A Message From The President

This commencement weekend marks a turning point in your life. UB is proud to celebrate the completion of your studies here and to wish you the best of new challenges and opportunities.

We are also at a turning point for the University at Buffalo, as we conclude our two-year celebration of UB's 151st anniversary. In fact, this is an era of change for the entire enterprise of higher education‹an enterprise nearly a thousand years old.

The monasteries of medieval Europe, where modern universities have their roots, were centers of knowledge, sheltered from the turmoil of the world around them and from change. But the world did change. As new trade routes brought new ideas from the Arab world, Greece, and China‹Europe's first multicultural moment‹a broader interest in learning arose, and the clergy founded schools.

Some of these‹at Salerno, Bologna, Paris, and Oxford‹attracted students from across Europe, and were chartered as universities in the 11th and 12th centuries. Students at these universities were "bachelors" who completed basic studies to become candidates for the Master of Arts degree, a license to teach. Some also undertook advanced studies to earn the philosophiae doctor, or doctor of philosophy, the origin of our modern Ph.D.

As the future leaders of Europe's rising cities increasingly required the best of educations, the privileged classes gained access to universities. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century and the increasing dissemination of knowledge in national languages also challenged the former intellectual isolation of the cloisters.

The legacies of these early universities‹including the degrees we award and the robes and ceremonies of commencement‹are still part of university life. At the same time, society and its universities today face social, economic, and cultural change even more sweeping than that which first gave rise to universities.

Just as the travels of medieval merchants opened new challenges for European culture, so today our society is challenged to compete in a global marketplace. Universities today must look beyond Europe's cultural traditions in order to offer students the wide-ranging education that makes international community possible. We strive to offer this breadth of preparation at UB and hope you have made the most of it.

In medieval universities, scholars were charged primarily with reproducing traditional knowledge. Today, universities also add to knowledge. UB faculty, for example, are creating better therapies for stroke; new superconducting materials; new ways to understand, deal with, and prevent domestic violence; and Internet resources for poetry, poetics, and literary discourse. We hope that your time at UB has given you a greater sense of your own potential to contribute to such advances and to the betterment of the world.

Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press changed the way knowledge was shared, the information superhighway challenges the way we transmit knowledge. Twenty years ago, about a hundred computers were connected to the Internet. Today, there are over 13 million.

Universities not only help to build this information superhighway, but must also teach students to navigate it in their careers and lives. During the medieval information explosion, universities guaranteed teachers' credentials by granting degrees. The degree conferred on you this weekend not only testifies to your skills, but also represents your ability to analyze and evaluate. We hope you will use that ability assiduously in the lifelong process of learning.

Medieval universities were accessible at first primarily to the clergy, then later to the privileged classes. Through publicly funded universities like UB, America has opened educational opportunity to people from all classes and backgrounds. UB takes special pride in providing broad access to educational excellence. We hope that you leave us with an appreciation of the value of this opportunity, and a strong commitment to helping preserve it for others.

As you step forward to new stages of your life, all of us confront change even more sweeping than that which ushered in Europe's renaissance; all of us are facing both challenge and opportunity. You will have great responsibilities, but your tools and understandings for making change wisely are better than those of any previous generation.

We who have known you, taught you, and learned from you here know that you will change the world, with every step you take. You must also help us to change UB. Come back to us as leaders, and help us to extend the adventure of the future to the generations that come after you.

The University at Buffalo congratulates you. We hope you will remember UB with all the pride and affection that we have in you.

Sincerely,
William R. Greiner