Life changed forever for Mohammad Mohanna when he came to America as a young man. An Iranian native, Mohanna had failed out of Oxford University and was searching for a purposeful life.

His was one of Fall Convocation's three main speeches, each reflecting the title of the event: "Crossing Boundaries Imagined and Real."

"I asked myself, do I want to go home a failure or do I want to succeed in life?" Mohanna told more than 1,000 faculty, staff and students gathered Sept. 29 in Mondavi Center. "One nation came to mind." Mohanna paused. "America."

Mohanna sweated through janitorial jobs and earned his college degree. At 22, he bought his first real estate property. He is now a successful Sacramento real estate developer and UC Davis Foundation Board trustee.

"I'm simply another story of 'only in America,'" said Mohanna, crediting education and hard work for his achievements.

In a weeklong tour of Iranian universities, Mohanna and UC Davis' six-member delegation worked at re-establishing ties with Iranian universities such as the Sharif University of Technology and the University of Tehran. Mohanna praised Vanderhoef for inspiring that trip and the chancellor's vision to "expand education beyond borders."

A university like UC Davis, Mohanna said, builds bridges where barriers once existed. He recalled one UC Davis alumnus he met on that journey -- he is now the Iranian Minister of Agriculture. "He said to me, 'Mohammad, I owe what I am to my education at UC Davis."

He found that sentiment prevalent among former Aggie students in Iran, a country he described as "a nation of young people, bright, but with challenges."

With visa restrictions making travel to Iran difficult, Mohanna hopes aloud for better days ahead for opportunities, educational and career-wise, in both countries.

"When competition yields to compassion and cooperation," he said, "we may achieve some greatness," he said.

The inaugural student address

Another convocation speaker, Education Abroad student and senior Kalen Ridenour was the first-ever student to speak at the Fall Convocation. She spent six months studying in Santiago, Chile. A Spanish and sociology major, she described it as a "life-changing experience."

Ridenour said her trip abroad nurtured a "world vision" and appreciation for different cultures and places. In Santiago, a city of 6 million, she encountered culture shock.

"Instantly I had to develop an entirely new way of interacting with people on different levels than I was," Ridenour said. "I was able, for the first time, to truly take a step back and view my country as an outsider looking in."

The Education Abroad experience taught her that "we as humans establish limits, or borders, within ourselves. These borders are generally limited to our own everyday experiences that only take place in our individual, comfortable worlds."

Ridenour believes that as our world grows more and more diverse, it's "important that we test our own comfortable limits and see things from another's perspective."

While in Chile, Ridenour met Vanderhoef who was on a two-week trip there and in Argentina with several university officials. There, the delegation met with educational and government leaders, hoping to build the university's links in those areas.

An increasingly global perspective

The chancellor said such ventures -- he estimates traveling to about 10 countries in the past few year -- have raised his own awareness of the global picture.

"Bridge building is the answer to boundaries, real and perceived," he said.

Vanderhoef explained that the Iranian trip was not to make a "political" statement or to seek "publicity" for the university. Rather, it was to take "one small step for a return to normalcy in the Middle East" and to reach out to the greater community of scholars and students worldwide.

On the budget situation, Vanderhoef said that "brighter days truly are once more ahead" and he expressed optimism in the 2004-05 budget agreement with the state that provides some light at the end of the tunnel in the years ahead.

In closing, Vanderhoef called for a "global perspective to permeate our curriculum" at UC Davis. "This kind of bridge building is really our best hope for world peace," Vanderhoef said.

In his remarks, Academic Senate Chair Dan Simmons spoke of how the campus's own Principles of Community is based in part on "eliminating barriers" to campus "participation." He said the senate's role in "shared governance" of UC is unique among other higher education system in this aspect.

Simmons said the concept of shared governance goes beyond "just consultation" to extend to the "shared responsibility and "partnership" that exists between the senate, campus administration and other units.

Quoting from the first line of Principles of Community, he reminded the audience about the campus's academic mission: "UC Davis is first and foremost an institution of learning and teaching, committed to serving the needs of society."

To view the Fall Convocation addresses online, see the UC Davis multimedia Web site at http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/multimedia/default.lasso.