Welcome to the University of Maine at Fort Kent. You have chosen to pursue your education with us, and we are grateful. What do we wish for you as you begin your education here at UMFK? What do we expect you to learn?

In the broadest sense, we will help you to think and to communicate - think and communicate. Breaking that down a bit into more specific goals, I would highlight six objectives:

1. How to think for yourself and to act on your knowledge.
2. To understand and accept your responsibility for your actions.
3. To analyze and critique facts and ideas.
4. To calculate and understand the meaning of numbers.
5. To read critically and write effectively.
6. To evaluate and prioritize data.

In summarizing the challenge to higher education, Russell Edgerton, then President of the American Association for Higher Education said it this way:

" ...higher education needs to move from instructing students about things (covering subjects) to helping students learn how to do things (complex abilities) and the deeper levels of knowledge we call understanding and judgement....Students learn about things by listening. They learn how to do things by doing them. They learn about understanding and judgement through immersion and intense encounters, being in the play rather than just reading it."

Where will your growth and educational development take place? Certainly in the classroom where you will exchange and defend ideas with faculty and peers, but also in your residence and commuting experience, with friends working together on projects, relaxing over a cup of coffee, governing yourselves within this community, on the athletic fields, and at home with family and friends. In this process you will come to define yourself to the world and hopefully to better understand yourself as well.

Let's take a quick look at the world in which you will pursue your lifetime goals. To say it will be quite different from the world of my generation is to restate a truth as old as time itself. The world is and always has been changing. In 1988 Professor Samuel Hynes of Princeton University authored a popular book entitled "Flights of Passage, Reflections of a World War II Aviator." The opening line is beautiful - the Preface begins, "Every generation is a secret society." He goes on, "The secret that my generation - the one that came of age during the Second World War - shared was simply the war itself.

If you wish to get a glimpse of what the world holds for your generation, I encourage you to read "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman. Friedman describes a connected competitive technologically empowered global economy in which you will live your lives and pursue your own life-goals. His overarching theme is the impact of technology and communications on the global economy - but an important sub-theme is the enormous power these factors bring to the individual. Getting published, starting a business, contributing to major social change were once activities reserved for the very few and the very fortunate. Already we see example after example of people with good ideas who are accomplishing such feats with minimal resources virtually on their own. Just one example is the case of Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, the two young men who created MySpace.com.

As a result, the opportunities that will be available to you are truly extraordinary. But you will have to stay smart and forward looking. In every situation you will have to look ahead and prepare yourself for the next level of performance. Just as it will be important to you here at this university, you will throughout your life, have to be constantly aware of where you are, and where you want to be. To paraphrase Thomas Friedman, you will have to opt for the only survival strategy that works, a shovel, not a wall. You will have to dig inside yourself for your real core competency.

It is our duty to prepare you to compete and to thrive in that emerging world. It is important for us to start by pointing out that it will be very different and to explain how it will differ from the world of your parents. For my parents, the goal of the university was to prepare graduates for that initial job with a major employer. Your career would then unfold and be directed by that corporation or organization literally through the rest of your lifetime. Today, the role of the employer, much like that of the university is to provide opportunities for you (during the time they are in business and you are with them) to make yourself more employable through each step of your career. You will make many career and job changes during your lifetime, some will be your choice and in some cases businesses will come and go. For your career, you will be and must be the director of the production. You will be the chief architect - no one else.

Today, you are beginning an important step in your lifelong journey of learning and personal development. We are glad you are here. Hone your skills and develop your goals. We welcome you as members of this academic community and we pledge our support to you. Bienvenue et bon chance!