Thank you Angela for your great, insightful explanations and humbling commitment to all we do well here.
Thank you Rev. Joel for your inspiring invocation and brilliant riff on quantum.
Thank you Kylee for your thoughtful example of learning and growth.
Thank you Ellen and Albert for your outstanding leadership (and Ellen for your outstanding voice).
To our outstanding new faculty, entering students (both our transfer students and Class of 2029), and to each and every one of you, welcome to the 2025-26 academic year:
This is a Quantum Moment for CMC. In three senses of the word. . .
First, quantum in the mechanical, physical, scientific sense of the smallest indivisible jump in energy that a particle can make.
Just as the smallest, indivisible units in the physical world create jumps in energy, here at CMC, the smallest gestures, actions, behaviors, thoughts, emotions in our social world create leaps in our social and intellectual development.
Second, quantum in the computational world of superposition, in which the zeros and ones are presumed to be simultaneously true.
In classic computing, a bit can only be one of two states: 0 or 1.
However, in quantum computing, a qubit can be in a superposition of states—a mix of 0 and 1 at the same time.
Here at CMC, we can think of the possibility that zero and one are true, as a philosophical embrace of and, where others act on the mutually exclusive either-or.
Third, quantum in the popular sense of a big leap forward.
Here at CMC, this means one of our big, bold, vertical moves in the steep trajectory of our future.
Today, we celebrate all three meanings at the same time and relate one to the other.
One, the Power of CMC Bits
As I told our entering students and their families last week, the conducive medium for our outstanding achievements is our social warmth, our commitment to one another as cherished members of a purposeful CMC community, our attention to the smallest moments of learning, experience, friendship, trust, love.
The time we take for one another, the effort to get beneath the surface, the smallest gestures of kindness and gratitude, the intellectual epiphanies from an incisive question in the liberal arts, the spark of our most powerful and high impact thoughts, curiosities, and strategies.
The mere raising of the hand to ask a question, volunteer a perspective, pose an answer, take the first step to act on that answer, overcome the fear of seeking a novel opportunity, cross the threshold to take on a big challenge.
These are the threads that build our social fabric. Small acts of kindness that build our greater goodness.
These are the micro-lessons in our liberal arts syllabus of higher learning. The actions from which we draw the wisdom of experience.
As Santana once said: The more you express “gratitude, deep appreciation, and thankfulness, the more the universe reads you and floods you with 100 times more [than] what you got.”
Two, the Superposition of CMC Qubits
In small and big ways, CMC is a not place of mutual exclusions.
We are a community of and.
We always have been.
A dozen years ago in my inauguration, I noted that when confronted with Frost’s dilemma—the fork in the road: we have always followed the advice of Yogi Berra.
As Yogi advised: we take it.
Yes, CMC takes it. Econ and gov’t. Social sciences and humanities and sciences.
Liberal arts and leadership.
The spouse of our founding president George C. S. Benson, Mabel Benson, said it best: real leadership presupposes [a liberally informed mind] and, in turn, a liberally informed mind can find no more satisfying vocation than in such leadership.
In a world that wants to force everyone to choose sides, we’re at our best when we persist in our refusal to be pushed onto one path or another, left or right.
We strive to understand the strengths and weaknesses of any one position before charting our own course.
Our embrace of and is why we can integrate through the silos of disciplines and prepare the next great generation to be strongest at the vital intersections.
Our pursuit of and is why we can build an athletics program of scholars and leaders and athletes as a triple threat (not just zeros and ones but ones, twos, and threes).
Our dedication to take the fork is why, in an attempt to measure and evaluate how we compare through the squirrely methods of surveys, public media reflect back a series of national rankings and data that typically don’t coexist on the same page in our fractured world today.
First in the confidence to speak up. Third in the tolerance of opposing viewpoints. First in the politically most aware student body. Second in the most politically active student government. Third in the friendliest community.
Is it possible for one community in the United States to be outspoken and good at listening?
Is it possible to be politically aware, active and friendly?
Is it possible for a faculty to focus on discipline-altering research and powerful student-centric teaching?
For students to be deeply contemplative and theoretical and simultaneously driven, and productive, and ambitious?
Is here possible, where views on the political right and left are both respected?
Where politicization of education, from either external or internal sources, are all repelled in favor of unwavering commitments to open inquiry, free expression, empathic curiosity, and fierce problem-solving across lines of controversy?
At CMC, we prove the possible.
Three, CMC’s Quantum Leap
The attention to the small moments and the embrace of and are the core foundations for the huge leaps forward.
We have an exciting year ahead.
An incredible Athenaeum season of leading thinkers and doers from a wide variety of disciplines and perspectives, including several CMC faculty and alumni, that stimulate our imagination and insights into core phenomena in the human experience, from world music to global trade, from milk to dreams, from civility to deepfake technology and AI.
In anticipation of the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence in July of 2026, we advance our commitments through The Open Academy.
We sustain expanded opportunities for our students, breaking down the barriers in our way.
We prepare for the 50th anniversary of co-education at CMC in 2026-27.
We envision and implement new programmatic strategies in the integration of humanities and policy.
We build our Sports Bowl: the arcade, football, track, lacrosse, softball, baseball, golf practice, and new ROTC facilities.
We design a new home for the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance. We set the stage for the expansion of the North and Diagonal malls in our master plan.
We sprint through the end zone during my final year as CMC president, with the excitement of the search for a new leader, for what I believe is the most compelling, attractive presidential role in higher education today.
And the most historic and aspirational leap of all: we open and dedicate our Robert Day Sciences Center.
Home to our Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences. Revolutionary in each of many fused features.
A program for each and every student. Grand challenges. Health, brain, planet. Problem-based, just-in-time learning. Self-authored research. Literacy in coding and the creation of AI generative systems. Integrated political and economic implications of scientific challenges. Teamwork and contributions to public institutions.
Now matched by an extraordinary facility.
Stacks of rotating parallels. Transparency, connection, and collaboration. Warm finishes and colors. Flexible classrooms and shared labs.
Signature spaces: McElwee Forum, Social Stairs, Agora, Innovation Studio, the Quantum Library with its Maloof table, Daybreak Café, the Terraces, and much, much more.
One of higher education’s most impressive public art collections, including Magnetic Field by Damien Ortega, hanging in the gorgeous atrium.
An architecture so stunning it will detach your jaw.
A space so energizing you will never want to leave.
We look forward to the dedication on September 26th and the opportunity to thank:
Our architecture, building, and artistic partners, who realized our BIG dream.
Our faculty who envisioned the path-breaking curriculum and pedagogy. Thanks to Heather, Emily (and our colleagues at Keck), and especially Ran and our founding faculty.
Our staff who worked so hard to raise the funding and especially to get the building built and ready. Thanks to Matt, Andres, Sharon, and our entire advancement and facilities teams.
Our Board, whose time, talent, and treasure made it happen. Thanks to Ken Valach and especially David Mgrublian who stewarded the project from beginning to end.
Our donors: Robert Day, the Keck Foundation, George Roberts (for his initiative and role as guarantor) and Henry Kravis for his big, historic gift for the program. 57 major gifts that contributed to so many spaces in the building.
Too many community members to thank by name.
With all of this support, we did it.
From the smallest jumps of quantum bits in our learning experience. From the superposition of our rooted commitment to and. To the biggest leap of all, the realization of our vision for the integration of sciences—all coming together in this historic semester—to prove the possible through and at CMC.
That’s CMC’s Quantum Moment.
That’s why we are here and where we are headed in the coming year and beyond.
We can hardly wait. Cheers and congratulations to you all.