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NEW COLLEGE FOUNDERS DAY, October 22, 2010
Remarks by Gordon E. Michalson, Jr., President

Good morning.  It is my great privilege to welcome all of you to this birthday celebration marking fifty years since the founding of New College.  I’m personally very grateful for the involvement today of so many key figures from the College’s past, as well as for the attendance of our elected officials and the other very busy people who are here, beginning with the distinguished roster of those who are on our program.

My warm thanks to students, faculty, alumni, and staff who are here – for those of you who may be missing class, I hope your being here is not a hardship – and, as always, a special welcome to the members of the New College Board of Trustees, as well as to the members of the Boards of the New College Foundation, the New College Library Association, and the New College Alumnae/i Association. Since we happen this weekend to be hosting a conference of the Consortium for Innovative Environments in Learning, I’m delighted also to welcome the representatives from two dozen or so fellow members of that stimulating Consortium who are with us.

Despite multiple and dramatic changes in its administrative arrangements over a fifty year period, New College has been remarkably consistent in its sense of mission and in the quality of people it attracts to the campus, especially those it eventually sends out into the world as New College graduates. Our purpose here today is not only to celebrate this fact, but to acknowledge and thank those whose commitment, talent, and personal generosity have made possible the flourishing of an educational idea that sustains its strength by means of its originating distinctiveness.

And distinctive we are. In less public settings than this one, I often say that the mission of New College is to be cheerfully subversive of the least attractive features of the surrounding society. We do this primarily through the specific means by which we make “active learning” a reality instead of a mere slogan. As you all know, over these fifty years we have never given our students grades or encouraged the cultivation of a high GPA as the goal of college life – a policy that conveys the not-so-subliminal message that there is more to life than the race to be “number one” or “top of the heap.” Nor do we use credit hours or emphasize their accumulation as a sign of academic progress – a policy that suggests the triviality of sheer acquisitiveness and implies that the well-lived life is about something more than having lots of possessions. “Learning to learn” is not about piling up things or flashing a high GPA.

In these and numerous other ways, New College continues to realize the ideal of the small residential liberal arts college envisioned by its founders. At the heart of that ideal is the profound connection between higher education and character formation. That connection can be lost from view amidst a wider conversation emphasizing “degree productivity” for the sake of economic development and the filling of “critical needs” occupations. These are important aims, without a doubt, but they are not the whole story when we consider what it might mean to educate the “whole” person for a productive and fulfilling life, a person who appreciates that intellectual inquiry and critical thinking must be harnessed to humane ends – character traits all the more important in a setting marked by deep and chronic disagreements that profoundly challenge our democratic practices.

Especially through the multiple ways in which New College teaches the lesson that personal responsibility is the flip side of individual freedom, this small school makes a contribution to that larger story all out of proportion to its size. To the extent that we are successful, it’s because we have remained faithful to the animating ideals of the College’s founders.

So, on this occasion and on behalf of all of us at today’s New College, let me extend my deepest thanks to those who had the wisdom, the creative insight, and – probably most of all – the courage to start this all off. “Thank you” to the founders for your inspiration. I trust that the New College of today is for you a source of deep gratification and pride, as I believe it should be. You have surely earned it.

Gordon E. “Mike” Michalson, Jr.
President, New College of Florida