make my share of mistakes, but I pledge that, mistakes or not, my actions will be undertaken with all the enthusiasm, honesty, and dedication I can muster.

I now hasten to conclude. In 1977, Robert Penn Warren, one of this country’s most distinguished writers, published a novel entitled A Place to Come To. Although it deals with Vanderbilt University, his alma mater, its essential theme is equally relevant to our purposes at Furman.

Warren uses evocative prose to describe the perennial human need for lasting relationships, for developing a sense of rootedness in a place of lasting significance. He recognizes that it takes a great deal of history to make a great university.

Like all colleges, Furman still has some history to overcome, but it has much more history to celebrate. Furman, you see, is not only a special place to come to, as Robert Penn Warren phrased it; it is a special place to come from as well.

I can testify to that fact. My own enduring experiences at this college are an indelible part of my life, my convictions, my view of the past, and my hopes for the future.

Many of you, I am sure, feel the same sense of indebtedness to this university. We work, learn, play, and occasionally struggle in this place--and a manifest sense of its spirit and texture dwells in our thoughts and memories for the rest of our lives.

It is not only a campus where knowledge is shared; it is a common ground where our very sense of self and our need for community and for spiritual purpose are awakened and nourished.

In coming years I hope that we will continue to communicate honestly and humanely with one another, that our relationships with one another will go deeper than our masks of acquaintance, and that we will develop some significant commitment to rejoice together, struggle together, and to delight in each other.

By doing so we can help ensure that Furman remains a university harmonious in its differences, compassionate and fair in its social transactions, tenacious and bold in its commitment to an education of the highest quality.

So as you leave this auditorium, please carry with you some of the excitement I feel for Furman’s present and its future. And take with you as well some appreciation for the proven ability of this university to liberate young people without casting them adrift. It is indeed a precious inheritance.