Dear Friends:
Four years ago, I was telling Trustee George Roberts '66 P'93 how excited I was about the groundbreaking for the Roberts Pavilion, the many reasons why we would become the go-to college for the true scholar- leader-athlete, how every single team would grow to be competitive for a national championship, and how the experience of going for that-going for all of that-would create the most powerful learning and leadership experience for our students. Why run a race without wanting to win it?!?
George said, "That's right, Hiram, you keep saying that. You'll find that you'll start hearing people say it back to you."
George was right. After two national championships in the last couple of years (men's tennis in 2015 and men's golf in 2016), this year's 2017 volleyball team walked the walk and marched through the national championship in Michigan, lucky rake in hand (to rake up the points), to win a 3-0 sweep against Wittenberg, an experienced team that had been in the championship match three out of the last seven years. The championship concluded a four-year quest. They dug and blocked, set and attacked their way through the competition and overcame their self-doubt each step of the way.
This was the first NCAA national championship for our Athenas in CMS history.
Then, a day before commencement, our women's golf team won another national championship. On top of the team title, Margaret Loncki '18 (who walked on to the team her first year) won the individual national championship. At press time, our track and field and tennis teams also were in contention for national titles.
These national championships accentuate the achievements of all of the scholar-athletes in our remarkable three-college program, drawing the best student-athletes from CMC, Harvey Mudd, and Scripps Colleges-all joining together to produce single teams of national prominence.
They also parallel other, innumerable individual and institutional achievements: our global Model UN team has won three world championships in four years; our students continue to win top national fellowships including Fulbright, Luce, and the Knight- Hennessy; and, between his work as a Robert Day Scholar and senior class president, Daniel Ludlam '18 managed to win a spot on Jeopardy!.
Our inspiring Athenas taught us all a powerful lesson. Every one of us has moments of self-doubt, feelings of intimidation, insecurities, the fear of failure to be sure, but at times, the fear of success, too. Am I good enough for this challenge? Do I belong here?
In these pages, you will see how well others have found their sense of belonging at CMC: Angel Ornelas '21 and Alejandro Posada- Sanchez '21 were guided to CMC by an influential teacher, who was also an alumna, Chelsee Cox '12; Dianna Graves '98 has dedicated her career to CMC. As our new dean of students, she helps our students contribute to CMC as the primary way of finding their own sense of belonging.
As I told our national champion Athenas at the Board of Trustees dinner a few weeks ago:
You have given us the inspiration to find the inner strength, to tap the innate talents that we thought we lacked, to find our sense of belonging in the places we want to go, as individuals and as a college. You've taught us all that we belong wherever we want here to be.
Have a great summer, wherever that takes you.
Very best,
