Usually in my role as dean I am charged with inviting someone to present the commencement address. Recently, however, I was invited to give this year's commencement address, and my mind wandered. What does commencement mean to faculty, I wondered. What does it mean to me?
Although I know that, as faculty, we share in the joys of our graduates, we are often tired. Meeting end-of-term teaching and grading demands, finishing the academic year's committee and curricular work, and (of course) preparing for the next student group can be exhausting. Plus, we attend countless events associated with graduation, such as our pinning ceremonies. All that takes time and energy.
After commencement this year, I walked the halls and noticed that the atmosphere was different - more faculty had their office doors open, and there was laughter and a line at the shredding machine as faculty purged files of confidential data. Clothing choices were less formal, with a definite trend toward comfortable shoes. Deep conversations were happening, the kinds of conversations that lead to the partnerships that sustain us through the teaching cycle.
None of this was a surprise, but I thought about the overall calm. It was pervasive and refreshing. If only we could capture its beauty and dispense it throughout the rest of the year.
Then I had an insight. This atmosphere of postcommencement calm can be carried forward to the next season, as it is calm that brings about creativity - new ideas and understandings and the opportunity to practice what we all preach, that is, the value of lifelong learning.
Our minds and hearts are packed with an unfaltering quest for knowledge and truth, an eagerness to learn and change. Periods of calm allow for voracious reading (think of the articles you discovered during the academic year and didn't have time to read), working in the specialty practice that is your passion, or changing through diet and exercise. As faculty, we can use this time as a launching pad for voluntary service - for the homeless, for migrant workers, or for a myriad of other special populations. Often service involves trips to other nations, through affiliations with groups such as religious organizations, as well as sightseeing expeditions.
If you think of the revised Bloom's taxonomy, you know that creativity occurs after facts are remembered and information is synthesized and analyzed. Creativity is the highest level of the cognitive domain. It requires content mastery so that ideas can be manipulated into new forms, sometimes with the abandonment of previous approaches. Periods of calm lead to new levels of cognition and the generation of new ideas. Over the years, I saw faculty use the period after commencement for writing major grants and enlisting novel approaches to instruction. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that innovations, such as clickers in the classroom, happened in this special time after commencement.
Periods of calm can also be the spark for working together in groups toward a common goal. For example, this could be the time to form a study group for the NLN Certified Nurse Educator examination or begin work on an NLN Center of Excellence application. (Applications of intent are due October 15.) Large collaborative projects, such as multiauthored books or interdisciplinary research proposals, are common byproducts of the calm.
In all these ways, commencement is a beginning for faculty, as it is for students. It marks entry into a new season of our professional lives.