Marilyn P. Sutton's Charge - M.A. '69, Ph.D. '73

DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD RECIPIENT

Honored Graduates,

We are members of an accomplished community—now approaching 17,000 alumni who include among their number countless leaders of business and education, two current members of Congress, 30 college presidents, three MacArthur Fellows and members of the cabinets or parliaments in 35 countries. I bring you the alumni greeting, traditionally known as the “charge.” Charge can carry many meanings—a load, a burden, or weight. Or, a pecuniary burden (graduate students know ‘pecuniary burden’ well).

A charge might be played out in another mode, say on a trumpet, signaling imminent attack.

Charge also carries the meaning of significance, and today this ritual bespeaks the heightened significance of transition, your transition from focused inquiry to application. It is a transition, however, that I will urge you to resist. Charge can also mean the accusation on which a person

is brought to trial. You are charged with "being learned" and learning is itself a sacred trust, a commission and a responsibility.

I choose as my point of departure, however, the notion of charge as in all charged up or as Benjamin Franklin put it, electrical fire. When I think of what gets me all charged up, where I

find my electrical fire, it is in being an inquirer who seeks to make a difference. And that leads me to my charge to you. Allow me to draw from the medieval world that so mirrors ours. I charge you to continue to SEEK, to resist this transition, to stay the course of inquiry. Poised as you are at this moment of accomplishment in your professional fields, you have completed a journey and you are about to begin again. You are much like the archetypal seekers of the medieval Romance tradition, the great heroes who set out on perilous journeys in unknown climes, all the while plumbing the psyche in search of deepest truth. You are gifted with ability and privileged with graduate training (joining a scant fewer than 8% in this country and a far smaller global elite).

Take your skills of focused inquiry forward, asking the unasked question, challenging the received answer, and pushing against the apparent limits of inquiry. I charge you to IMPACT. I charge you to make a difference.

You have power. With graduate certification, your power increases. The Romance heroes always returned, harrowed, with earned scars, with wisdom too rich to convey but with knowledge to impart—they impacted the community (whether routing a predatory beast, or healing a blight).

The Romance heroes had set out with plans. But even then, the gods had a sense of humor. You will make a difference in ways you plan, but also in ways that would now surprise you. Be open to the moment. We will be called upon by our multiple communities to strengthen their bonds and

to re-imagine their parameters as together we move through decades of unprecedented change.

I charge you to WONDER. I charge you to reach deep within to MARVEL. The medieval world is filled with marvels—resplendent giant-like warriors, winged beasts, and fiery comets bespeaking the Divine will—marvels which led the viewer at best to suspend known intellectual strategies, accessing the phenomena in their own terms and, in the process, discovering new ways of knowing and new ways of being.

There is much to perplex in our time as Kip Thorne so eloquently put it earlier this noon. I marvel that orderly patterns emerge from chaos and find mathematical description. I marvel that ancient texts hold timely wisdom. I marvel that children learning language speak poetry.

And I have to believe a sense of wonder and mystery drew our distinguished speaker to his stunning descriptions of the physical world, or Peter Drucker to his sense-making patterns of global economy. And, as all of you engaged in education know (and we are all engaged in education), wonder and marvel is the apt response when a learner actually “gets it” for the first time.

All great discoveries begin in a fresh respect for the puzzle, begin in a sense of wonder. Treasure that sense. Leave space to marvel.

Alas, I have been granted only three wishes for you. The load or weight I would like to leave you with has no pecuniary burden. It does urge you to imminent attack, attack on the dilemmas of our time. It is a call of heightened significance, charging you with knowledge and wisdom

(for you are people of power), charging you to resist this transition, charging you in all that you do, to SEEK, to IMPACT, and to MARVEL.