Dr. William Craft, President of Concordia College, addressed UIC students at the High Table Dinner on November 14 and gave them his words of encouragement. He suggested that students should actively pursue the "3Cs"-competence, creativity and character- and dare to dream big to thrive as professionals, citizens and human beings after graduation.
Dr. Craft also brought greetings from UIC students, Yitong Duan and Shenshen Xu, who are studying this semester at Concordia and whom he has had the privilege to meet.
His theme of the evening was the "Journey of discovery: Learning for whole life." It is a theme that Dr. Craft had taken up in part because of the commitment that UIC has to Whole Person Education, but also because it accords with his experience in liberal arts colleges for more than thirty years.
He began by recalling his first semester as president of Concordia: there was one evening when the college invited four distinguished graduates to a dinner to receive awards for their lifetime achievements.
One became the White House translator on the "hotline" to Moscow during the Reagan administration, who was present as the Berlin Wall came down; one established rules and standards for medical laboratory work that has since saved human lives.
One was assigned to protect U.S. Presidents and was the one who personally threw himself over President and First Lady Kennedy to shield them after the first shots were fired in 1963; and the last and oldest one became an opera singer in England.
None of the four honorees had ever imagined that they would be invited to the congregation nor did they know how their lives would unfold when they were as young as the students at Concordia.
"Whatever you may imagine your future will be, you do not know how your life will unfold." Dr. Craft said to the audience. He then raised an interesting question: how should you, students, spend these college years? How can you prepare for a future?"
Dr. Craft's theme of the evening was "Journey of discovery: Learning for whole life."
Dr. William Craft suggests that students pursue three things during their undergraduate years, and that they pursue them because they will need them all to thrive as professionals, citizens and human beings after graduation.
"These three are competence, creativity and character." He continued, here at UIC, students are privileged to have the chance to develop the foundational competencies of the liberal arts: to think critically, to communicate clearly and persuasively, and to see demanding challenges through to a successful end.
When speaking of creativity, Dr. Craft stated that it is one of the key "graduate attitudes" for UIC students: "Creativity is a serious endeavor, but we can learn it though play." "True play involves crossing borders into strange worlds; it involves trying out different ideas, even at the risk of failure; and it involves fully taking the time to see things and to discern the connections between things that others have thought of as unrelated."
Students hearkening Dr. Craft's word of encouragements.
"You can dream big dreams". Dr. Craft explained the last element by sharing a story of a recent graduate from Concordia with the audience at the High Table Dinner.
"She came from a very poor family in Haiti and she was funded to be able to enroll and graduate from Concordia with a science degree. The girl then returned to her home country as a nurse and as a teacher."
"In only a few years, she set about raising funds so that more than 200 radically impoverished children in Haiti could go to school."
When she visited Dr. Craft, she told him that university had given her the character to "dream bigger dreams".
"You can build your competence, creativity, and character." Dr. Craft concluded, "The world needs dreams. It needs you."
Editor: Sze Ying Cheong
Photographer: Jihong Wang, Anming Liu
(from MPRO, with special thanks to the ELC and IJ Programme)
