When Promise and Promises Meet

This past weekend opened another academic year at Avila University. For me, this is an exciting time, filled with great promise and possibility. Most of the promise I see is in the faces of our new students, whether they be of traditional or non-traditional age. In them, I see such capability and untapped capacities; perhaps more than they realize in themselves. The unfolding and development of that promise is what makes working at a university so fulfilling. So many of our students have no clue as to what they are capable of becoming and are left to their own devices. They might sell themselves short and settle for merely being "good enough." That's where we come in.

Too many of our students are like the Chief in Ken Kesey's, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The Chief was literally a giant among men, but being beaten down so by life, he believed himself small, weak, and insignificant. Too many students never recognize the greatness that lurks within. McMurphy coaxed and convinced the Chief that he was indeed a giant, a person of great capacity. Sometimes, it requires the help of others who believe in us, to coax out that greatness that we might not ordinarily see in ourselves.

Our students are people of great promise. The promises we make to them as a university are to help them develop, to become more than they have imagined for themselves. Our promises are the promises of outcomes, they are promises of possibility, of who they will become. They speak to their development as creative and critical thinkers – strong communicators, leaders and team members. They describe our efforts to engage them in the community through service and the process of helping them understand the world through the eyes of the other, and then helping them act in it with values and integrity. They describe our aim to guide them toward success in their life's calling and in their lives.

The process is one of helping the student slowly grow in the realization of their goodness and their growing greatness, by nourishing and nurturing them to be sure, but also by pushing and challenging them as well—all the while believing in their capability and helping them to believe it themselves. It is built on providing a lot of small opportunities for them to succeed, to discover and prove their capability, and then to claim it as their true self.

For me, this is what makes the opening of a new year at a university like Avila so exciting—it is a time when promise and promises meet and are fulfilled in the full development of possibility. So, let this year begin and the excitement unfold.