2009 Admission Preview Days Welcome
- President Pelton welcomed prospective students and their families to campus during two Preview Days in 2009.
But first, and foremost, I wish to congratulate you on your admittance to Willamette. As Willamette's national reputation and selectivity continues to grow at a rapid pace, this represents a notable achievement. In fact, our applications have increased by an average of 30 percent per year over the past decade, reflecting the standards of excellence that each of you represents.
No doubt you are among the high-fliers in your high school class - members of National Honor Society, National Merit scholars, student body presidents, team captains and MVPs, the leading ladies and men in school plays and first-chair cellists and trumpet players.
These attributes tell me many things about you.
You undoubtedly possess a quick and curious mind, the kind of person who will thrive in an undergraduate environment that provides multiple and varied opportunities: Opportunities for discourse, engagement with the sciences, the humanities and the arts, undergraduate research. Opportunities for close interactions and connections with committed and brilliant faculty who truly love teaching.
Opportunities for learning experiences both inside and outside the classroom that will transform you from student into thinker, creator and leader.
And what exactly are we offering?
Unparalleled excellence in teaching: With a 10-to-one student to faculty ratio, Willamette University is recognized nationally for its commitment to teaching. Each year, the Carnegie Foundation and the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education names one Professor of the Year from each state, and the Oregon Professor of the Year has been a member of the Willamette faculty nine times in the past eighteen years.
Academic achievement: Our students live and learn in an environment of intellectual rigor. An academically gifted student body invigorates campus life with intellectual liveliness.
Willamette graduates go on to do great things: study at the London School of Economics, Harvard Divinity School, MIT and Columbia University; join the Peace Corps; and begin careers at Nike Corporation, Intel, Microsoft, Columbia Sportswear and the White House.
They are entrepreneurs, artists, writers, teachers and scientists; they are elected to the Oregon legislature, the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.
A Willamette education engages the fullness of each student's potential as a leader and shaper of society, so our students are rigorously prepared for life after Willamette - for a career of meaningful work, or for graduate and professional degree programs at the nation's finest graduate schools, or both.
Willamette values diversity: We currently have one of the most diverse undergraduate student populations in the region, with 19 percent international and multicultural students, and Willamette University welcomes approximately 200 international students to campus each year.
A global perspective: Approximately one-half the junior class travels abroad annually. Plus, each year, Tokyo International University of America, located just across the street from the main campus footprint, integrates students and faculty from Japan, China, Korea and other Pacific Rim countries into the Willamette campus community, to live and learn side-by-side with Willamette students. For students interested in Asia and the Pacific Rim, this is a virtually unparalleled opportunity.
Experiential learning and service to others: Philanthropy is an integral part of the Willamette University culture, emphasized by our school motto, "Not unto ourselves alone are we born."
At Willamette, service to humanity is not an afterthought or an avocation, but a distinctive attribute of our essential historic character that is displayed in the activities of our students, faculty, alumni and staff. Willamette students provide more than 65,000 hours of volunteerism to the Salem community each year.
Having a campus within a stone's throw of the state Capitol affords fantastic opportunities for civic engagement in the form of student internships in politics and public policy. In fact, in the 2007 legislative assembly, all but a handful of the fifty-five legislative interns were Willamette students.
Furthermore, with 27 alumni currently serving in the Peace Corps, Willamette was ranked third in the nation in 2008 on the list of colleges and universities with alumni on Peace Corps assignments, with a grand total of 275 Willamette Peace Corps volunteers since the program's inception in 1961.
Our commitment to modeling our core values of excellence, achievement and service, to creating a community that models the kind of behaviors and values we would like to see the world emulate, achieved national recognition last September when the National Wildlife Federation named Willamette University as the number one college campus in the nation for incorporating principles of sustainability and conservation into its curriculum and day-to-day business practices and operations.
Willamette cultivates leaders by connecting students to the world around them, challenging them to think critically. Our five Centers of Excellence - the Center for Asian Studies; the Center for Governance and Public Policy Research; the Center for Religion, Law and Democracy; the Center for Ancient Studies and Archaeology; and the Center for Sustainable Communities - foster and support academic programming and collaborative research opportunities for faculty and students, greatly enriching the intellectual life of this campus.
To the parents present today, who are probably both as curious and as unnerved about the college search as the students are, I want to take a moment to recognize the reality of these difficult economic times.
In response to today's shifting economic environment, Willamette University has created a financing option to help families manage tuition expenses, called the Scholar Achievement Loan Forgiveness Program.
Beginning this fall, Willamette will make available annual interest-free loans to students whose financial circumstances have been adversely impacted by the economic crisis. Please note that this assistance is in addition to whatever financial aid the student is already receiving.
These loans will be forgiven if a student maintains a minimum 3.0 grade point average during the year in which he or she receives the loan, and if he or she graduates in four years or less from Willamette. If you would like more information about the Scholar Achievement Loan Forgiveness Program, contact our Office of Admissions or consult Financial Aid staff.
Willamette's graduates have applied what they have learned at Willamette with idealism, confidence, moral awareness and conviction, a commitment to the public good and to those wise restraints that make us free.
We share the sentiment expressed in Book I of Plato's Republic that "if you ask what is the good of education in general, the answer is easy; that education makes good men [and women] and that good men [and women] act nobly."
One of our national scholars put it this way: "The experiences I've had at Willamette have done more than simply accrue credits toward an eventual diploma. They have played a major role in forming who I am - and who I'll become."
"Who am I?" "Who will I become?" Are these not the fundamental questions of human existence that each person must confront over the course of his or her life? Though they might not know it when they arrived here, these are indeed the questions that many young people on the brink of adulthood come to Willamette to pursue.
An academic environment that ignites intellectual curiosity, then tended and nurtured by a caring and attentive university, fosters in our students a life-long love of learning.
Willamette is an intellectual community, not merely a congregation of individuals devoted to self-cultivation alone. We seek to understand our connectivity to social and political forms, to ideas of good and evil, to natural laws, to the life-sustaining elements of the earth, to the life sciences and other forms of human expression and contemplation. We appreciate and create beauty. We seek a more complete knowledge of our place in and relation to cultures not our own and to life forms that exist beyond the earth itself.
It is in this sense that we educate our students - not only to achieve success in their post-Willamette endeavors, in graduate school and careers, but to serve humanity.
A few years ago I received a letter from a parent telling me about her daughter's Willamette experience. The mother wrote, "I have watched Jaime grow into a strong, independent and extremely confident young woman. ... A university can prepare one for a profession, but a true success is when a school can help prepare one for life."
"What I remember best about Willamette," said an alumnus, "Is that I really learned to think for myself."
Willamette is the place where students take their earliest steps down the paths to their future, to the person each was meant to be, the people who will solve the problems and change the world.
This is the essence of a liberal arts education at Willamette. This is what makes Willamette a place of distinction, an enduring place of excellence.
Of course, there are other perspectives to consider.
I once asked a prospective student who had traveled from Colorado for a campus visit, how he planned to make this most crucial decision. He was a talented athlete and musician and a high achiever, graduating number one in his high school class, near-perfect SAT scores, a 4.0 GPA and impressive array of co-curricular achievements. He was every college admissions counselor's dream-come-true. I asked him, "How will you make your decision, what are you looking for in an undergraduate college experience?"
He thought for a moment, and then looked at me and thought a moment longer.
"Weather," he said at last. "Can't be too hot."
Well, there you go.
Whatever criteria you plan to apply to this decision, I urge you to seek out a university that will challenge, excite and confound you.
And keep in mind that Willamette's temperate climate is very pleasant most days of the year.
Thank you for your interest in Willamette University and good luck.