Good evening, everyone.
My name is Dean Pribbenow, and it is my pleasure to serve as the 17th President of Millikin University. I am delighted to welcome you to the 2025 Opening Convocation, which is one of Millikin’s most beloved observances and formally celebrates the arrival of a new academic year. As we begin the ceremony this evening, I would like to extend an extra-special welcome to our new and returning international students. We have 34 students representing 21 different countries at the University this year, and the flags of their home countries were proudly flown this evening as part of our processional. Students, your presence enriches our community, and we are grateful that you have chosen to add your voices to the Millikin story. Everyone, please join me in giving a warm welcome to our new and returning international students.
Traditions in our lives are important, and this tradition — Convocation — signals your joining the Millikin University community. Convocation is, in fact, rooted in centuries of higher education tradition — faculty in academic regalia, a processional set to music, words of welcome from faculty, students and administration. But I’d love us to remember that the heart of this tradition is not found in the particulars of the ceremony itself, but in the sense of community thatit creates. Tonight, we come together to gather our newest students into the fold, as they join our family of teachers and learners, artists and athletes, servants and leaders.
To those of you who are just beginning your academic career at Millikin, welcome! Just like you, I’m also new to the University, and I’m thrilled to have you join the Big Blue family alongside me. We have been waiting for you. I started on July 1 and, over these last couple of months, I was busily meeting as many people as I could on and off campus. Like I hope you’ve already experienced, everyone has been gracious and welcoming. But something didn’t seem quite right, and this past Sunday move-in day, I realized what it was. All of you weren’t here yet. And now that you are ALL here, everything seems right with the world. The campus has come alive with your energy, curiosity, ideas and activities. You have brought us all great joy!
We are proud to have you become a part of the history of this beloved institution. In recognition of that, I’d ask that you allow me to carry out another of our time-honored convocation traditions. Would all our returning students, faculty and staff please rise and welcome the newest members of Millikin University, our first-year and transfer students, with your applause?
A favorite poet of mine, Mary Oliver, writes these words in her poem, “The Summer Day”:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
Today, I would ask you to put these words in the context of your Millikin University journey. The stories you bring, the Millikin stories that you write as a student here will give voice to your answer to Oliver’s question about your one wild and precious life.
A bit about my story: My father is a Lutheran minister, and I am one of six children that he and my mother raised. With six kids in the family, you can imagine how we might compete for attention, AND fellow middle children in this room can imagine how it felt that one year when I was accidentally cropped out of the family Christmas card picture, but that’s a story for another time. As family legend has it, I was also the one who sat in the front row during my father’s sermons and, once the sermon passed the 10-minute mark, would throw glances at my father, speaking with my eyes, “Aren’t you done yet?” I’m still teased about that to this day.
But, as I reflect on that time now, I realize I learned important lessons watching and listening to my father. He was using the power of stories — his and others’ — to take stances, to challenge prevailing understandings of important issues, to suggest new ways of seeing and acting in the world, to make meaning of our lives. The power of our and others’ stories has remained with me.
Your Millikin story begins now. You made it! Pause for a minute: think about all that you have done to get to this point. You’ve worked diligently in and out of the classroom, you’ve made plans and set goals, you’ve likely overcome challenges and you’ve made some important decisions. Celebrate those accomplishments! Your own experiences in life are set against the backdrop of a challenging — and yet hopeful — world. Pandemics, racism, hunger, housing, healthcare, education, immigration, climate change — these and other challenges don’t have easy solutions. And so, we need a generation of leaders and citizens — all of you — who feel compelled to tell their stories, to give voice to change, to create a more wise, just, equitable and sustainable society. Doing so requires critical thinking, creative problem solving, ethical reasoning, multiple-diverse-interdisciplinary perspectives, collaboration — all the knowledge, skills and abilities that are central to your Big Blue education.
We faculty, staff and administrators come and stay, often for many years. But our students, you come to us for a few short years with your stories. You come with your questions, your experiences, your joys, causes, identities — all of your stories intersect here, in this wonderful community of learning and performance, and you shape who we are and who we become as a University. We need you: your many talents, your diverse voices, your active engagement, in and outside the classroom — your stories. You are and will become the tangible evidence of the impact that we have on individuals and the world.
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?
You might be saying, “I don’t know yet, I don’t know what my Millikin story will be,” and that’s okay, but don’t stop asking this question. It is what we call a vocation question. And, unlike the questions on a quiz or mid-term or final exam, these types of life questions often do not have straight-forward answers. But ask them, we must, over and over again.
Beyond your coursework, experiences available to you at Millikin will help you find your answers … experiences such as:
- Conducting research alongside our faculty as you explore big questions and problems our world is trying to answer;
- Traveling abroad to explore new worlds and new ways of understanding others who we have historically described as “different”;
- Pursuing internships to learn about careers and build networks that will serve you once yougraduate; and
- Joining clubs, attending lectures or serving in the community to expose yourself to new ideas and people.
These and similar experiences are what we call Performance Learning and are central to our Millikin promise of excellence in education.
With courage, creativity and compassion, our students are writing and telling their stories — they are asking the tough questions about purpose and calling; they are finding their voice in the world.
So, as we open this academic year together, I invite you to embrace these questions: What is your story? What do you want your story to be? How will you use your time at Millikin to grow as an individual, to contribute as a democratic citizen, and to prepare for a life of meaning and value? We are standing ready to help you live into your answers. Write boldly. Learn deeply. Live fully. And know that the pages that you author at Millikin will forever be a part of the larger story of this remarkable institution.
We can’t wait to see your stories unfold. You inspire us!
Welcome to Millikin University! Thank you.