As I near the end of my first year as president of Texas A&M University-Commerce,

I struggle to hold in balance the competing emotions of pride and humility. To be

named the eleventh president of this venerable institution is an attainment far beyond

what I had imagined would be the culmination of my academic career. I’m sure that if

my parents were alive today, they would be proud, and also a bit surprised. I say this,

in part, because of their skepticism many years ago about my choice of profession.

I remember clearly that my father was less than thrilled when I told him that I

planned to go to college and major in English so that I could become a poet.

He was an orphan who endured considerable hardship during the Great Depression,

went to college on the GI Bill, and worked tirelessly as a petroleum engineer to create

the middle-class lifestyle for his family that he had never known as a child. He could

hardly imagine why any son of his would entertain the notion of spending four years

in college to earn a degree that, to his way of thinking, could not possibly lead to

gainful employment. If he were here today, he would congratulate me for landing

a job that requires a suit and tie, all the while wondering how someone with no

practical training could ever advance in life. And to be honest, I have to admit

that I am a bit surprised myself, having begun my career in higher education

with no goal other than to become the best teacher I could.

Yet in my battle of emotions, it is, without a doubt, humility that wins out. To serve

as the president of an institution that has, for 120 years, changed the face of a region

by extending to its citizens the priceless gift of educational opportunity is a rare

privilege, and one that I approach with a humble appreciation for the awesome

responsibilities that it entails.

When I first arrived on the campus of A&M-Commerce, I walked through the

Founders Lounge in the old Sam Rayburn Memorial Student Center, where

portraits of the ten previous presidents and first ladies were on display.

I returned again and again to that room to study each likeness, imagining what

special challenges each president faced, and what special qualities each brought to

the task of leading the university: Professor Mayo, a visionary who envisioned a future

rising from the hardscrabble landscape of the present; Presidents Binnion, Whitley

and Ferguson, who shaped the character of the institution as a public university;

President Gee, whose military bearing bespoke an unerring commitment to

excellence; Presidents Halladay, McDowell and Austin, whose love for this

institution was manifest in all that they did; President Morris, who engineered

the transfer of East Texas State University into The Texas A&M University System.

And, President Keith McFarland, whose service to the institution spans 39 years,

and whose legacy of renewal will be celebrated long beyond my tenure as president.

His efforts secured the promise for the university’s future as the jewel in the crown

of Texas higher education.

I appreciate the wisdom and guidance Dr. McFarland has extended to me personally

as I made the transition into this office. To paraphrase Isaac Newton, all of us at this

extraordinary institution are able to see further because we stand on the shoulders

of such giants.

Each of these presidents, working in concert with gifted faculty, staff, administrative

leadership teams, students, and community leaders played an important role in advancing

the university to its current state of realization. Our university has a character formed by

the collective dreams and visions of all who have passed through its doors.

In different eras, responding to different challenges and opportunities, each president,

each financial aid counselor, each coach, and each student, has, by pursuing his or her

own vision of excellence, left an imprint.

Think of the university as a 120-year-old village, constantly changing, ceaselessly

evolving. Those who settled first built structures, both physical and ideal, which were

cleared away by those who followed to make way for grander, higher-reaching ones.

In conversations real and abstract, with each other and across time with their

historical predecessors and imagined successors, the people of “Old ET” and

now, A&M-Commerce, have continuously shaped the life of this village.

We, its 21st-century citizens, are the inheritors of a grand legacy. With our

inheritance comes a challenge from our forebears: take this bequest and use it as

the platform upon which you stand to reach higher still. Like Hamlet, we proclaim,

“The readiness is all!” We accept the challenge of the past, we seek the opportunities

of the present, and we pursue relentlessly the promise of the future.

As we appraise our inheritance, we find in it treasures of great worth.

We find, for example, tens of thousands of alumni who have taught, and are

teaching, hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children throughout Texas

and the world. Each child whose potential has been unfolded by a graduate of our

institution is an indelible testament to our achievement. The army of teachers that

has been deployed from the grounds of East Texas Normal College and its successor

institutions has been a powerful force in shaping the intellectual, political and

cultural life of Northeast Texas, and continues to be an important part of the

contribution we make to the vitality of the many communities we serve.

While teacher training is still a significant part of our mission, we are now a

comprehensive, doctoral-granting institution offering a broad spectrum of

degrees in a wide range of disciplines. Our graduates are found not just in

Blue Ridge and Bailey, but in Bangalore and Beijing; not just Pittsburg

and Paris, Texas but the other Pittsburgh and Paris as well.

Our Spring 2009 PRIDE Magazine focuses on the achievements of alumni who have

graduated in the last 10 years – since we have been part of The Texas A&M

University System – and their stories underscore why the PRIDE Magazine

is appropriately named.

David Milligan, M.S. in Industrial Technology, class of 2000, credits A&M-Commerce

for his successful transition from military to civilian life and now works for NASA.

Alicia Pol, B.A. in Art Direction, was awarded the 2008 Student ADDY Award for

Best in Show – the most prestigious award in the field of advertising. Delbert Knight,

Jr., B.S. in Sociology and Criminal Justice, followed in the footsteps of his uncle,

ET football legend, Harvey Martin, by attending A&M-Commerce, and is now vice

president of sales for one of the nation’s largest mortgage companies. Lui Barkkume,

B.S. in Geology and Environmental Science, became president and owner of Arkose

Environmental, Inc. just seven years after graduating – and the list goes on.

Among our 105,000 alumni are CEOs, scientists, teachers, researchers,

public servants, and more than a few multi-millionaires.

How many of them would have been successful if they had attended another university?

All of them.

But for most, going elsewhere was not an option. Bound by constraints of place and

economic necessity, they were able to achieve their dream of earning a college degree

only because this university was here to extend to them the welcoming hand of

educational opportunity.

As I travel throughout the region and meet our alumni, I am continually revitalized

by the stories I hear – stories of hard-working, determined young men and women

whose dream of a college education seemed, to them, impossibly remote. But because

this university was here to serve, and more important, because someone at this

university – a faculty member, a librarian, an assistant dean of students, a volunteer

tutor – took a special interest in them and showed them the way, they were able

to realize their dream.

Their stories of opportunity and accomplishment are emblematic of the character of this

institution, and a reminder that the greatness of Texas A&M University-Commerce lies

in the nobility and expansiveness of its mission.

It is a mission that has served well not only the interests of Northeast Texas, but one

that has advanced the well-being of the American people. Ours is a nation founded

on the promise of opportunity, and education is the essential element in realizing that

promise. We understand that the democratic form of government we have carefully

nurtured over almost two-and-a-half centuries would crumble in the absence of an

educated public. We understand that educated people earn more, contribute more to

their communities and nation, and help create and sustain a better quality of life for

all. And we understand that educational opportunity must be more than a privilege;

it must be a right – not a benefit reserved for the few, but a blessing bestowed upon

the many. The importance of this birthright has never been greater than now. As we

watch the value of equity investments, commodities and foreign currencies gyrate

uncontrollably, we affirm, again and again, that education is the only investment

whose worth is sure, the only asset whose value is guaranteed to become

more precious with time.

The creation of monetary wealth is a mere footnote to history; great nations are

remembered not for the riches they amass, but for the quality of their ideas, and

great ideas emerge only from the give-and-take of robust debate by informed

citizens. In the marketplace of ideas, we educators are merchants of opportunity,

and we trade in knowledge, the currency of civilization. Unless we disburse the coin

of the academic realm as widely as possible, this nation – this world – whose future

has been entrusted to our care cannot survive.

The American nation was born at a moment in history when a political system was

fashioned by thinkers steeped in such notions as natural rights, the inviolability of

the individual, and the prerogative of women and men to craft their own destinies.

Democracy cannot survive without education; consequently, America was the first

nation of the modern era to compel the basic education of all its children.

It also was the first nation to embrace the notion that higher education should be

made widely available to its citizens. A defining moment came in 1944, with the

passage of the GI Bill. This piece of landmark legislation opened the doors to

college for millions of veterans returning from service in World War II, including

my father. With the stroke of a pen, colleges were transformed from bastions of

privilege to gateways of opportunity through which ordinary people could pass.

In time, this educational entitlement was broadened to include all students whose

socioeconomic status might preclude them from attending college. The Pell Grant,

part of the landmark Higher Education Act of 1965, provides financial support

to any student who aspires to earn a college degree, but whose financial

circumstances would otherwise rob him or her of the opportunity.

At A&M-Commerce, 41 percent of our undergraduates receive Pell Grants, while

60 percent receive some form of financial assistance, including veterans’ benefits.

From time to time, a political debate emerges over the question of whether to increase

funding for the Pell Grant and other forms of financial assistance for students. Since

students are the primary beneficiaries of their education, shouldn’t they pay the

greatest portion of the cost?

Or so the debate is sometimes phrased. There can be no debate, however, that

broadening access to higher education benefits not only the lives of those students

who receive a degree, but also the intellectual, political and cultural life of this nation.

We Americans have taken the best traditions of educational excellence from throughout

history and put them to use in a radical, uniquely American way: in pursuit of the belief

that educational excellence is synonymous not with exclusion, but with opportunity;

that it is best used not for the enjoyment of the elite, but for the advancement of an

entire civilization.

It is this conviction that compelled professor Mayo to found East Texas Normal College.

It is this ideal which comprises the authentic legacy of those visionary men and women

who have gone before us, and who committed their lives to building an institution

whose mission comprises nothing less than the unceasing betterment of the world.

That which makes A&M-Commerce great is that which makes America great: the belief

that a college degree can elevate individuals, a culture, a nation, to unimagined levels

of achievement.

We receive our bequest with gratitude and humility. We celebrate the achievements

of those who have gone before, as we accept our moral duty to carry forward with

the work they have begun. Our mission – our sacred trust – is to extend the

life-altering opportunity of higher education to all who will take this gift and use

it to the advancement of our highest ideals. It is incumbent upon us, as a community

of educators and current citizens of the Village of Texas A&M University-Commerce,

to go about the pursuit of our mission with a shared commitment to three principles:

integrity, innovation and imagination.

Integrity is the bedrock of all that we do, and as we have learned from events in finance

and politics in recent months, it cannot be presumed. All of us, I would hope, affirm

that we would never transgress the moral, ethical and legal boundaries that guide our

actions. As public servants, we are recipients of public trust. We must act always in a

manner that upholds the highest standards of integrity; to do otherwise is to shatter

the very foundation upon which our institution is built.

If integrity is the bedrock, innovation is the superstructure of our enterprise.

Innovation is the engine that drives positive change, allowing us to continually refine

our efforts in pursuit of excellence. We, like those who have gone before, are constantly

building an institution that will never be completed. That is because our university,

as beautiful as it is in its physical appearance, is, in actuality, an idea, and an ideal.

The idea is that education is the essence of freedom and democracy; the ideal,

that we can always be better tomorrow than we are today.

Just as we seek to provide the kind of educational opportunity that transforms

lives, so must we become capable of being ourselves transformed. There is always

a better way to reach our students, a better way to deliver our mission, a better

way to conduct research. Without an unswerving commitment to innovation,

the educational experience we offer becomes a dead letter.

And finally, imagination, which sits atop the university we are building

like a weathervane pointing skyward. Imagination is the capacity to conceive

new understandings, new opportunities, new ways of seeing ourselves and

the world in which we live. Imagination drives innovation, and is the source

of new solutions to old problems. The world has an endless supply of surprises

in store for each of us. Recognizing them, and pursuing them relentlessly,

is essential to our success as teachers, students and scholars.

To these three “I”s, add a fourth: each one of us. To all of our students,

and to the many communities we serve, each of us is the “I” in our great university.

As faculty members, accountants, student service professionals, counselors, plumbers,

athletic trainers, and electricians, we are all making a contribution to the betterment

of our world, one student at a time; I am, as are each of you, a merchant of opportunity.

I am reminded of the parable first recorded in a monastic manuscript more

than 1,500 years ago. The story, known as the “Rule of St. Benedict,” goes like this.

A traveler came upon a group of three stonemasons, each hard at work

shaping marble slabs. He asked each in turn what he was doing. The first

replied, “I am polishing the block of marble.” He then turned to the

second stonemason and asked the same question.

“I am preparing a foundation,” he replied. He asked the third,

who replied, “I am building a university.”

Those familiar with the tale recognize that I have changed it up a bit; while

St. Benedict’s stonemasons were building a cathedral, mine are erecting a university.

That’s because a university, like a cathedral, is a place where the human spirit soars

beyond its earthbound body, spurred on by a restless urging to know the mind of

God. Like the third stonemason, each of us is laboring to erect an institution

that is more idea than edifice.

The worth of our labor is enhanced knowing that future generations will one

day tear it down to make room for one that is even nobler.

They, like we, will be driven by a commitment to integrity, innovation and imagination.

And they, like we, will be shaping the foundation stones for a future that has yet to be imagined.

Dan R. Jones, Ph.D., 11th President, Texas A&M University-Commerce

www.tamu-commerce.edu903.886.5000

A MEMBER OF THE TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY SYSTEM