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MaryAnn Baenninger Inaugural Address

The University and the City October 2, 2015

Preamble and Thank Yous

Good Morning, everyone. I must begin with thanks to the Board of Trustees of Drew

University for believing I could lead this university toward a shining and sustainable future, and

for their constant support of my leadership. Thank you.

This celebration is about the University; my presidency is just the excuse for it. It is my

many colleagues and our students at Drew—our team—who made this day, this week, happen.

They did everything from composing poetry and song to preparing meals and venues, to even

picking up stray cigarette butts to make this a special day and to welcome our guests. It is with

deep gratitude that I thank each of you.

I offer a special thank you to Marti Winer, College of Liberal Arts, Class of ‘97, Chief of

Staff at Drew, who has become “Chief of Inauguration” for the past few months. There is no

way we could have done this without you, Marti.

My family is here today, my husband Ron, who has supported me on all of my crazy

adventures; my children and their spouses, Maggie, Karl, Lucy, and Dan, who are also my

friends and a constant source of pride, and our grandchildren, Lukas, Sela, Jack, and Luke, who

are all just plain awesome, and an even greater source of pride. My dad and other family

members and friends are here today too. My Dad, I have to thank for my ability to “work a

room,” and my Mom, whom we all miss so much, I have to thank for my persistence and my

brains. Right, Dad? I love you all very much.

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Inaugural Address

I need the love and support of all of them, because the role of the university president today is

not a gentile social one in which the president gracefully transitions from a scholar to a benign

figure head who leads unassumingly, armed with knowledge of academic governance, decent

cocktail banter, a penchant for impromptu chats with students, and a sense of when not to

overstep one’s bounds.

I do aspire to and enjoy some of those things, and I hope the Drew family sees in me a

scholar who cares deeply about shared governance and collegiality with faculty, and who craves

the presence of bright young people.

But today’s college presidency requires the ability to lead a responsive institution to face

the ever-changings demands of the world and the higher education marketplace in unique and

meaningful ways, on behalf of its students and alumni. That leadership requires acute

perception, grit, organizational and financial acumen, calculated and repeated risk, and, at times,

bravery. But those attributes, to which I also aspire, will be useless to me as a leader if I don’t

understand what makes Drew, Drew. To be successful, I must crack the university’s “genetic

code,” and ensure that the university’s identity and programs offer a distinct pathway. To

paraphrase theologian Frederick Buechner, a distinct pathway between a student’s gladness and

the world’s great needs. And it would be good too, if that pathway led to a job.

Without knowing its distinct attributes and communicating them clearly, a university will

fail in today’s market. In contrast, a president armed with the knowledge of her institution’s

indelible character, and with the ability to communicate the essence of that character, can lead

with her colleagues to do great things, and along the way compete well in the market.

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To tell you about Drew University’s core identity, its essence, and how it provides that

pathway for students, it will help to first tell you about my lifelong love affair with cities, and

how it figured highly in my decision to come to Drew.

I am not a scholar of the city, or an artist or writer who uses the city as her muse. My

credentials for describing the city come from my own experience, my understanding as a

research psychologist about how learning occurs best in context, how attitudes are formed, and

how a variety of experiences prepare us best—particularly in our formative years—for a

successful and fulfilling life. I am a learner, an explorer, and I am full of confidence when I am

in the city, because I am at home there.

My home city was Philadelphia. Without Philly and what I learned there, I am certain

that I would be less prepared for my own successful and fulfilling life. I would not be who I am.

As far back as I can remember, the city has been a vehicle for learning and independence for me,

and it certainly set me on the path to Drew. My grandfather, particularly, acquainted me with the

city, teaching me public transportation, how to hail a taxi, and how to tip well, as soon as I could

walk. The taxi and the tipping were not because we were a wealthy family. We were working

class. He didn’t have a car. And you tip well because you understand what it was like at the

receiving end of the tip. In the city I learned how to navigate, literally and figuratively. I learned

independence—so much so that I was able to take the El to my grandparents’ house alone for the

first time at the age of 9. I learned street smarts, to haggle when appropriate, to help people who

needed it, to vote and follow politics, to use the library, to appreciate art, music, theater, and

food, to test my nascent foreign language skills, not to litter (that was the forerunner of

sustainability). I learned about race, about difference, and that I could both see and appreciate

difference. I also learned to tackle bureaucracy, interact with all types of people, and to not be

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afraid of strangers. In the city I could easily test the values that my parents wanted to instill in

me—people are good, prejudice is the worst sin, be a good citizen in whatever form that

takes…oh, and don’t litter.

Nearly two years ago, when I was recruited to the Drew presidential search, I had already

decided to retire (at a very young age, mind you). But I felt compelled to explore Drew more

deeply. I knew of Drew, and its stature as a national liberal arts university, but I knew little

about its essence, its core identity, what I am calling its DNA. My husband Ron and I visited—

like many prospective students do—on a stealth drive.

My reaction was instantaneous. There is no better location in the country for a liberal

arts university. Did you hear that, Drewids? You know this: there is no better location in the

country for a liberal arts university. For me the decision was done. To hell with retirement, I

desperately wanted this job. I wanted to be here in Madison, where it, Morristown, Newark, and

New York provide an unparalleled extension of The Forest. And I knew even then that what we

do in partnership with these cities, how Drew relates to them, how we keep seamless our

connections to them, will be the route through which this great University offers a distinct

opportunity to students in each of our three schools. It will also be how we attract students who

want to use their education to be in the real world, not to be apart from it. I understood then, as I

understand now, that there is opportunity here like none other.

As you’ve heard from Dean Liebowitz, last Saturday some brave first-year seminar

faculty members and equally brave upper-class writing fellows, and a couple of deans, with me

tagging along, spent the day in New York City with the College of Liberal Arts entire first year

class. With 360 students, we created our own rush hour, beginning our journey on a train

platform whose signs say “Madison, New Jersey: Home of Drew University.”

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Our goal, metaphorically, was to drop crumbs along the route between Madison and

Manhattan, to give students a glimpse of the limitless experiences right within their reach, and to

instill in them that urge to explore. We wanted them to see Drew and Madison as home, but also

as a gateway, an extension of the Drew Arch.

But that trip, for which 20 CLA faculty members gave up their Saturdays, highlighted

two other characteristics that reveal the essence of Drew University. Faculty members in our

three schools—the Theological School, The Caspersen School of Graduate Studies, and the

College of Liberal Arts—exhibit an uncommon devotion to our students and their success.

Every liberal arts college and university promotes the personal relationship between the faculty

and students, but I have come to learn that it really is different at Drew. When alums reflect on

their time at Drew, invariably they rhapsodize about a particular faculty member and the

centrality of his or her teaching and mentoring to the alum’s success. It is not about an archrival

football contest, or Friday night drinking games. In describing our professors, one student said,

“our professors will know your name, your dog’s name, your birthday, and what you did last

weekend.”

That appears to me to be true, or at least essentially true. When I sit with Drew faculty

members and listen carefully, I hear that most of their conversation is about their students,

offering to help colleagues in support of a student, reaching out to garner leads on an opportunity

or internship, highlighting the success of a particular student mentee.

On our trip to New York, I watched the faculty-student relationship in action. New first-

year students questioning and responding to their professors with abandon and a sense of

confidence after only four short weeks of class. The trip to the city became an opportunity to see

their professors as people with multi-dimensional skills and personal attributes. On Saturday, I

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saw faculty members do everything from bringing life to a discussion of eradicating disease,

making students feel safe in a brand new environment, teaching them to use chopsticks, and how

to insert their subway ticket the right way. [I must take a diversion here. If you are imagining a

homogenous group of white suburban kids experiencing the subway for the first time, think

again. Ours is a diverse group of students in all ways, among them are many students who live

in urban areas like Newark, Paterson, and Edison, who are not yet familiar with New York.]

Back to my key point. The relationships between students and faculty, which start out

classically around some academic subject matter quickly turn to a relationship between mentor

and mentee, researcher and apprentice, counselor and discerner. The vehicle for these more

personal relationships is most often an experience outside of the classroom. Drew students seek

out and sustain experiences that provide practical or professional learning as a matter of course,

and their professors are the catalysts and the matchmakers between student and experience.

Lately we have been interviewing students on video about their experiences at Drew.

Three common themes emerge as they speak. (1) Students know their faculty members well; (2)

faculty members serve as bridges or connectors between the student and research opportunities,

internships, civic engagements, supervised ministry, cross-cultural experiences, practica, and

creative projects, and; (3) our location and the connection to “our cities” and other cities around

the world facilitates these experiences, nearly always resulting in multiple opportunities for each

student.

When the media report on surveys indicating that today’s graduates are not prepared to

step into the job market, what they mean is that students are not able to generalize, extend, and

operationalize what they have learned the classroom, and nor can they translate their learning for

use in the dynamic environment of today’s workplace.

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The reason for that is that even the best teacher cannot replicate the messy, multivariate,

experiences that a student will encounter in his or her first post-graduate job, and no campus

alone can simulate the glorious diversity of culture, talent, and perspectives that the world has to

offer outside of the university gates. An undergraduate or graduate education is by nature

somewhat structured, predictable, and constructed: Areas of study or majors require a certain

number of credits and a specified menu of courses. The work of each semester is artificially

concluded before the holidays or the summer. The very construct of a liberal arts education is

being questioned today in part because of perceived stasis, lack of innovation, and penchant for

the abstract.

But it is also true that experience without reflection is less enriching. A person might

learn how to do a singular job by getting hired on as trainee or apprentice, but the skill set they

develop is not likely generalizable. Discourse in the classroom with faculty members and other

students and writing and presentation competencies acquired inside the gates of the university,

combine with practical experiences in “our cities” to create a gestalt, a whole greater than the

sum of its parts for our students.

The very combination of inside and outside the classroom learning is together better than

either type of learning alone. Together they do an unparalleled job of launching students on the

path to an adaptive life and a robust career.

Drew’s location provides an incomparable venue to accomplish this goal. And these

experiences begin the day the student arrives at Drew—no waiting here for the “junior year

abroad,” “senior internship,” or graduate thesis to integrate learning.

Real examples best illustrate how this works at Drew University:

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Kishan Patel, who graduated in May: Baldwin Scholar, Civic Scholar, United Nations

Semester, Kean Internship New Jersey State House, Morris County Courthouse internship,

Grassroots campaigns internship. Kishan is at Oxford University studying international law.

Khemani Gibson, who graduated last year: Van Hooten Writing Fellow, conducted

research in DC, Moore Undergraduate Research Apprentice at UNC Chapel Hill, a Civic Scholar

working at a program for Gifted Students in South Orange; Study Abroad in South Africa and

the Dominican Republic. And in his research on West-Indian immigrants working on the

Panama Canal, he was able to discover his own great-grandfather’s name. Khemani is in a PhD

program at NYU.

Here’s Gabi Bisconti’s resume so far—she just began her senior year: Civic Scholar,

Joseph R. Patenaude Theater Internship Program; Internship with New York Women in Film and

Television; Internship with Night Castle Management; Internship with Greater Media NJ,

Internship with ARTS by the People; Drew London Program, Drew University Dramatic

Society. I think Gabi will be ready for what comes next.

RJ Voorman graduated last year: While at Drew he did the Wall Street Semester, he was

CFO of student-run investment group, he had Internships with Bank of America, Merrill Lynch,

The Bank of New York Mellon, and he played men’s soccer. After two job offers before he

graduated, he accepted a job in wealth management with Merrill Lynch.

To make a point I just read you some typical Drew University resumes—yes, I said

typical. But we know that learning, whether in the classroom or in the city, is not about

collecting internships or experiences. It is about the transformations that occur during those

experiences and how they are connected as a whole to prepare the student for life beyond college

or graduate school.

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This leads me to think about the goals of today’s liberal arts education, and how experience

shapes its outcomes. In particular, what are key attributes of a liberal arts education that are

particularly enhanced and made meaningful by experience? How does The City—Drew’s

location—offer a hyperconcentrated venue for learning? An answer lies in what a liberal arts

education must do for today’s students, millennials, and Generation Z’ers, who were born in a

generation where their parents were striving to make their lives safe, structured, and predictable.

• A liberal arts education must make what is comfortable challenging, and what is

challenging comfortable. If things are too comfortable, we must shake them up, and we

must inculcate adaptability and resilience.

• A liberal arts education must connect those things that appear separated, and it must

make the predictable unpredictable. Deeply ingrained stereotypes—in other words,

seemingly predictable characteristics about others, cannot be dispelled through classroom

learning, but they can be dispelled through repeated positive experience of difference,

and the simple act of getting to know well people who are different from oneself.

• A liberal arts education must make the static dynamic and the abstract concrete.

Learning in a classroom about business or the markets cannot hold a candle to immersion

on Wall Street.

• A liberal arts education must make the limited generative. Most college students in this

country experience the natural sciences through canned laboratory experiments and video

simulations. Our science faculty and RISE fellows (Research Institute for Scientists

Emeriti) are doing real research in a setting that affords them easy collaboration with

industry and other academic labs. Our students benefit from this, often working on real

projects beginning in their first year. In my first couple of weeks last year I was indeed

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wandering around the dining hall talking with students. At one table I asked a group of

first year students how their first weeks at Drew had been. They all had remarkable

answers, but one young man said, in effect, “I’m working on a cure for Alzheimer’s.” He

had found his first mentor by talking with several faculty members about their research,

and he was asked to join a lab—in his first semester.

• A liberal arts education must make the constricting freeing. To have art, music,

philosophy described in class barely whets the appetite; to have limitless opportunities for

exposure increases the hunger.

The words of our own students illustrate how their experiences were freeing, disruptive,

dynamic, and generative.

Chris Hardy—now pastor Chris Hardy—who will graduate with his Master’s of Divinity

degree from the Theological School. As part of his required cross-cultural experience, Chris

spent time in the city of Istanbul. In a sermon, Chris wrote, “the real test for me was not with the

people whom I had arranged to meet, but rather with the chance encounters I had with the

“regular” Turk on the street. I crossed paths with people, engaged in small talk and deep

conversation, walked next to and stood beside, shared a restaurant and rode public transportation

with, ordered food from, visited the homes of, and just plain old encountered thousands of people

while in Turkey – and not a single person or a single incident made any of those fears about

Muslims that I once held come to fruition. My fears were erased. “[end quote]

Aaron Sartori, a current sophomore in the College of Liberal Arts writes: “As a mentor in

the Drew Summer College, I was there to help the students from Newark, the Bronx, and

Brooklyn realize that they can achieve a college education. In one-on-one conversations with

my mentees, a common theme among them was a lack of belief and support from others. I would

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tell them that I believed in them, and that they could do whatever they put their minds to if they

worked hard. I told them that I would always be there to support them, and I do continue to

support them.” But what Aaron found is the students helped him. “Now I realize,” he said, “that

for my career I want to be the voice in students’ heads that tells them they can achieve their

goals. My ultimate goal is to be a guidance counselor, like my mother has been for the past 31

years at my high school. If I hadn't come to Drew and mentored in Summer College, I would not

have realized my full potential.”

Stephanie Weymouth, a recent grad from the MAT program in the Caspersen School of

Graduate Studies reflects: “Throughout my experience with the Masters in Teaching program, I

questioned whether I had it in me to be a teacher. I was teaching in a school with very few

resources, and very low expectations for student outcomes. Toward the end of my student

teaching experience, I had a conversation with my senior class on why we should be fighting to

keep arts programs in schools when so many other schools were getting rid of them. I picked on

a particular student who I had had a hard time getting through to all semester, and her response

was what I had expected, a shrug of the shoulder and an eye roll. I moved on and other students

gave inspirational and beautiful responses. After several, the first student I called on raised her

hand. She said "Theatre opens the doors for us urban kids to see that there is a greater life

beyond the limitations our society puts on us. It shows us that we don't have to aspire to be an

athlete or a rapper to be successful in this world." Her answer stopped me in my tracks,

Stephanie said, and eliminated any doubt in my mind as to why I did this program, why I chose

to be in an inner city school. These kids defy odds and rise above the stereotypes.”

In an era where the costs of a college education are being questioned constantly and in

which a liberal arts education in particular is viewed as frivolous, a university can do one of two

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things. It can shrug its shoulders and snub its nose at the concerns or criticisms, or it can take a

good hard look at exactly how it is preparing students for life after college or graduate school.

I have taken that look at Drew University. I understand its essence—its DNA.

With deeply engaged faculty mentors, with a culture of experiential learning, and the world at

our door, Drew University prepares students for the real world in the real world.

Thank you very much.