Remarks of Carol E. Quillen, after she was introduced at Davidson College’s Duke Family Performance Hall Thursday as the college’s 18th president. Also below, audio replay of her press conference afterward with local reporters.

Carol Quillen

Thank you, Kristin and Mackey, and thank you all for being here and for welcoming me so generously. It is an extraordinary privilege to be here on this gorgeous campus, among the people whose dedication makes Davidson such a remarkable place. I am especially grateful that Davidson’s prior first families are here—President Spencer and his wife Ava, President Kuykendall and his wife Missy, and Susan Ross, wife of President Tom Ross, and their daughter Mary Kathryn Ross Elkins. President Vagt, his wife Ruth Anne, and I spoke yesterday. Each of these talented people did much to define and to realize Davidson’s purpose. Each, by hard work and example, genuinely assisted students in developing humane instincts and disciplined and creative minds for lives of leadership and service. Their ongoing support is a great gift. And I have them all on speed dial already.

The loyalty of Davidson’s past presidents is, if my admittedly limited experience is typical, indicative of a broader phenomenon: alumni love this place. They are profoundly grateful for their experience here. Many attribute to Davidson their determination to lead, after graduation, a life of purpose and of consequence.

Over the past few months, I have come to see Davidson through the lens of my conversations with the staff, alumni, faculty, students and parents on the search committee. This committee is a pretty diverse group. We talked about a lot of things: the complex talents required of leaders in an increasingly interconnected world; the tension between deep training in a subject and interdisciplinary approaches to study; the challenge of creating a genuinely hospitable campus culture where people from different backgrounds can each learn and thrive; the past role of Presbyterian clergy, many of them Davidson graduates, in promoting racial equality and the ongoing importance of the church to our society; the inestimable value of competitive sports in cultivating the whole person; the profound impact that doing original research can have on a young mind; the grounding role of faith for a community deeply committed to rigorous, unfettered intellectual inquiry; why art matters; grace; forgiveness; providence.

I have learned from these conversations with the search committee that Davidson people are thoughtful and smart. They are respectful and open in debate; they are humble yet quietly firm in their convictions. They are not, generally speaking, big Duke fans. They laugh a lot, and they possess a generosity of spirit that is rare and precious. It has been and is a privilege getting to know Kristin and Mackey and the amazing people who have served with them. And it will be a privilege to join them and you here.

I come to you, I know, from outside the Davidson family. I have much to learn, and it would be beyond presumptuous—as well as unwise—for me, at this moment, to talk for too long, when what I most want and need to do is listen. I am mindful of Bobby Vagt’s great advice: Davidson is our individual stories: a student transformed by a classroom discussion; a faculty member’s tireless commitment to one kid’s success. Listen and remember these, Bobby said, and you will grasp what makes Davidson Davidson.

For much of the next several months, I will listen—to our faculty, our students, our staff and to the extended Davidson family. Allow me, though, to take just a moment here to share two things these past several months of engagement with your community have shown me.

First: A liberal arts education—one characterized by breadth, sustained faculty engagement with students in and outside of formal coursework, serious class discussion and a collaborative quest for knowledge, significant research opportunities, a residential environment that promotes a culture of inquiry as well as personal growth, and mechanisms to help students make connections between what they learn and how they live—cultivates a student’s capacities like nothing else. Now more than ever, we need the kind of leaders that liberal arts education produces. At the same time, liberal arts education is very, very expensive. It is not practical. And by its labor-intensive nature it is highly selective. Those of us who believe in the societal value of liberal arts education must make that case within an increasingly competitive landscape as the public grows increasingly skeptical.

Second: Davidson is, I believe, better able than any other institution to demonstrate to an increasingly skeptical public the crucial value to society of a liberal arts education. It is easy to list some of the attributes that set Davidson apart: faculty with an unfeigned, profound love for teaching; academic rigor; The Davidson Trust; the reformed tradition; the Honor Code;  a commitment to the highest level of athletic competition. Now these things alone cannot explain why Davidson, more than any other institution, can re-imagine and exemplify liberal arts education for this century. But I think that these things somehow work together to create something amazing. I am not yet equipped to describe this fully, but here goes:

At Davidson, a particular religious tradition grounds a foundational commitment to cultivating a broadly diverse and collegial community, where people possessing different talents, from different cultures, whose deepest convictions differ, can learn from and with each other in an environment of warmth and respect. Davidson creates a distinctive culture of inquiry and trust within which students grow as humane thinkers and perceptive leaders precisely because they are simultaneously engaged in the production of knowledge and challenged to build creative, purposeful lives. Davidson graduates morally courageous persons who are not afraid to take intellectual risks. Most important, Davidson somehow enables each student to discover the remarkable human being he or she could become, such that each student seeks to fulfill his or her highest potential—not because they have to, not because other people expect it, not because they will get in trouble if they don’t, but because they genuinely want to be that remarkable human being that this college shows them they are capable of becoming. Somehow Davidson gives students the courage to make their own decisions and to take responsibility for those decisions, so that, whatever they choose to do, they live lives of purpose and consequence in pursuit of their highest aspirations.

I do not know precisely how Davidson has done this—that is why I need to spend some time just listening. I do not know what it will take for Davidson to do this in and for an increasingly interconnected and rapidly changing world. That is something we will need to figure out together, the whole Davidson family, and it will be both challenging and exhilarating.

I do know this. Davidson is uniquely able to re-imagine and to exemplify this profoundly valuable kind of education at this crucial time. And because Davidson is uniquely able to do this, Davidson is also obligated to do so. It will be a great privilege to contribute with you to this daunting, urgent and profoundly rewarding task.

What I bring to the Davidson community, I owe to the teachers and colleagues I have had over the years, and above all to my family.

PRESS CONFERENCE

Listen to an audio replay of Thursday afternoon’s press conference between local reporters, Carol Quillen and Davidson trustees chair Mackey McDonald. Click play button to list. Can’t see the player? CLICK HERE »

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(MP3, 5 min. 31 secs)