Convocation Speech 2005

Advancing Our Culture of High Expectations
Convocation Speech given by Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum, August 25, 2005

Convocation 2005 Photo Gallery

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And of course, that should not only be true in Sisters Chapel. That should be true all over Spelman College. Students, this place was built for you, and it should grow better and better with each passing day because you are here. That is our expectation.

I titled my speech today, “Advancing Our Culture of High Expectations.”It was inspired by my experience this summer in Japan. I had the privilege of traveling to Japan with our robotics team, known as the SpelBots. I hope you all had a chance to see the CNN coverage of the SpelBots or read the article in the September issue of Ebony Magazine (on newsstands now). The six Spelman students who have been working with Professor Andrew Williams in the Computer Science department did a wonderful job representing Spelman College in the International RoboCup (what we might describe as the Olympics of computing), the first all-female, first all-Black undergraduate team to ever compete in the RoboCup! It was a tremendous achievement for students who had been programming robots for less than a year when they entered the competition. When asked by a CNN reporter how it felt to be part of the SpelBot team, one student spoke about how hard the team had to work, but how motivated they were, knowing that Professor Williams believed in their ability, and that he had high expectations for them, sometimes even higher than they had for themselves. She said, “He believed in me, even when I didn’t believe in myself.”

When I heard her make that statement, I thought, “That is part of what is so special about Spelman College.” This is a place where our expectations are and must be high – not so high that they can not be reached – but high enough to make you stretch yourself, accomplishing what you did not even know you could accomplish. That is our history, our legacy, our tradition.

This academic year, on April 11, 2006, we will celebrate the 125 th anniversary of the founding of this institution. The founders, Miss Giles and Miss Packard, had great expectations at a time when many others doubted the worth of what they were doing. Two white women devoting themselves to the task of creating a school for formerly enslaved Black women in Atlanta, Georgia, just a few years after the end of the Civil War was considered lunacy by some. Their cause –described by one critic as “providing a classical education for ‘colored girls’” - was not a popular one in post-Civil War Atlanta – they were isolated from many. In 1956 on the occasion of Spelman’s 75 th anniversary, Dr. Mordecai Johnson, a 1911 Morehouse graduate who went on to become President of Howard University, recalled “The early teachers lived in ostracism and lived in loneliness, but they had no bitterness…Rather they labored ever joyfully because they had confidence in the capacity of their students for growth in body, mind and spirit; and the students justified their faith.” From the beginning, this institution was built on a foundation of high expectations, great expectations – a part of the very fabric of all that they did.

And so the title of my talk is not “creating our culture of high expectations” or “restoring our culture” or “maintaining our culture”. I was intentional in my choice of the word “advancing” because our task is to move this institution forward into the 21 st century, ever present that we have a tradition of excellence to uphold. And, we must insure that it continues for the next 125 years. We know that requires more resources, and generating those resources is a daily focus for me. We know there are many needs across the campus, and our Spelman ALIVE acronym, reminds us where to focus our attention - Academic Excellence, Leadership Development, Improving our Environment, Visibility of achievements, and Exemplary Customer Service.

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