President Schall gathers with students in the Traer residence hall courtyard for one of his Fireside Chats.
PRESIDENT’S LETTER By Lawrence M. Schall
The New Campus Center A Sneak Peek This summer I began my seventh year at Oglethorpe. In some ways, it feels like we have just gotten started with the important work we have to do. In other ways, it’s hard for me to remember being anywhere else. I continue to love the work I do and remain as passionate as ever about our mission and the critical role we play in educating the next generation of global citizens. Steve Jobs passed away this fall, and upon his retirement just a few weeks before his death, he spoke about the value of liberal arts. “I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it, musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians, also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough— it’s technology married with the liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.” Bet you didn’t know Jobs was a Stormy Petrel at heart. I would argue that the ability to solve any problem, technological or otherwise, begins with understanding how to learn, to think and to reason, to communicate, and to be adaptive. Jobs made the case for the liberal arts. Our students and graduates make that case every day, and in the issue that follows, you will have a glimpse of an Oglethorpe education in action. The campus is teeming with activity this academic year. You will hear from Denise von Herrmann, our new Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs, later in this magazine. Under her leadership, our faculty continue to imagine and re-imagine what a superlative education in the 21st century looks like. In a conversation with our Parent’s Leadership Council this past fall, we talked about the
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importance of inspiration and how Oglethorpe’s faculty and staff seek to inspire their sons and daughters. I certainly believe that among the many important things we do here, the goal of inspiring each and every student would be at the top of my list. Our new Center for Experiential Learning, which opened this fall, is a perfect example of that goal in action. Through the work of the Center and our faculty, every student at Oglethorpe will have the opportunity to complete a work experience in his or her chosen field of interest.
in the issue that follows, you will have a glimpse of an Oglethorpe education in action. The Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) celebrated its fifth anniversary in October. The CCE is another source of inspiration for many of our students. Oglethorpe is a founding member of our new athletic conference, the Southern Athletic Association (SAA). Conference play for the SAA will begin in the fall of 2012, when Oglethorpe brings on line its 16th intercollegiate sports team, women’s lacrosse. You can read more about the rationale for this change inside. And speaking of inspiration, we are working toward a new campus center for Oglethorpe, sited where Emerson Student Center now sits. See the opposite page for a first glimpse at some amazing plans for the new building that have personally inspired me.
Oglethorpe’s new campus center is one step closer to reality thanks to an unprecedented gift from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation in Atlanta. Their grant of $5 million in December is the largest single gift in our 177-year history. The gift was a major step forward in achieving the $15 million required to break ground.
room of campus, the open and modern facility will provide flexible, multipurpose spaces to meet, study, and play, including a dining hall, coffee shop, bookstore, campus life offices, and outdoor patios. The building will also be home to the Center for Civic Engagement and the new Center for Experiential Learning.
The new campus center will replace the existing Emerson Student Center, which was built in 1968. With architecture that is both modern and classic, walls of granite and glass will provide a seamless visual connection to the surrounding environment and campus quad. Designed to be the living
The university is deep in the process of fundraising and planning, hoping to possibly break ground on the center later this year. Stay tuned for more details.
As always, we would love to have you come visit us on campus or join me in one of the many alumni events we hold around the country. Please come back and come back often.
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