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Howdy!
Thank you for the honor. In thinking about tonight, I have agreed to this quite some
time ago. In thinking about tonight, I have tried to characterize my address to you, be
about you, but also about me. This speech, we can call valedictory. You know the term
valedictorian already, that's the number one person in your class. But the word "valedictory"
refers to a farewell address. It comes from a Latin term "valedictory," which means to
bid farewell to someone. So, this is my valedictory to you and it'll be hard.
It's really about you and always has been. Let's think about Texas A&M's history though.
This university began in 1876. It was a beneficiary at the very beginning, that extraordinary
thing. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln, then the president, signed Morrill Act. Senator Morrill
put together a law that allowed for the federal government to grant to the states lands that
belonged to our government to be sold and the monies from the land used to establish
colleges. Now until that time, almost all of higher education was done privately. The
churches of the world were the principle sources of higher education. There are universities
in existence today over a thousand years after their founding that were put in place by churches.
The problem was that most higher education, unless you wanted to go into the clergy, was
the purview for only of those that had money and had the wealth to afford to a college
that charged money and where they could live in a fairly good condition typically. That's
the way it was until the Morrill Act came along and all the sudden, this nation became
a different kind of nation to the rest of the world in terms of higher education. It
was able to plant around this country universities, now called land-grant universities, based
on the previsions of the Morrill Act. Now a little thing called the Civil War got in
the way of Texas getting a land-grant college right away, they had to serve a little bit
of time before they could do that. But again in the 1870s, legislature created based on
the constitutional provisions in place, this college now we call Texas A&M, at that time
the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas. This place was built based on federal
land being sold and the money from all those lands going into the actual construction and
initial operations of this thing called A&M College of Texas.
The land-grant schools were meant to do something never done before: to provide access to higher
education for those who have not had it before. It was so called "working classes" that were
entitled now to access higher education. I proudly come from a working class family and
I'm sure many of you do as well. As Provost Watson mentioned, I'm a first generation college
student, I was the first in my family to go to college. My father, when he was 13 years
of age, having attended six years in a one-room rural school, was told by his father "it's
time to go to work." So his education stopped at grade six. My dad, as I have learned growing
up with him, was a very intelligent man. But he lacked a formal education beyond sixth
grade. He could read, he could write, do arithmetic, and that was about it. Now again he was intelligent,
he was able to master many skills in his life, and do many great things from my perspective,
but he never made much money. My mother did finish high school at a time when high school
education was at an eleventh grade level, and she then had that much education. But
no one in her family went to college either. So here along comes baby Bowen and from the
age I can barely remember, probably around 3 years of age, I remember my parents talking
about the fact that I was going to go to college. Now, they didn't know what that meant, they
had no experience with it, but they understood it to be one thing, a good thing. They felt
it was a way for me to do better than them, to be able to earn a living at a higher level,
to enjoy things they couldn't enjoy, and they drilled into me from early in my life "you're
going to college" even though they didn't know what that really meant. So I never doubted,
I never questioned that. I never even concerned myself with any alternative, I just knew I
was going to go to college. I won't bore you with my pathway to Texas A&M exactly, but
I ended up here in 1967 as a fish. It was an interesting transition from a high school,
which is quite small; my graduating class had 65 in it. To a place here where we had
almost 10,000 students, this place was huge to me; a huge place to me.
But, I've done well in high school. I finished my class number two in my class and that entitled
me to a tuition scholarship. I thought this is a great thing here; my tuition is paid,
college is free. Well as you've learned, tuition is not the only cost, so as I figured it out
over the course of a few months after my admission to Texas A&M, I realized this wasn't going
to be easy. Even though my tuition was covered and I must tell you, it was $50 a semester,
think about that, nothing else was. So there were fees, I had to pay for Kyle Field after
all; that's true. There were fees, textbooks, living expenses not covered by my tuition
scholarships. So my dad, my mother, and I talked about this and it wasn't easy. There
was no federally guaranteed loan program back then. There was really no way to access money
unless you borrowed it under other circumstanced from a bank to be able to get more access
to cash to be able to pay the bills here. So I resigned myself already to taking a year
off between high school and college to work and try to earn money to really pay for rest
of the costs for my education here. Then one day a magic thing happened. I got another
letter from Texas A&M, about two months or so after my first letter came, saying "you
know in your application you mentioned you wanted to major in an 'easy' subject called
physics and it so happens that our Department of Physics at Texas A&M has two things for
you; first of all a former student passed away a few years ago and in his will he left
money to provide a scholarship for a physics student, we want you to have that. Secondly,
we want to offer you a 20/hr per week part-time job in our department." I went from having
only tuition money and nothing else, to having a full ride scholarship, and also having a
20/hr per week job that paid about 90 cents an hour. That was a lot of money to me so
I could actually afford gasoline and a date occasionally. So it was really an extraordinary
transition form worrying about how I can do this, this thing called college financially,
to having it taken care of for me.
I tell you all this because I want you to understand that to me, access, access to our
education is paramount. No one should be denied access because they can't pay. How to make
that happen is complicated. Right now I can tell you that 80% of you have some form of
financial aid being made available to you here at Texas A&M, so you're not alone. Most
of you have something; a grant, a scholarship, a part-time job provided by the university's
work-study program, or heaven forbid a loan. You got something, and that's enabling you
and your family to make this all possible. So to me, access is very important because
it goes all the way back to me personally. I didn't have any, I thought, for a while.
But I did get it and it made a lot of difference for me.
What else did it teach me? Where did this other scholarship come from? It came from
a former student. What does that teach us? Someone I never met, who died before I got
here, cared enough for me, that he provided money for me, think about that. A man I never
met enabled me to go to school here. It taught me about sever things. That taught me about
philanthropy, about giving back in spite of not having any value back to me. So it was
a great lesson to me in sever things, again, about philanthropy, giving back, but also
about the loyalty and love of Aggies. So that's where I was. Now, I got here, I went to a
really small high school, I was not really prepared for college, and so the first semester
was a bit of a struggle. Freshman chemistry, especially, was a struggle. My first tests
came along, I made a 25, the class average was 14, and that wasn't much fun. Made an
A in the class ultimately, but I was scared to death. Very scared to death that I wasn't
going to make it through the class, but I did. So I worked hard, I had friends who helped
me, we studied together, we worked hard together. That taught me about the loyalty and the Aggies
helping Aggies mentality of this institution. So we had study groups, we worked hard together,
and helped each other get through hard assignments, test preparation, and the agony and stress
of taking a test, and not getting a so good grade occasionally. Those are all things I
learned my first semester here at Texas A&M. I brought something with me and I realized
fairly early in my career here I had something many didn't have.
Back to my father; my father again was not educated, he was intelligent, but he also
had a gift. His gift was relationships. We were in a small like 2,000 people at that
time and my dad knew everyone and they all knew him. He was a pretty beloved person.
He was equally at home with a person who was his level, which is very low income, and the
few people in town like the lawyer, the doctor, and maybe a banker, or a business person that
had some money. He was conversing with them all. He could meet anyone and within a minute
connect to them. He would find something in common with them. I grew up as an only child
and he was the only role model I had in a family as an adult male. I assumed all people
could do that. Everybody could walk up to anybody and introduce themselves and within
a minute make a connection. That's not common quite frankly, it's not common. So again I
was given a benefit early in my life that I didn't really appreciate for quite a while,
that I thought everyone could make friends, could build relationships with almost anybody
else. I came here with that background and that helped me immediately to be able to connect
to anybody I talked to in my classes, among my fellow students, my professors, and staff
here at Texas A&M. I realized fairly quickly that this wasn't a common, but that's something
I've used my entire life now. In fact, I think relationships are the currency of life, think
about that. All of you have relationships; you have family relationships, you have friends,
many different kinds, and those are relationships you now built over some period of time perhaps
and they are good things mostly for you. Those things are things that really give you access
to a full and varied life that gives you fulfillment, that gives you joy, sometimes a little bit
of pain, but it does work for you. We all have those and I have many of them. I have
hundreds, even thousands of relationships I have built that I extremely value for. These
things have made my life rich, interesting, and rewarding in all types of ways. So think
about relationships as something you need to work on. Again, my dad had a gift, I can't
say I inherited it, but I saw it and adopted it, and it works for me very well. You gotta
find your way too, because that's your key to life. Your key to success; being able to
build relationships and have it work for you and the other person in a way that helps you
both. That's something very precious and very valuable.
Now let's turn your attention to you in particular. I talked about a few things about where I
came from and I hope you find some connections there to me, relationships with me, but let's
talk about you more specifically. First of all, how did you get here? Now some of you
were top 10% of your high school class and so the law of Texas says you're here if you
want to be, congratulations to you. A few of you did exceptionally well on your SAT
or ACT test and you had a perfect class standing and you were admitted automatically. But some
of you like me, before being accepted went through a review process. That review process
is very interesting to me. You are reviewed in two different dimensions as you applied
to Texas A&M. You were reviewed based on the objective criteria on your record; that is
your test scores, your high school grade point average, your class standing, all those things
go into an objective rating of your academic success in high school. But we also rate you
in a different way at the same time. We rate you subjectively on things like where you
spent your time? Were you in organizations? Did you volunteer your time? Did you play
a sport? Do you do music? And so on. We call this subjective because it's not quantifiable,
but it gives something very important. It tells us, will you fit at Texas A&M? So our
goal for you as a person being admitted is that you be successful here academically,
but also in other ways too. That you truly fit this university and it fits you. So I
find that holistic review process to be very valuable, because it gives some weighting
to things which aren't just tests, aren't just grades, but really about you, who you
are, and what choices you made with your life. That to me is a good measure of how well you'll
do here at Texas A&M and especially how you'll do when you graduate and go out of here as
an Aggie, and make your way in the world.
When you first come here, perhaps your first visit; that's very important. Do you realize
that the majority, in fact over 90% of those who visit Texas A&M for the first time as
a potential place to go to school make the choice to come here. That tells you what this
campus is all about. When you walk on this campus as a stranger, you don't leave that
way. You come here and you find people will help you find the place you need to go. You'll
meet a young man or woman who is a student here and they'll take you on a tour and the
love they have for A&M comes spilling out. By the time you get through the day, you make
that decision; "I want to be here." Now, time rolls on, you're admitted, and you show up
to Fish Camp or Impact, or both, and so starts a very, very good integration process. The
vast majority of our freshman here go to Fish Camp or Impact or both and those give you
a true starting place here at A&M, that's like any other, because you know what happens
there. You may come in as a stranger but you leave with a hundred plus friends, don't you?
They aren't friends for the moment, but they're friends for the long haul. You see them when
you arrive here for the first day of class and you integrate with them, and you hang
out with them, and it makes your life rich because the relationships you have there are
strong. That's part of becoming an Aggie isn't it? You find other things here to do, you
find an organization, maybe you go to a Flow. You work through over a couple of years perhaps
the processes to become a leader in an organization and that gives you great value too, which
I'll come back to in just a minute. But along the way besides those Fish Camp and Impact
friends you've made, you make other friends here. Those friendships are deep and enduring
as well. They're done day in and day out here, aren't they? Again, relationships, relationships,
relationships... So valuable to you. You can't help but be infected after a while that thing
we call the Aggie Spirit. You know it, I know it. You learn right away that Aggies help
Aggies. You learn about entrepreneurship, about being able to capture ideas and translate
them to action. That's part of being an Aggie as well. You have this sort of can-do spirit
that develops alongside of you that helps you that helps you tackle seemingly impossible
tasks to help get them done. You never ask what's in it for me, but you ask how I can
help. I mention this to you because this is a very, very important thing about your future.
When you leave Texas A&M as a graduate and start your professional career, you'll find
people want this kind of attitude. They want you to show up to work the first day and not
say how big is my office, how big is my paycheck, how long are my breaks, but they want to hear
you say what can I do for you? How can I help this company or this organization my first
day? How can I make a difference? That's not a common attitude today, but it's the way
Aggies are. Every time we ask employers of our graduates what they like about us, they
talk about the obvious things; that you have a good education, but they also talk about
the attitude, the spirit that fits their company, their organization, and is highly valued.
Let's talk through very quickly our core values, I'll talk about them just a bit about how
they apply to you, not today but tomorrow after you graduate and go onto the next step
in your life. The core value "Excellence" is pretty clear isn't it? You want to do your
best in everything you're asked to do, in everything you volunteered to do. Now excellence
is not perfection, remember that. One of t he key phrases I use in my life is this: "Perfection
is the enemy of success. If you try to do it perfectly, you'll never get there." So,
excellence means you do your very best, you don't necessarily do things perfectly; that's
my motto. I'm not perfect, I have flaws, I make mistakes all the time. But I do my very
best everyday and that's all I can ask anybody. So think about excellence not again as perfection,
which really is not a way to be successful. Think about it as being again, who you are,
that you will give whatever you can, your very best, to those people that volunteer
to work for, or your work for in terms of your profession for your living.
Leadership is something we talk a lot about here at A&M. There are kinds of ways to get
it. You can join the Corps of Cadets. Leadership is built in, but that's not the only way to
do it. I've already mentioned organizations, haven't I? We have over 900 of them here.
You have the opportunity everyday to be a leader in a student-lead organization. It
is the best laboratory in the world for sharpening your leadership skills. You can read about
leadership, take courses, listen to talks about it like mine right now, but until you
do it, you won't know really what you can or will you want to do it. So, get engaged
in an organization here as soon as you possibly can, become a leader, you've all done that.
That leadership opportunity here is extraordinarily valuable to you. I tell people all the time,
maybe you've heard this from me at organizations where I have spoken about leadership, that
leading is always tough, but most leadership roles in the world have authority. You may
work at a company where there is a manager role you play and you have people you manage
and they need to follow your direction, if they don't, there are consequences. They may
not get promotions, they may get fired, they may not get raises. So you have ways to really
tell people they're not following your leadership. The military it's even cleaner. If you fail
to follow the instructions of an officer who's ordering you in some way, there are serious
consequences of that. But think about this, here, every organization you're apart of is
voluntary organization. That means the people that are in it, can leave. Now, they may be
embarrassed for a moment walking out the door, but once they're gone, they're gone. I think
leadership here, in an organization the type you belong to, is the hardest leadership there
ever can be, because you have to know authority. All you have is yourself. All you have is
leading by example. All you have is motivational skills. All you have is persuasion; you don't
have any power. If you can lead in that condition, guess what? You can lead anywhere, anywhere,
and people pay you for that, they'll pay you well for that. So I hope all of you have taken
advantage of the fact that you are at a place where leadership opportunities are bound and
you had the chance to become a leader here. Now you can translate that immediately to
your future. It will be so valuable not just to you, but to those you work for and with.
Loyalty, we're certainly loyal to each other, we're loyal to our university, we're loyal
to our state, our nation, but loyalty is a funny thing. Loyalty is to be earned, and
not blind. If you're blindly loyal to something, you can be lead in the wrong direction, lead
astray quickly. Loyalty is a gift you should give someone else once they've earned it.
Loyalty is a gift you should give an organization once you understand it and they've earned
it. So again, to me, loyalty is earned, it's not something you give away without it having
been earned from you. Keep that in mind, because it will send you in good stand as you get
involved with others and organizations as well.
Respect is a core value as well here at Texas A&M. I often times use the word "respect"
in the context of appreciating diversity here at Texas A&M, it certainly works there pretty
well. The main thing when I think of respect is we owe it to everyone to give them benefits,
to give them a chance to explain who they are, what they think, and what they believe,
and not to shut our minds off at the first word they utter. So all we're asking about
the word respect is, that you be open minded to others who may not think the way you are
because they come from other places that you came from. A&M is somewhat homogeneous, but
not totally homogenous. We have a diverse student body. We have a diverse population
of staff and faculty here at Texas A&M, and guess what? We're the richer for it. The diversity
here gives us the richness, a flavor; it's like putting seasoning in a dish that you
eat, it makes it taste better. It gives you contrast, it gives you things that you wouldn't
get any other way. So I hope all of you while you are here cherish the fact that you can
meet people here that you wouldn't meet people in your home town. Get to be friends with
people you would never have seen anywhere else. Take advantage of that both in terms
of your enrichment, but also the reverse enrichment you gave to them.
Selfless service, once again, a totally, totally, Aggie core value. Just a little anecdote here
as a student in the 60s, you'll be thinking about this in your own cases as well, Spring
break was a really welcomed thing for me. We've been grinding hard through the Spring
semester, it was great to have a week off to go to South Padre, drink a little beer,
and have a little fun. You know what I've seen here in my time here at Texas A&M over
the last decade or so, how many of you don't do that anymore. You choose to go someplace
and drill a water well for a place with no clean water. You choose to go build a house
for someone that doesn't have a house. You choose to go to New York City and help someone
that Hurricane Sandy destroyed their home love. That's what I see every year more and
more here. You're choosing not to go just have fun. You're choosing to take the time
given to go do something good. That I find an an incredibly good example of selfless
service. I thank you for doing those kinds of things. The good news is that you have
a whole lifetime ahead of you to do the same thing. As you leave here, establish yourself
else where, be that kind of person that you were here and that community. Be someone who
gives back without expecting anything in return. Be someone that helps others who are less
fortunate then you. Be someone who leads those efforts. Aggies do that and they do it well.
Now if you counted these off, I've listed five of them so far and normally I name them
by alphabetical order, but I've left one out haven't I? Which one did I leave out? Integrity.
I saved it for last, because integrity is something that is very, very special. Integrity
is a very valuable, a very, very valuable core aspect that you bring to the table. The
problem with integrity though, is it's very fragile. If you lose it, if you ever give
it up, you may never get it back again. So treat it that way, treat it as a most precious
asset. Something that you treasure and hold next to your soul. Something that you use
everyday with those around you by telling the truth and being honest. By never, ever,
misleading someone. By doing that, you will be respected. You will be treasured by them,
because they know that you can be trusted. The moment you do not act with integrity,
and maybe the first few times it's not discovered right away, but ultimately it will be discovered,
you lost something you cannot regain. So think about that and treasure integrity above all.
Now, let me turn a bit back onto myself for a moment here. You know, as was said by Provost
Watson, that I'm going to transition into a new part of my life along with my wife Karin.
It's I think, going to be a good thing for me and a good thing for the place I'm going.
Back in July of this year, I announced to all of you that I would be leaving the presidency
on January 13th of next year. At that time, it was clear to me that the path would be
forward. I've been higher education for almost 40 years. Much of that time I spent as a teacher,
a researcher, and a person providing service to my institution, my profession, and my community.
So I saw that as a pathway for me. A careful pathway, one that I would be enjoy with a
somewhat less intense life I've had the last several years and one that would allow me
to do things that I haven't been able to do for quite a while that I enjoy a lot. But
I thought about that over the last several months and began my process to transition
ultimately back into the faculty at full time capacity and even went and bought a house
in the area to move into soon, began to make plans in the future that way. Then just a
few weeks ago, something else came along. An opportunity I had not expected, an opportunity
to serve elsewhere in a similar capacity to my role here at Texas A&M. I had to immediately
begin to weight what I had chosen as a pathway in July versus what I had in front of me in
October. The difference was very simple; it was a matter of whether I wanted to interact
with, to serve you well, students in my classes, and my research laboratory. Whether I wanted
to continue interacting at a larger scale with literally thousands of you as I have
for many years here at Texas A&M. So my wife and I discussed this quite a bit. It wasn't
an easy decision to make, but ultimately just a short time ago I made the decision to take
the offer at a university outside of Texas to become their leader. I feel good about
that, because I have a chance to continue what I've done here for you. I have a chance
to serve a student body, not quite as big as yours, but almost as big as yours, in the
same way I have served you over the last few years at Texas A&M. There's life in the body
yet, there is joy in the body yet to begin from interacting with you on a large scale,
so I've chosen to do that. But last week in Missouri when I was announced as the next
chancellor of the University of Missouri at Columbia, I was asked by somebody, "well how
long will you do this job?" and I said "well, I will do it as long as I am capable of doing
it well, as long as I am allowed to do it by the board there, because I'm at a will
to employ as I am here at Texas A&M." But I said "one thing is for sure, I'm going back
to Aggieland to die" and I meant that, not right away of course. This will always be
home to us. My wife and I will spend time in Missouri and enjoy that venue, serving
students there. Doing what we can as we did here at Texas A&M, but at some point in the
future, not that far away I'm sure, we'll be done with that, it'll be all I can give,
and I'll come back here to Aggieland not to die right away, but of course to live for
a time, and be buried inside of Kyle Field. What more can I ask for?
Let me leave you with one simple thing. I say this every year at convocation whether
I'm the speaker or not, so this is what you always get from me. Think about what you're
inheriting tomorrow. You're going to cross the stage tomorrow, I will hand you a tube,
and I hope there's a diploma inside of that tube for you. We're checking right now. But,
what is that? It's a piece of paper. That piece of paper says you've done certain things
here at Texas A&M. It says the faculty have evaluated you and found you to be okay. That
you know certain things, that you can do certain kinds of things. That's what the diploma says
at least in one way, but it says something else. On top of the diploma, there is a title.
It says Texas A&M University, that's our brand. So what you're getting from this university
tomorrow is not just a piece of paper, which certifies you completed certain courses here
at Texas A&M. It says you're baring the brand of Texas A&M. Now what's the value of a brand?
What's the value of Coca-Cola? Nike? What's the value of those? How is it established?
The brand is out there in your case, because of those that became before you. Almost 400,000
people have graduated from Texas A&M. They have done good things, they have been leaders,
they have been successful, they have solved problems, they have helped others. They have
built a brand, you inherited. So in the act across the stage tomorrow, you inherit a very,
very valuable thing. A brand built up by 400,000 people that became before you. Now what's
your response to that? Your job then, is to make the brand even better. So the charge
is for you to go out tomorrow after you get your diploma and day one, build the brand.
Thanks and Gig 'em.