Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting with some McMurry alumni in Indianapolis to discuss the status and future of the McMurry science programs.  It is rather ironic that a school would be stripped of its Indian mascot by an organization with its headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana.  Hmm…

The men I met with are among McMurry’s most celebrated graduates – a business tycoon, a pharmaceutical chemist, a pilot for United Air Lines, a retired engineer, a college professor.  Examples of their achievements:  a man who has been central in the development and success of the Blackberry; a man with a dozen patents in pharmaceutical development; a man who, between his freshman and sophomore years in college helped a German  manufacturer design and set up its plant for building television components.  These are not mere mortals, but heavy-hitters who have helped change society for us all.  Their common thread – all were McMurry chemistry and physics graduates. 

I spoke to them about McMurry’s science programs and our direction for the future, how they could help us by their wise counsel and efforts to reconnect us with a “lost generation” of exceptional graduates who were their classmates and friends.  It is hard to enter a huge capital campaign when the institutional history has been lost, and yet we have suffered the sin of failing to remain engaged with our alumni very well.  That is being remedied by hard work by professionals in our Advancement Office as we make contact, restore confidence, and engage our past to inform our future.  We need the insight, contacts, and experience of our graduates to guide us down a successful path. 

As they recalled their McMurry experiences, they spoke with great reverence of those who shaped their lives.  Faculty from the sciences, but also faculty from English and History and Religion all held them to high standards of performance and behavior, all pushed them to give more than they wanted to give to be more than they wanted to be.  They spoke about professors in the same way we professors speak about our successful graduates – with respect, excitement, affection.  We faculty live vicariously through the lives of our graduates, holding every success they achieve as our own because of the investment of ourselves we have placed in them.  And so we live in this odd continuum in which alums revere their faculty of long ago while we in turn hold them in highest regard for their accomplishments.  I was able to convey to these McMurry alumni that similar success stories continue to be written in our courses with our current students, and that their efforts to help us forge our way through a successful capital campaign will insure those who follow us will be able to carry the torch on our behalf.  Future faculty will speak to successful alums in the future, who will speak fondly about those of us here today.  How humbling that is; what a responsibility we have in upholding the standards of the past for the sake of the future.

A university is not so much buildings or programs or money.  It is people.  The quality of the people and relationships are what make a school great.  Our graduates in Indianapolis provided proof positive that great faculty of long ago loved their students and lived their mission to teach at McMurry very well.  They inspire those of us here and now to live our mission to today’s students similarly, that we might help shape the future of McMurry students and those who are to come.