Skip to main content

Highest Aspirations for Higher Education

When my eldest daughter started as a freshman at the University of Texas in Austin, she got a T-shirt that said: What starts here, changes the world.  Today I got to see her recognized for her academic achievements over the past four years, and I can't think of a more apt way of congratulating her:  What you started here, will change the world.  I am so proud that her highest aspiration at this moment is to make this world a better place.  The ceremony today honored the highest achieving students at the University, based only on their GPA.  The honor student selected to address the audience was Kelly Moynihan, Senior in Biomedical Engineering.  She is also the recipient of a $250,000 fellowship from the Hearst Foundation and a $90,000 National Science Foundation Grant to pursue her graduate studies at MIT.  Her speech, however, was about what has been the most meaningful experience of her undergraduate life at UT:  Mentoring. She has been part of an organization that meets weekly with at risk middle schoolers to work on engineering type projects.  Many of these kids are now signing up for advanced classes in high school and considering higher education for the first time.  How right it felt to hear this young woman talk about her rewards as a mentor at the same time that her awards as a scholar were being celebrated.

Ms. Moynihan's speech was followed by an address from Dr. Sharon Jarvis, a Professor at the UT College of Communications.  She challenged the students being honored today to "safe-guard" their communities with the same diligence that they have safe-gaurded their GPAs! To think critically, ask questions, work hard and sacrifice to better the world. This is what higher education is all about.

I know this is not the only institution of higher learning that instills these kinds of values in its graduates, but I feel blessed that I have not one, but two of my children studying at the University of Texas.

"That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race . . ."
                                                                                                     -Bahá'u'lláh

Comments