PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE

Who Should Be Our Role Models?

I’m on a campaign to promote as role models ordinary people who model extraordinarily uplifting behaviors. Parents, teachers, friends, ordinary people who are extraordinary in the way they use their talents to inspire and support others are the ones I want to hold up as role models.

Mass media often promote as role models the brightest, most talented, best looking, and most successful. Some of them are not very desirable models of behavior or service to others. TV commercials rarely tout average achievers.

Even colleges and universities seldom lift up the performance of those who finish in the middle of the pack, and they tend to measure their own performance in terms of their ranking on standards chosen to highlight the biggest and best. Hence, factors such as size of endowment (the bigger the better), number of students who graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class (the higher the better), and the percentage of alumni who make gifts to their school (the more the better) are judged most important.

From a values perspective, I think we’d be better off if we celebrated institutions that enable students to excel in learning, service and integrity; standards admittedly more difficult to measure. For example, I like the emphasis our cross country coach, Jay Birmingham, gives to “personal best” among his runners. More important than winning a race or beating an opponent is “improvement against your own previous best time.”
Dana is a moderately selective college, and we seek students prepared to handle a challenging curriculum, but I like to see emphasis placed upon learning and service, not alone on measures that tend to honor only the brightest and best.

The NAIA, the national athletics association of which Dana is a member, is promoting a “Champions of Character” theme. The character tenants they are promoting and Dana is subscribing to include respect, integrity, responsibility, servant leadership and sportsmanship. I serve on the Council of Presidents for that group and have been delighted with this emphasis.

Bruce Brown, a successful coach and teacher from the state of Washington, has become the lead spokesperson for the theme. Speaking to our athletes and coaches, he said his role model as a champion of character is a blind junior high student he taught. This boy overcame the odds of blindness to become a true “athlete,” disciplined in practice, eager to receive coaching, unselfish in his support for teammates and respectful of opponents.

At Dana we see evidence of such “role models” every day, and I believe we should and do seek to provide an environment that occasions each student to grow in performance and in character, academically and in participation outside the classroom as well. Some of them perform at high levels while having to overcome significant challenges.

This past Homecoming, many of us enjoyed the outstanding piano performance of Dana alumna, Iris (Frey ’78) Doolittle, who has excelled as a piano instructor, composer and performer despite a crippling stroke that requires her to play challenging compositions with only one hand.
Among current students, I hold up Brian Martin. Brian was in a life-threatening accident when his car left the road in his attempt to miss a deer. He was in a coma for months, and still battles the odds to return to full mobility. Thanks to good care and loving support of family and friends, Brian is back on campus helping with the wrestling program. He is determined to compete once again. What a role model he is for us who had doubts that he would ever again be a college student, let alone a wrestler. The recipient of three As and two Bs at midterm, he says, “I won’t stop until they’re all As.”

Iris and Brian are just two examples of Dana students past and present that fit my ideal of a role model. Both strive for their personal best, developing their gifts when many in their circumstances would have given up.

Of course, we have countless students with a range of abilities and gifts who beat the odds to achieve personal bests and who rise above peers in the character they model. I’m delighted that Dana’s Christian mission and reason for being compels us to be a learning community that not only celebrates those who come with everything going for them but also countless others who are willing to keep improving upon the gifts God has given them. That’s the kind of community I prize, and I trust alumni and friends will support with their prayers and gifts. It is not the kind of community that every learning institution chooses to be, or can be.