 |
 |
 |
|
|
Ronald R. Ingle recently retired from the presidency of Coastal Carolina University after 14 years at the helm. He was the first president of Coastal Carolina after the institution left the University of South Carolina system and became an independent, state-supported university in 1993. He led Coastal from branch campus status to its present position as the fourth largest institution of higher learning in the state. Today's campus—both its size and its spirit—is a testament to his leadership. His presidency will stand as a significant benchmark in the present and future annals of Coastal Carolina University. On May 5, 2007, President Ingle gave the spring commencement address. Following are some of the highlights of his remarks. I am privileged to address you today for I, too, am graduating. You and I are joined in belonging to the distinguished Class of 2007. And like some of you, I have been enrolled for more than the suggested four years.… While my days as an English major can rightly be called "days of yore," those times, though long past, continue to influence my thinking about the world and my daily sense of who I am, where I want to be, and what I want to achieve. To the dismay of the graduate faculty at Ohio State, my English major probably made me the only doctoral student in psychology who regularly cited the Southern writer, Flannery O'Connor, in my research. O'Connor's characters and plots are so driven by the setting, the place, the ambience, that the stories and their places become one and the same. I want to reflect on the significance of this sense of place today.… So, how would I define place? The English major that I am relies on metaphor: places have memories of yesterday and tomorrow, good and bad. Places are invested with meaning and understanding of behavioral norms, cultural expectations and social responsibilities. Think of the difference between space and place like that between a "house" and a "home"—a house might keep out the wind and the rain, but a home is where we are snug and warm. Place offers a connection and nurtures us in a chaotic world. The novels of Josephine Humphries, whom we honor today for her literary contributions to American letters, are imbued with a sense of place. In her novel Rich in Love, the narrator Lucille resides in a place providing her with continuity, contentment and connection. To deal with the family turmoil that surrounds her, Lucille draws comfort from her place. She says, "From the porch I had a panoramic view of water: the ocean, the harbor, two rivers, and the Waterway; not to mention creeks that snaked out of the marsh, rivulets, and finger-wide channels through shining dark mud.... It was my favorite view. A view like that is a privilege, I told myself, and I began to get back the old feeling that I once had, the feeling that my place was special, my family was special, I myself was perhaps also, in some tiny way, special. . . ." Like Lucille in Ms. Humphrey's novel, we have had the good fortune to live somewhere special, to be a part of a place that has profoundly influenced our lives and created a strong sense of community and connection among us. We were given a space, and we have fashioned a place. As we have lived—and now recall—our own Coastal Carolina stories, we have acquired an intimate sense of this place. Now, even as we anticipate new adventures in new places, we have some trepidation about leaving this place we have come to know so well. Yet the promise of new places is exciting and energizing. A sense of place is a necessary ingredient for a sense of past, present and future. The Southern poet and novelist Wendell Berry famously said, "If you don't know where you are, you don't know who you are." My sense of this place—Coastal Carolina—occurs where, in the words of a speaker on a recent ETV program, "the awesome intersects with the everyday." And I have 20 years of narratives that could not have happened in any other place:
Very simply, I love this place—its cultural forms, its idiosyncrasies and quirks, its passion for and commitment to learning. From the moment I set foot on campus in the fall of 1988 to this day, I've been touched by the soul of Coastal Carolina. As president, I have been paid to nurture this institution. In retrospect, however, I am the one who has been nurtured. I have had a dream job in a dynamic place of students, colleagues and ideas that have broadened my outlook and expanded my horizons. Like you, I have done a lot of growing up at Coastal Carolina. . . . In my inaugural address in 1994, I said: We have something very special here at Coastal Carolina University. We are small enough for intimacy and large enough for inspiration. There is the Coastal spirit—that unique quality or feeling which gives the campus its light, indeed its life. Those individual acts of personal generosity…are the same imponderables which connect and continue to connect human face to human face, teacher to student, student to student, colleague to colleague. I have sought, above all, to protect and preserve that special quality of this university—small enough for intimacy and large enough for inspiration. All of us have experienced the growth of Coastal Carolina, and our increasing national reputation makes further growth inevitable. My hope is that growth will never jeopardize our sense of place at this university we have known and come to love... As we venture to new spaces, let us pledge to convert those spaces to places of hope…and optimism…and honor. Let us attend less to the material dimensions of a space than to the moral dimensions that compose a sense of place. Let us pledge to act with compassion, with tolerance and with love... |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
