NSU undergraduate students celebrated the official start of the academic year on Sept. 6 with Convocation, hosted by the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences. A keynote talk by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, M.F.A., highlighted this year’s ceremony.
The event opened with welcoming remarks by Don Rosenblum, Ph.D., dean of the Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences, and George L. Hanbury II, Ph.D., president of the university. Hanbury encouraged the students to have “passionate curiosity” while at NSU. “Use this time in your life to explore the many opportunities on this campus,” the president said.
Rosenblum introduced and congratulated Shanti Bruce, Ph.D., associate professor and coordinator of writing program in the college. Bruce received the 2011 Farquhar College of Arts and Sciences Full-Time Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award and represented faculty members in welcoming the students at Convocation.
Bruce urged students to learn all they can and to push themselves to their full potential. “Learning is a lifelong process,” she said. Bruce also introduced the 2011–2012 academic theme, “Truth and Power.”
James Munoz, Ph.D., assistant professor in the college, followed Bruce and introduced keynote speaker Díaz, a “self-proclaimed ‘ghetto nerd with game’” whose first novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, won a Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
Díaz, who also teaches writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke about the importance of a college education.
“An education is more than classes and grades and future jobs,” he said, adding that education is ultimately about being “transformed, utterly.”
Díaz told students to “drop your defenses” and stop worrying about being wrong, which will enable them to undergo this transformation. “The person who walks into NSU [should not] recognize the person who walks out,” the author said.
To conclude the event, Rosenblum recognized NSU’s Dean’s List Scholars, undergraduate students who earned the Dean’s List for the fall and winter semesters in their first year of enrollment. Nearly 100 students who earned at least a 3.5 GPA in both semesters of their first year at NSU took the stage.
Following the ceremony, Díaz met with students and faculty members at a reception. The night concluded with a private dinner seminar, at which Díaz spoke with students from the college’s First-Year Reading Program. He discussed his writing process and how his background influences his work, and also responded to student questions, providing insight into some of the deeper meanings within his award-winning novel.
“The 2011 Undergraduate Convocation ceremony provided an outstanding start to the academic year,” Rosenblum said after the event. “This event and Commencement four years later serve as bookends that celebrate expectations and accomplishments of our students.”
