Finding–and Being–the Inspiration

Keynote Address by Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef It's no accident that we happen to have arrived here today, the 26th of September, in the year 2007, as members of this

campus family. But why this family and not another? What paths did you take? What options did you pass by? What was it that resulted in your being here today on the 26th of September, the year 2007?

I suspect we all have stories about nudges now and again and here and there that have helped us find our paths….stories about others who have inspired us, consciously or not, to see possibilities that we never would have imagined for ourselves.

I never could have foreseen the path that would lead eventually to my becoming the chancellor of a major research university.

My mother quit school after the eighth grade, my father after the ninth. I lived in a poor neighborhood where no one went to college and where boys were expected to go directly from high school to a nearby foundry that was the major employer in the Midwestern company town in which I grew up.

And that would have been my future but for two people who early on helped me see other possibilities.

One was a truck farmer I worked for during summers, who actually, it seemed to me, was really a biologist. He knew everything there was to know about plants and about the insects that bothered them. He lit a small fire inside me, a curiosity about the biological world. He read everything he could to understand that world better, and soon so did I. That was the field I ended up studying.

The other person was a high school English teacher who, just passing me in the hallway one day, casually remarked, "That was a pretty good paper you wrote." That was probably the first time in high school that I'd gotten such encouragement — and probably for good reason. I wasn't at all interested in being a good student. But, after this brief encounter, likely utterly forgettable by the teacher, I began to think differently about myself. Maybe I could do better.

So instead of the foundry, I headed to the nearby commuter college. There were still several bumps along the new road I'd chosen, but, particularly with the help of a laboratory instructor and an encouraging professor, I was on my way. I was taking my first steps on a path that would lead from Purdue University to the University of Wisconsin, to the University of Illinois, to the University of Maryland, and ultimately to a great university in the always interesting city of Davis, California.

We all have interesting stories….

I suspect that new paths were also sketched nine years ago in a fourth-grade classroom at Father Keith B. Kenny School in the Oak Park area of Sacramento.

It was there, and then, that we launched our Reservation for College program to encourage these elementary school children in this hardscrabble neighborhood to see a different future for themselves. I promised those 9-year-olds that, if they stayed on track with their courses, studied hard and were eligible for admission, we would provide funding equivalent to the cost of their tuition for attending

UC Davis.

Well, those nine years passed in a hurry and those fourth-graders, surely with lots of help from their parents and teachers, are now ready for college — and five are enrolled here at UC Davis this fall. They will be majoring in genetics, economics, environmental management, biochemistry and psychology. They are, all of them, on their way to careers that will make a difference in this world.

They recently returned to Father Keith B. Kenny School, along with their former principal, Mertie Shelby, who is one of our featured speakers this morning. Their accomplishments were celebrated that day but, more importantly, they encouraged the current elementary school students to see new possibilities — to find the inspiration and then to act on it, just as they had done.

One of the five told these youngsters, "Stay focused and don't give up, because your future is really worth fighting for."

Prompted by their principal, these nine-year-olds responded in unison, "I WILL go to college. I WILL earn a degree. I WILL be a university graduate."

Quite a powerful example of

finding — and being — the inspiration,

don't you think?

So let me ask today, where have you found inspiration — and who are you inspiring? I suspect you are more likely to know the answer to the first question than to the second. After all, we generally don't wake up in the morning saying, "Today I'm going to be inspirational!" But every one of us, every single one of us, has the capacity to be inspiring.

Actor Denzel Washington has gathered together personal stories of inspiration in his book titled A Hand to Guide Me. Several well-known people contributed essays for this book about the people who helped to shape their lives.

Former President Bill Clinton credits his Uncle Buddy, whose dinner-table stories about everyday people taught the future president that, and I quote, "everyone has a story and the more of others you understand, the better your grasp of human nature."

Clinton says that he really believes one of the principal reasons he became president was this great gift he received from Uncle Buddy — the lesson to "keep eyes and ears open, to soak everything in before judging a person, a situation, or a complex issue."

I've had the opportunity to meet Clinton a couple of times now and it's clear Uncle Buddy made an impact. Bill Clinton has a phenomenal ability to remember names and faces — and the personal stories attached to those names and faces, mine included.

He was back in our area just last month to speak at the annual Lake Tahoe Forum. He and former Vice President Al Gore helped launch this effort to preserve the lake a decade ago. In fact, Clinton and Gore were briefed then on the more than 40 years of UC Davis studies of the lake and its ecosystem.

Those studies show that the lake faces the same environmental challenges that are plaguing the rest of the planet —

climate change and resource depletion. And the only way that those challenges can be met, Clinton said last month, is through a committed coalition of public and private agencies and individuals. The emphasis is on coalition.

Perhaps it is Clinton's former vice president, Al Gore, who is most responsible for focusing the world's attention on global warming and the urgency to address this climate crisis. His documentary

An Inconvenient Truth won an Academy Award this past year. This summer his Live Earth benefit concert was staged around the world and broadcast to an estimated two billion people through the Internet, television and radio.

There's no doubt that Gore inspires others, but who has inspired Gore? One person, for sure, was his former college professor, Roger Revelle. Do you recognize that name? He was one of the earliest predictors of global warming, and he was also the father of the

UC San Diego campus.

I believe that both Revelle and Gore would applaud the tough sustainability goals recently approved by the University of California Regents. They would urge us to stay personally focused and dedicated.

For example, we at UC Davis are committed to becoming a zero-waste campus by the year 2020. We're committed to purchasing 20 percent of our electricity from renewable resources by 2010. And we're committed to sharply reducing the campus's carbon emissions as quickly as we can.

If any campus can do it, we can. We have a long tradition of environmental research and leadership and sustainable practices. But it won't be easy. We certainly can't succeed unless we do it together.

I hope that you will join me at our Campus Sustainability Day on Oct. 24 and in a nationwide event called "Focus the Nation" on Jan. 31. More information will be forthcoming, but both events will help to focus our attention — both as individuals and as departments and offices — on the urgency of reducing our negative environmental impact. It's hard to imagine a global challenge in greater need of collective inspirational leadership.

And so, again I ask, where have you found inspiration — and who are you inspiring?

Those sources of inspiration are really all around us. Colin Powell, our formerSecretary of State, says that "you never know who's going to touch your life or how…Don't just sit around waiting for someone unique or special to come touch you. There are mentors and positive influences in every direction you look."

The point is that inspiration is always there. It's just waiting to be found.

But let's not forget chapter two.

We're all meant to pass some of that blessing on — to not just find the inspiration for ourselves but to BE the inspiration for others.

You may not even realize how or when you're touching another, or how important your example can be.

Remember that encouraging comment that I got from one of my high school teachers? Long before me, historian Henry Adams said, "A teacher affects eternity; one can never tell where the influence ends."

To inspire and to be inspired — it's what life is really all about.

Thank you.

Presented here are the speakers' prepared remarks.

Mertie Shelby

Sacramento Educator and Former Principal of Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School

One of the most cherished memories of my childhood includes sitting on a little stool as my mom braided my hair and told me of her childhood on the farm. Her parents were share croppers in Mississippi so the opportunity she was given to go to the city and complete 9th grade was a huge deal. This 9th-grade education at what was called the normal school was paramount to an undergraduate degree for African Americans or so-called colored girls of her day. With the education she received, she was able to go back to the Delta and teach in a one-room schoolhouse. Today, we would call it a multi-level interdisciplinary classroom. To prepare ourselves to facilitate instruction in this way we would have to have formal training or special expertise in differentiated instruction. However, the stories I heard about this configuration of multiple grades in a one-room schoolhouse came from an 8th-grade scholar who was allowed to go to the city for 9th grade. Hearing my mom talk about the relationship of the older children in her class to the younger scholars gave me a sense of cooperative learning groups. This strategy became a powerful teaching tool not during the '80s but really during the era of the one-room schoolhouse. Learners were expected to collaborate and share the knowledge. The teacher worked first with the students who grasp information or skills easily and they in turn passed it down to the next group. This strategy helped to facilitate one teacher working with large groups, 30 or more students in multiple grades in the same room. The collective, teacher and students in the room, gave you special attention until you knew what they knew.

My mother wove the stories of the everyday triumphs and trials in the classroom so convincingly that they replaced the Goldilocks and other so-called classics for me. She was a great storyteller. While I don't recall reveling in the desire to teach in that kind of a school, I do remember vicariously enjoying the atmosphere and believing that one day I too could become a teacher. My journey has been a much different one, however I do recall the joy she felt when I decided to become a teacher. I knew I could do this because I had a desire, a role model, and was expected and inspired to facilitate learning first and foremost by my mother, Mrs. Susie Greer.

The 25 years I spent in the classroom, grades 1-6, at Bret Harte Elementary School have afforded me the opportunity to see young people begin their formal education and actually enter their careers. Every birthday or holiday I'm reminded of the special relationship I had with the Fisher family. Maisha Fisher, a '94 grad of

UC Davis, and her brother Demany, also a grad of UC Davis, were not only my students but my mentees. Maisha did her student teaching at Father Keith B. Kenny where I was principal and distinguished herself as a Master Teacher in only a few years. She then matriculated at Stanford University obtaining a master's degree and then on to UC Berkeley for her doctorate. Today, Maisha is a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is a product of UC Davis you can be proud of and I am indeed proud to say she acknowledges the role our relationship played in her life. Not to be outdone, Damany is completing his doctorate this year at

UC Berkeley. While I don't take credit for their successes, I do share in the

joy of their accomplishments and

the part my relationship with these two

students played.

Lastly, as principal of Father Keith B. Kenny, I had the pleasure of working in partnership with the outreach department of UC Davis to inspire students to take a nine-year journey of preparation to enter college. We designed a curriculum called a Reservation for College that would demystify college for them and their families. This successful program beginning in fourth grade would expose them to college life, the necessity to become educated and its relevance to their later life. Today I am proud to say there are new Aggies on campus because of the Reservation for College program.

You see, success in life is finding — and being — the inspiration.

Craig McNamara

Alumnus, Founder of the Center for Land-Based Learning and President/Owner of Sierra Orchards

I am honored to be here at the beginning of this new academic year. Today's theme of "inspiration" is so appropriate in our world, which often seems out of control and broken.

While preparing for today, I reflected on the key people who have helped shape my life. These mentors have brought meaning to my work and everything that I do.

I met Agnes Miller when I was 18. By that time, she had been teaching 6th grade for more than 20 years in a school in the poorest part of Washington, D.C. Washington is a city of many contradictions, and there is no greater one than this all-black elementary school just blocks from the nation's capitol, where students lacked textbooks, clothing, lunch money and a sense of hope.

Aggie taught me that "her children" needed love and a strong role model. Her goal was to expose these "precious children" to nature and to the goodness of life. She encouraged me to follow the path of Gandhi and "Be the change we wish to see in the world."

At 22, I met Manuel Torres in his sugar cane field in Michoacan, Mexico. Throughout that year, I helped Manuel and his family raise and harvest their crops. I will never forget working on the rocky slope of a cane field, hoeing weeds from what seemed to be a never-ending parcella of sugar cane, looking up from my hoe and confessing that I didn't think that I had it in me to finish the field. Manuel turned to me and said, "Don't worry about the field; just think about the plants you are helping today."

When I was 26, having just graduated from UC Davis, I met Ton Lum. He was a local Chinese farmer and Davis graduate, who allowed me to work at his side hoeing, mowing, and irrigating field crops. He knew that, if I was going to succeed as a farmer, I needed to know all the jobs on the farm — even the boring ones.

As inspirational as Ton was out in the field, his greatest gifts to me were his lessons about appreciating life and nurturing friendships. Occasionally at noon, he would find me in some distant field and take me to his house for a lunch of homemade noodles and some lively conversation about Chinese literature or Cesar Chavez.

Aggie, Manuel and Ton all taught me to love, to nurture, and to connect with the land. I fear that today our children are experiencing what has been termed a "nature deficit disorder." This occurs because of the disconnect between our food, our land and our people. Today our fellow Americans spend 95 percent of their time in houses, cars, malls and offices. We are becoming an indoor species. It is predicted that 25 percent of the next generation of children born in the U.S. will begin their lives in slums and never experience or visit the lands upon which their food is grown.* I think that you will agree with me that this is unacceptable.

My passion as a farmer is to help others reconnect to nature, to give inner-city children a chance to experience the world of farming, and to seek sustainable ways to improve our communities. At the Center for Land-Based Learning, we are preparing the next generation of decision makers to be informed stewards of the environment and committed community leaders.

UC Davis has been a valuable partner, emphasizing the rigor of learning and the value of mastering a subject through a combination of experiential learning and scientific research. I invite you to join us. Together "we can be the change we wish to see in the world."

And on that note, as you return to work or class on this beautiful day, stop by the UC Davis farmer's market on the Quad and, as Michael Pollan would say, "Vote with your fork!"

*The Geography of Childhood by Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble.

Alfredo Arredondo

Senior Anthropology Major

As it turns out I have always been an Aggie. Not in the traditional sense that might first come to mind, but more in the sense of my parents' legacy. Neither of them completed more than a fifth-grade education in Mexico, much less attended a university like this one. Both came to this country as unauthorized immigrants in hopes of a brighter future and worked hard in the agricultural fields of the Santa Maria Valley for close to 20 years — this is where the Aggie identity comes from. I still remember the smell of the freshly sprayed pesticide as I walked to school in the morning and how every so often I would see my mom and her troop through the chain-linked fence and out into the fields as they worked hard to cultivate the crops that fed thousands.

Ironically enough, working from sun up to sun down in the fields does not pay much; in fact it pays the worst in this state. Of the billions of dollars in profit made by agriculture in California, a farm worker only sees about $15,000 a year. Even with this reality, my mother always pushed for me to succeed and led by example with her determination. She became a truck driver about five years ago. Her first shipment was from Los Angeles to New York City, a trepid land infamous for the worst traffic in the nation that many experienced truckers refuse to drive to, and she did it by herself. Today she owns and operates a very successful transport company. She is my inspiration.

A racialized and gendered history tells us that those who were most inspirational have been people like our presidents or other celebrities. Yet there also exists another history not too often retold of how some of the greatest events that have occurred were committed by common hardworking people. As for myself, less than one lifetime ago I would not have been allowed to enroll at this very university. People struggled and it is because of those struggles in the '60s that I, along with other people of color and women, can now pursue higher education. It took ordinary and dedicated people to make that type of positive change. My time at Davis, along with many other staff, faculty and students, has been dedicated to making diversity and equity better at this campus and the surrounding region, and I am sure that many of you will also continue with the challenge for change.

Struggles continue today and there are always ordinary people with extraordinary passion and heart who are willing to stand up for others so that they too may succeed. Staff, faculty and students at UC Davis do this every day. That is what is truly important: understanding that it does not take a presidential title or celebrity status to make a difference; all it does take is you.

Isao Fujimoto

Senior Lecturer Emeritus of

Asian American Studies

More than 40 years ago I was in the Philippines researching village development. One remote village was in the mountains of Northern Luzon, home to numerous indigenous tribes like the Bontocs, Ifugao, Ibaloi and the Kalingas. It was near Christmas time 1965 when my wife and I were invited to join a celebration in a Kalinga village. As we were sitting in their makeshift village church, a small boy appeared and presented my wife with a gift — one egg. We were immediately struck by what that gift represented. In that very poor village, one egg was a very precious commodity. That special act of generosity left a deep impression on us.

I can trace my being in the Philippines to another generous gift given to me many years before. I grew up on the Yakima Indian Reservation in Eastern Washington where over a hundred immigrant families from Japan were farming on land leased from the Indians. When World War II began, everyone of Japanese descent on the West Coast was rounded up by the U.S. government and evacuated to the interior. Our family was imprisoned first in the Heart Mountain, Wyoming, concentration camp and later at Tule Lake, in Modoc County, which was my introduction to California.

These camps confined everyone behind barbed wire with armed guard towers spaced every l00 yards. It was in the Tule Lake camp that my father gave me a gift that helped me transcend being imprisoned, leading to what I am doing now. I had started collecting stamps and, seeing that I had little equipment, my father looked through a Sears Roebuck catalogue and ordered a stamp album. It was the biggest Scott's album available and it cost $5. As a cook in the prison camp, my father was paid $16 a month — he had diverted nearly a third of his month's pay to get me that album! The impact of that gift was liberating. As I studied the images of stamps from everywhere my imagination flew me over the barbed wires to places all over the world, firing up my curiosity to know all the amazing people on this planet. My father's gift of the stamp album got me started on a journey leading to my work as a rural sociologist doing community development with people from all over the world.

Today is a day for remembering that all of us, like the little Kalinga boy and my father, are bearers of life-inspiring gifts. Some, like all of you here, bear gifts of intellectual talent; others add or bring gifts of creativity, courage or compassion. It is not our purpose as a university to search for who is the most gifted, or to define gifts in narrow terms. Rather, our purpose is to encourage each of us to discover our gifts, whatever they might be, and to deepen and strengthen them, for the common good.

The follow-up question, "What shall we do with our gifts?" can be answered by the choices we make.

Some years ago I saw a billboard at California's northern end of Highway 99 stating: "If you are a doctor, our community welcomes you. We don't have any one like you. Please call this number." For those of you considering medicine, would you also consider responding to such an ad? Say you graduate as an English major — will you write copy for a public relations firm to get people to buy more things they do not need? Or will you be an investigative reporter or teach youth in an inner-city school to write expressively about their families and their dreams? If you become a lawyer, you can devise ways for Fortune 500 companies to avoid paying taxes or you can do pro bono work for the victims of Katrina denied payment on their insurance claims. If your interests are in agricultural business, you can become a junior executive with Con Agra, Cargill or Dole, or you can help manage a farmer's market like the local one in Davis that enables 50 local producers to make a decent living while adding social and environmental vitality to our region.

No matter what our age or major, no matter what our resources or life circumstances, the world stands ready to receive our gifts.

The most important question we'll face won't be on an exam or during a performance review, it will be the question we answer in our everyday lives here at the university, with our families and in our communities. Everyone here has the potential to make a difference and inspire others. How much and in what ways will depend on how we answer the question: "Today and every day, how will we share our gifts?"

Debra Cleveland

Student Affairs

Web Content Coordinator

The phrase "six degrees of separation" was popularized by a 1993 movie of the same title — the premise being that, within six people, we can discover a connection to anyone in the world.

I'd like to share with you my thoughts on "degrees of inspiration."

When asked to call to mind inspiring people, we often think of those whose extraordinary accomplishments are recognized worldwide: Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, to name a few. They exemplify one degree of inspiration.

Another degree of inspiration, however, lies closer to home, provided by friends, colleagues — perhaps even those we don't know well.

For instance, the person who has been most inspirational to me is a friend who introduced me to my faith community, which now provides an enduring foundation for my life, no matter the changes and chances of this world.

Each of you can likely call to mind a person close to you who has been similarly inspiring: a grandmother whose love and patience carried you through a difficult time, an encouraging supervisor whose support led to a promotion, a friend who listened compassionately when you were troubled.

What links these degrees of inspiration are the virtues that underlie them, the qualities that are the best we have to offer: determination, graciousness, courage, persistence, kindness, strength — and there are many others.

So when we exemplify positive qualities, when we bring them to bear on any endeavor, we are inspiring.

The poet Maya Angelou has said, "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

Isn't that the essence of being inspiring: working to make people feel uplifted, valued, capable and accepted? Again, the positive qualities I mentioned earlier are what we call upon to make people feel all of those things.

It's most difficult, of course, to exemplify these qualities in trying or stressful circumstances, and yet it makes our exercising of them all the more inspiring.

I was recently at a sporting event, and some of the participants were unhappy with how the referee had called the game. I watched as she responded to anger by patiently listening and remaining detached. I was so impressed that I later e-mailed her to let her know that I appreciated her inspiring behavior under difficult circumstances.

What is beautiful, to me, about being inspiring, is that it has nothing to do with position or material means, and we have opportunities to be inspirational each day.

I hope you'll take time after the convocation to talk with each other about someone in your life who has provided you with a degree of inspiration.