Washington College Magazine
College Honors Former Dean, Civic Leaders at Convocation
Baird Tipson presented one of the inaugural President's Medals to Kent Center Director Judy Linn (center), pictured with students and faculty who work there.
Barbara Mowat, a leading Shakespearean scholar who directs the Folger Institute, delivered the keynote address at Washington's Birthday Convocation. A former Dean of Washington College, she returned to Tawes Theatre to speak about the "radically large ambitions" of our nation's founding fathers and the enduring value of the liberal arts.
George Washington and his compatriots, Mowat remarked, held a "grand image" of the individual who could transcend his selfish interests and act in such a way as to affect future posterity. She recounted how Washington quelled a mutiny among his impoverished army in 1783. College Honors Former Dean, Civic Leaders at Convocation "Instead of making promises, instead of issuing threats, he challenged the men to demonstrate their public virtue," she said. "Specifically, he urged them to 'rise superior to the pressure of [their] most complicated sufferings'; [for] their 'glorious example' would display the highest 'stage of perfection to which human nature is capable of attaining.'"
This was the context in which our government was established, she said. "The United States Constitution, with its insistence on features designed to contain human weakness, seems, at first sight, an unlikely creation of men who clearly believed in the individual as larger than life and, potentially, at least, magnificently virtuous. Yet closer readings of Jefferson and Adams, closer attention to the debates at the Constitutional Convention, suggest that it was their grand vision of human potential that allowed the founders to face up to, and to find ways to contain, the tendencies in humans—especially greed, self-interest and susceptibility to the giddiness of power—which act against the common good unless checked by a system that takes these tendencies into account." And it was into this "potentially magnificent" democratic society that Washington College emerged.
Those in higher education acknowledge its value to society. But Mowat sees something "more vital" than economic prosperity, improved health care and global competitiveness in a liberal education. "A liberally educated workforce leads to an educated citizen who can think about his or her own view of what it means to be human, of what it means to live in a republic, of what is required of a citizen who values freedom—both on the national front and the individual front," she noted.
"There are few places in the United States where one can feel more in touch with the nascent republic of the late 18th century than in Chestertown, few places where George Washington's birthday is still given its own special celebration... The citizen who has absorbed the dreams, the vision and the wisdom of our ancestors is the citizen whose civic and public virtues will strengthen and animate the core of our hard-won and always vulnerable republic."
President Baird Tipson started a new tradition when he recognized employees, as well as community members and organizations, who understand the concept of public virtue. Ruth Briscoe, a longtime community volunteer: James Siemen, a mental health counselor and emergency rescue volunteer; and Nancy Dick, a public health advocate, received inaugural President's Medals, along with the Kent Family Center and the Chestertown Volunteer Fire Department.
Tipson also recognized exceptional College employees with the President's Distinguished Service Awards. Louis Saunders, a 42-year employee of buildings and grounds; Laura Johnstone Wilson, director of campus events; and Joachim Scholz, provost and dean of the College, were singled out for their exemplary character and service.
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