 Please remain standing. Good afternoon. We are here together on this special day to recognize an important academic milestone in the lives of our talented incoming students. As we convene convocation exercises for the entering class of 2019, we ask our acapella group drastic measures to come to the stage to sing our national anthem. O say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proud the twilight's last gleaming whose bright stripes and bright stars through the peril for the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave Thank you very much. You may now be seated. Thank you, drastic measures. The university has several religious organizations for students who work collaboratively with local clergy and our spiritual life office to coordinate spirituality programs on campus. Today, the university's multi-faith chaplain and director of spiritual life, the Reverend Nancy Succup, will offer invocation. Please join me in a moment of silence in the tradition of the Quakers. O God, inspirer of knowledge, we gather to embrace warmly the newest members of the Roger Williams family, the class of 2019. In the days ahead, grant these men and women uncommon boldness to reach beyond who they think they are to imagine who they might become. Grant them courage to seek challenge in spaces and places where growth in intellect and spirit leads down avenues of understanding and endeavor never before considered. Grant them wisdom to fuse their own character with all they will come to know about themselves in classrooms near and far and through friendships made and nurtured here. O Holy One, bless these students, families and friends who also become a part of our university community today and who surround us in this moment with their love and support for our common journey. Bless this university's faculty, staff, administration and board of trustees who labor tirelessly with one purpose to offer with enormous skill and care the enduring hope that education brings to us all. Now, as each class member assumes the rights and responsibilities of academic life, imbue them with the character of our namesake, Roger Williams, who advocated for freedom of thought and belief in all aspects of life. Great spirit, now bless the class of 2019. Bless their minds and hearts this day and for all the days to come. Amen. Thank you Reverend Sukup. Greetings and thanks to President and Mrs. Farish, Provost Workman, members of our Board of Trustees, officers of the university, faculty, staff, marshals, returning student volunteers, parents, family members and most importantly, all of the first-year and transfer students comprising the entering class. Thank you for participating in convocation exercises today and celebrating this important milestone with us. I have the privilege of serving as Vice President of Student Life and together with my colleagues, look forward to witnessing your learning and growth both in and out of the classroom in the years ahead. Today is a day of powerful emotions that are at times conflicting and confusing for both students and parents alike. Pride, happiness and excitement, taking turns with anxiety about the transition to university life, making new friends, new academic challenges and saying goodbye to loved ones. Together with you under this tent today are dedicated faculty, staff and student leaders who are committed to mentoring you along the way. Do not hesitate to reach out, ask questions, seek guidance and make suggestions. They are here for you. We welcome you as a community with genuine enthusiasm. You experienced that yourself at our open houses, accepted student days, orientation and again this week check in and move in assistance from many student leaders, athletes, our ROTC unit, faculty and staff. Next year, you may be one of those volunteers. You may be asking what is so special about convocation? Well, did you know that convocation can be used to create 131 legitimate scrabble words? Or that the term dates back to the 14th century originally used to describe important religious gatherings and then adopted by universities to describe special academic ceremonies such as the beginning of the school year. At Roger Williams, this ceremony begins with messages formally welcoming the entering class to our community and ends with our pledge of academic integrity. On Monday, your class will represent Roger Williams as you participate in service for our 11th annual community connections experience. Your orientation will continue with several important programs this week and your first day of classes on Wednesday. By the end of this week, you will have a deeper sense of why you are here, what we expect, who is there to help you and why every student matters. Together, new and returning students, staff, we begin the process of building community and caring about each other. It's hard work that requires patience, humility, and honesty. We all need to listen and understand each other, welcome and value all expressions of diversity and identity while practicing inclusiveness, civility, and respect. Learning is at the center of all we do at the University as reflected in the words of biology and chemistry major Richie Alfifi who was our senior commencement speaker this past May and I'm quoting Richie to his classmates. My lovely classmates, you are some freaking hard working individuals. You have worked tirelessly as a whole to carry one another through all night study sessions. You've formed study groups wrapped on desks in between classes and stared at computer screens until your eyes were sore and through it all with plenty of help from our incredible professors we were able to leave each lecturer lab having learned things we never thought we would understand. That same work ethic continued outside the classroom where I saw that same fire in every student leader, athlete and engaged student who worked their tails off to bring pride but also the whole university. You will find that Richie's reflections will be further supported today through the remarks of our distinguished speakers representing the university community. Let us begin our learning together. Thank you. It is now my distinct honor to welcome the 10th president of Roger Williams University, Dr. Donald J. Farrish to the podium for the president's address. Thank you very much John. I'm giving an enthusiastic welcome to Roger Williams University's Class of 2019. Welcome. We, and by we I mean all of us, administrators, boards of trustee members, faculty, staff, student leaders, we are delighted to have you as the newest members of our university community and I'm personally delighted that so many parents and relatives are here this afternoon to wish the students well as they begin their journey. Since this is the last time I will have the opportunity to speak to you as a class, the last time that is until your commencement exercises in four years when you receive your diploma, those of you that think that's happening today are mistaken, but in four years. I've given some thought about what I might say in the few minutes that I have that could prove useful to you. So here goes. The next section includes many components. Students select a major, a deep dive into one particular academic discipline, in order to understand both the essence of the subject and the ways in which new knowledge is created in that subject. Students also explore the breadth of human understanding through the study of liberal arts. At Roger Williams, the liberal arts program is called the Core. A selected series of courses designed to expand your general knowledge of your thinking in the abstract. We strongly encourage all of our students to acquire expertise in both one of the liberal arts and in a professional field by majoring in one subject and minoring in the other. The skills that come from the liberal arts written in oral communication, critical thinking and reasoning, the ability to integrate and synthesize diverse sources of information, these skills are universal and complement very well the specific skills that come from the study of one of the professional disciplines. But a university education today is more than learning existing information and knowledge. Today's employers expect new employees to arrive with experience and to meet that expectation we strongly encourage every student to engage in at least one project-based learning experience during your time here where you will spend a semester or more with other students and at least directly working on a problem that allows you to employ the theory that you've learned in the classroom in a real world setting. This project may be doing original research in the sciences or working as a team making stock market investments through the cafe program in our department of finance or working in the external community on a project overseen by the community partnership center. The point is our overall objective is not just to have you learn how to apply that information in the real world. We want to prepare you for a great career and a great life. And yet college is more than just knowledge acquisition and application. It's also about learning how to become an independent thinker and how to rely on your own best judgment to make decisions that are in your best interest. These are skills that you will develop over time and we are here to assist you in that endeavor as your parents have assisted you to this point in your lives. In recent weeks I've read several articles about the problems that millennials, that is people between the ages of 20 and 35 are having and keeping a job. Too many of them are apparently arriving in the job market not only without any meaningful experience but also, and this is critical without much capacity to deal with the politics and psychology of working with others in the world of work. The result too often is that they are terminated. So here is where I want to speak to both the students and the parents. Students, I must warn you that you will encounter the occasional speed bump as you progress through your college career. Occasion of the speed bump will turn out to be a far bigger issue. I don't mean to suggest that every problem you encounter will be trivial but to get the most out of your college education it's vital that you learn how to resolve these problems by taking personal responsibility for them. The faculty and staff of our university are here to assist you. Your academic advisor and your resident assistant can be enormously useful to you. Don't be shy about asking them for help. And parents, I'm asking for your help in this process. Please, please encourage your son or daughter to try and resolve their problems on their own without immediately handing them off to you. Obviously if they're unsuccessful I expect them to seek help from mom and dad we don't want our students to feel in any way cut off from their parents. But I have been surprised how often in recent years I've been contacted by a parent about a problem their son or daughter having or in some cases is perceived by the parent to be having before the student has made any effort to resolve the problem on his or her own. Sometimes the student is not even aware that a parent is calling on the student's behalf and that can cause unintended strain between a student and parent. A college education is in part learning how to pick yourself up after you fall. It's learning from your mistakes. If there's always someone to catch you before you fall or to intercede before you make a mistake you aren't learning how to deal with these issues during the time when you are occupying the relatively safe world provided by a residential college campus and you will be ill-prepared for the real world that awaits you after graduation. RW graduates have a well-deserved reputation for having a great work ethic combined with great skills. But these aren't acquired by accident. They are the result of our very purposeful academic and co-curricular programs. So help us help you get ready for a great job and a great life and enjoy your time here at Roger Williams. Welcome again, class of 2019. Thank you, President Farrish. Each year at our commencement at our convocation ceremony a member of the faculty is honored with the excellence in teaching award. That recipient is then invited to give the faculty address at new student convocation. Please join me in welcoming this year's excellence in teaching award which was conveyed at commencement Associate Professor of Engineering Dr. Charles R. Thomas. Dr. Thomas? Well, hello class of 2019 on behalf of especially the faculty I welcome you to Roger Williams. I'd first like to thank the person or persons who nominated me for this award and those who wrote letters of support who are unknown to me. I'm deeply honored to receive the award especially in light of the many outstanding educators here. I teach in the engineering program and the sustainability studies program. Given my background in engineering I suspect some of you might expect me to deliver a formulaic technical non-funny to normal people speech but please rest assured I plan to deliver just such a speech. In my experience the process of earning an undergraduate degree is a complex task. Sometimes before beginning a complex task it is beneficial to reduce it to a more simple form. Now I know I'm not as experienced as some but I have had a few years to reflect on what it can mean to complete a degree so I offer this distilled take on it. Completing a degree can aid in the ability to identify appreciate and describe to others the uniqueness of situations. Sometimes uniqueness is obvious and can be predicted and thus exploited. It's a rare opportunity especially at Roger Williams given our class size to address such a large gathering. So when I was preparing for the speech I knew I had a chance to collect some data for one of the classes I teach. Plus I wanted to try to emulate the commencement speech delivered by Bobby and Peter Farrelly in 2007. However since I am not a film director I will not be selecting one of your names from a hat and will not be flying you out of state to be an extra in my upcoming film. It actually happened. Instead, taped to the underside there's an envelope that contains a note from me, a sound level meter as well and there may or may not be a gift card from the bookstore. Please take a minute to reach under your seat and see if there's an envelope. I think it's somewhere over here. If you found the envelope can you hold it up just to make sure it's there? Excellent, excellent. So I need your help envelope holder. Take out the sound level meter and what I'd like to do is to determine or measure the sound level in the tent when the entire audience is clapping. So I'll give you a chance whoever's operating that to turn it on. It's a button that has a circle with a break in it. I'm going to measure it up here as well. Then press the button that's called Max Min because I want to know how loud it gets in here when we clap. Give me a thumbs up when you're ready. Thank you. Oh, thank you for participating. All right. One. So I'd ask the audience to clap on the count of three. I should give that to be clear. One, and by the way I'll give a sign to stop something like this after the end of about five seconds. Okay. One, two, three. Such a nice audience. Clapping right in the middle of my speech. Thank you. I hope we got the measurement. Sometimes uniqueness is subtle and pops up unexpectedly. A few weeks ago I was on a trip to Washington D.C. with my wife and kids. My wife suggested that we visit an exhibit at the National Building Museum called The Beach. Maybe some of you have seen it. It's basically a large ball pit fashioned into what looks like a beach in the large lobby of the museum. The chance to play in a ball pit is uncommon these days, and putting aside what I would say is a reasonable fear of germs in such places. I decided to go all in with several, well, excuse me, a few hundred other people. At the beach, kids and adults alike had huge smiles on their faces. This I sort of expected. What I did not expect was how the exhibit would foster interactions between complete strangers. For example, at one point I found myself near a woman who was holding a young boy who was not smiling. It became clear that she was struggling to stand up in the pit of balls. I asked her if she needed help and she handed the young boy to me, a complete stranger. I held him until she could get her footing. Now it would be easy to go on, but I am content to follow the advice of educational theorist Thomas Gruthers, who said essentially that the job of a teacher is to make themselves obsolete. Think about that. I encourage you to always strive to find, appreciate and tell others the uniqueness of the experiences you have at Roger Williams and after. Oh, and whoever took the SPL measurement, please be brave enough to find me in the School of Engineering Building Room 117. I'll need that measurement for my class. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Thomas. Next I would like to introduce our Student Senate President to give the Student Senate welcome. Matt is from Ashland, Massachusetts. He is a senior political science major and is minoring in economics and management. Matt, President Farish, members of the Board of Trustees, esteemed faculty and staff and most importantly the families and students of the Class of 2019. It is my pleasure to speak to you all today and welcome you to Roger Williams University on behalf of the Student Body. Each year, the Student Body President is invited to share their knowledge and offer some advice for the next four years. I can give you a lot of advice. Call your parents weekly and parents. I'm sorry, but that means I'm going to call you when I need to be picked up for a break. Just letting you know. Save some hot dollars for finals. That is gold. Also, you can't stuff too loads of laundry in the dryer despite the dryer being bigger. Join a sport, club, an organization and this list can continue. But the most important advice I want to offer is not just for the next few years but also for your entire life. It is simply to try new things and challenge yourself. New students, you may ask how do I challenge myself and I can't answer that, sorry. Everyone is unique, so I can't tell you the specifics on how to challenge yourself but you know your comfort zone and I encourage you to step out of it. Take me for an example. I am quiet. I'm an introvert. I hate public speaking. I'm not the one to make a big deal of things. Right now, I'd be perfectly comfortable sitting in my dorm room but I'm here challenging myself to speaking to all of you in the biggest crowd I've never spoken to a crowd this big before. I want to help you make the most out of your career here at Roger Williams University and for the next four years you have the best opportunity in life to try new things while still having a safety net in place. What that means is now is the time to take responsible and calculated risks. Challenge yourself to do new things join new clubs take a class outside of your major and if it turns out it's not your cup of tea you can walk away without serious consequence. Challenging yourself is fun and you will find some address you may never know that you had and what you will take away from taking these risks is learning more about yourself and what you are capable of. At RWU we provide you with plenty of opportunities when I was in your seat a few years ago I could not imagine myself standing up here giving this speech. I went to the involvement fair not knowing what I would do until I stumbled on the student senate table and decided to run based on a sales pitch a senator gave me at that time I ended up winning that election and the experience has greatly transformed me since. After I joined senate I became more and more involved joined a few more clubs and organizations and even assisted with a community service program through our SOAR leadership program. I came out of my shell and I met some of my greatest friends from my involvement and probably 90% of my memories from college will be from my experiences. One last personal example of making the most time up here was to consider how you can gain valuable work experience in your major by doing an internship or participating in a community service through our community partnership program. I applied for an internship this last summer with the Alzheimer's Association and the first thing that my prospective boss asked me at that time was to tell me about your experience with student senate and your involvement. I shared with them my work with the student senate and that I also had worked with a non-profit club called Hawkes for St. Jude that raises and increases awareness for St. Jude's research hospital. I also explained that my experience working with these organizations has piqued my interest in pursuing a masters of public administration with a concentration in non-profits and non-government organizations. Getting involved helped me find my passion and helped me determine my career goals. So I highly encourage you to challenge yourself and to do things that you normally would not do. Take up something new play on an intramural or varsity sport team. Get engaged locally through a service program study abroad in another country participate in an alternative spring break service trip and this list can go on and on. The ancient Egyptians had an interesting idea when it comes to the afterlife. Each person was asked two questions. One, have you found joy in your life? And the second, has your life brought joy to others? I believe you can't bring joy to others unless you find joy in your own life. The only way to find that joy is to challenge yourself and you will find that joy in your life. In closing, allow me to share one of my favorite quotes from the movie Interstellar. Cooper says, we've always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible and we count these moments. These moments when we dare to aim higher to break barriers, to reach for the stars to make the unknown known. We count these moments as our proudest achievements. But we lost all that or perhaps we've just forgotten that we're still pioneers and we've barely begun. That our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us because our destiny lies above us. And you may wonder what this has to do with you. I believe that when you look back on your proudest moments, they will be in those in which you challenge yourself, push yourself and reach for the stars. When I think back to my proudest moment, the first thing that pops into mind is that day that a shy, introverted freshman picked up an election packet at the Student Senate table. And I don't think I'll ever forget that day. So I encourage you to make the most of your career here at Roger Williams University. Ask yourself what can I do, challenge yourself to ask what should I do and get out of your comfort zone and find what brings you joy. Enjoy your first few days here, check out the weeks of welcome events and best of luck with your first semester at RWU. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. It is now my pleasure to ask our Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Andrew Workman to the lectern to give the academic address. Provost Workman. Thank you. Thank you, John. I'd like to join John and all of the people of our platform and the President in welcoming you here to Roger Williams University. It was a difficult choice to make in which college to go to. I think you made the right choice and you'll see that as it unfolds over the next four years. A book that will be read by the entire incoming class, and all of you received that book early in the summer. Have you read it yet? Yes, good. You still have days. You will read that book and it's something that our faculty will be using in their classes and in fact, we'll bring the author of that book. The book is entitled In the Shadow of the Banyan by the day, Ratner. The author of the book will be coming here in October to discuss it with you if you discuss it in your classes. You'll have questions and we'll have a conversation with the author. But it's also something we really want to infuse the coming year academic conversation with. Now, after reading the book this summer, it occurred to me that In the Shadow of the Banyan illustrates in very dramatic fashion two important points to reflect upon as you begin your college career. The first concern is the value of higher education for society as a whole. Now, the Khmer Rouge, the communist group which controlled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, had its aim, the destruction of the old Cambodian society and the creation of an agrarian utopia. To achieve their vision, they emptied the cities, they disbanded or destroyed every organization safe for their own. They divided families. In the end, after four years by the best estimates, it's really hard to get good estimates, they caused the death of about a quarter of the population of Cambodia. It's about 2 million people. Reflect upon that a second. There are about 2,000 people here so multiply that by a thousand. It's a quarter of the population. Now, the Khmer Rouge were fanatics, they were moral monsters, but they were exactly right about one thing. The way to destroy the society is to do what was one of the first things they did. It was to kill educated people. It was to destroy the schools, to shudder the universities. Universities are essential to schools, education is essential to all societies. Universities are essential, I'd say, to modern societies and to free societies. And why is that? Let's reflect on that a little bit. One thing that universities do is they provide information, ways of thinking, technologies that are really essential for all of the kinds of organizations that make a modern society work, whether it be businesses or schools or the military, anything. It's essential to have that core of knowledge, kind of technical skills. But more so universities foster the habits of independent thinking, cultural understanding and something I'll call intellectual humility. Understanding that you don't know everything, that you're not the smartest person in the room always. That your views can be changed by others. I think that a truly educated person has that intellectual humanity and I think it's actually essential to a free society. There'll always be tensions in society. There'll always, I think, be impression and injustice. It's the nature of human society. I don't think we'll ever get it right. But when the aggregate effect, I think, the aggregate effect of a broadly educated population is to create the antithesis of the nightmare society of the Khmer Rouge. Universities are essential to modern society and to free society. Secondly, I want to talk a little bit about reflecting or I think we should reflect on bad days, the days, sorry, ratners journey after she escaped from Cambodia in 1979 because I think it'll help you to frame the benefits of a university education for yourself. By the time she left, she and her mother left the killing field, she was nine years old, it was 1979. She was so terrified that she'd lost her voice. She literally couldn't speak any longer. She began to recover in a United Nations camp in Thailand in 1981. She and her mother were allowed to immigrate to the United States. She's 11 years old when she began learning English and she was ravenous to learn. She had a mind that despite her traumas compelled her to learn. She learned English so well and she excelled at academics so well that by the time she graduated from high school she was a valedictorian. Like you, when she graduated she had the ability to learn. Nonetheless, although she had long since regained the ability to speak I'd say that she hadn't really found her voice in a more grand sense of that term than simply being able to speak. What helped her to find that voice was higher education. She had a scholarship in Tindit Cornell University. She majored in Southeast Asian politics and literature and no doubt she chose that course to understand more of what had happened to her world. What her college education provided was the ability to reflect upon the tragedy that had befallen she and her family in ways beyond the emotions of anger and fear. From political science and history she had learned a context and a theoretical framework from which to understand the larger forces that play in Cambodia. From literature she learned cultural structures of Southeast Asia, the cultural traditions and the structures of Western literary forms. It would take decades of time after her graduation from college and years spent in Cambodia searching her path to create the final manuscript that you have read, or will soon read. But the ability of the day Ratner to think deeply about her experiences and to express herself with depth and elegance to an audience that was fundamentally culturally different from the world that she grew up in her early years in Cambodia I think is fundamentally rooted in higher education. She truly found her voice in higher education. What we hope for you at Roger Williams is that you too will find your voice in the coming four years to help build a strong, free and just society. Thank you very much. Thank you, Provost Workman. It is now time to officially welcome the entering class into each of their respective schools. I will call each of the school deans to the lectern to present their class and we will start with Dean Steven White from the School of Architecture, Art and Historic Preservation. Will the new members of the School of Architecture, Art and Historic please stand. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. Looks like a good group, doesn't it? Welcome to a great community. Please be seated. The Dean of the School of Justice Studies Dr. Stephanie P. Manzi. Will the new members of the School of Justice Studies please stand. Ooh, the front row. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. On behalf of the School of Justice Studies, the faculty and staff, we welcome you to the university and to our family. Thank you. Dean of the School of Engineering, Computing and Construction Management, Dr. Robert Potter. Will the new members of the School of Engineering, Computing and Construction Management please stand. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. Welcome to the school. We look forward to seeing you next week. Dean of the Mario J. Gabelli School of Business, Dr. Susan McTiernan. Good afternoon. Will the new members of the Mario J. Gabelli School of Business please stand. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. The faculty, administration and I extend to you a warm welcome to our community which is focused on your participation and success. We welcome you and we'll see you next week. Please be seated. Dean of the Feinstein College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Robert Eisinger. Good afternoon. Will the new members of the Feinstein College of Arts and Sciences please stand. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. On behalf of the faculty and staff, congratulations. Please be seated. Dean of the School of Education, Dr. Kelly Donnell. Dr. Donnell will remain at the podium to lead us in the Pledge of Academic Integrity after she welcomes the class. Good afternoon. Will the new members of the School of Education please stand. As a symbol of your membership in the university, please don your robes now. We may be small but we're mighty and we're excited to welcome you to the university. Please be seated. I'm pleased to now have the privilege to administer the Pledge of Academic Integrity to our new students. The Pledge embodies a set of ideals that links this institution to those who have come before it all the way back to the colloquia of Socrates, something you'll be studying in the coming months. By embracing it, you commit yourself to pursue academic achievement of the highest standard of which you are possible. Its goal is that we be collegial in the best sense of the word. A community of scholars working in an atmosphere of honesty and integrity. The faculty of Roger Williams University consider the Honor Pledge the foundation of trust that makes this community of learning possible. When you take the pledge you will be welcomed into the academic community but you must be aware that violation of the pledge will bring serious consequences. When you accept this code you pledge yourself to a personal responsibility. You pledge to take responsibility for your actions and decisions. You pledge that you are interested in acquiring knowledge on your own and for its own sake rather than simply as a display of achievement to impress others for a competitive advantage. Finally, you pledge that you want to forge a bond with your professors and with your fellow students based in trust and common pursuit of knowledge and academic integrity. I ask each member of this incoming class to concentrate fully on each word as you promise to adopt and practice the code of conduct. We, the undergraduate students of Roger Williams University, commit ourselves to academic integrity. We promise to pursue the highest ideals of academic life to challenge ourselves with the most rigorous standards to be honest in every academic endeavor to conduct ourselves responsibly and honorably and to assist one another as we live and work together in mutual support. Thank you. Best of luck in your first semester. You may be seated. Thank you, Dean Dinell, and congratulations to our entering class. You know, in May, under this same tent, we graduated an impressive class of students who were engaged in purposeful learning, community engagement, and leadership over their four years. We need everyone in your row and starting in your chair to take their place on campus and establish your own legacy. Students who will co-author and present a paper with faculty members, assist in cutting edge research, participate in providing service and leadership on and off campus, encourage peers to dedicate time to civic engagement in student organizations, obtain demanding internships, proudly represent our athletic teams and study abroad. Because you and your classmates are our future, this is now your university and we encourage you to bring your ideas for improving campus life forward, volunteer to improve what exists or create what is missing. This afternoon at 5 p.m., our residential students begin meetings and activities related to residence life, hall meetings, floor meetings, and together tomorrow with our commuter students, the orientation will continue. Parents, we're going to ask you to depart before 5 o'clock after heartfelt hugs with your student. You may have noticed the residence hall's rooms are small, there's no room for extra beds or for parents to stay over. It's our comfortable way of saying it's time to go. We appreciated having you for lunch this afternoon, but there really isn't room in the dining hall for dinner. Students, please take one moment and stand up, give your parents a wave, and clap for them. They are the reason you are here. Parents, we enthusiastically invite you back to campus October 23 through the 25th for family weekend and homecoming to enjoy a full array of special programs. In the meantime, students, return your folks messages money or packages may follow and reduce their anxiety by sharing what is happening in your life on campus. We thank parents and family members for your presence at Convocation today and wish each student a purposeful academic journey full of learning, friendships and personal development. Thank you very much.