SMU Convocation Speech by Professor Howard Hunter

I extend a warm welcome to our new undergraduates and their parents at SMU’s seventh convocation. Each year in August, SMU throws a big party to welcome our freshmen. Academic convocations are part-serious, part-celebratory events where freshmen are made to feel at home while interacting with senior students, faculty and staff. At the same time, the university leaders articulate and renew the academic creed and other statements of core academic values.

After the serious part of the program, an exuberant celebration of the University and our new class will follow. We hope that this will set the tone for your University life – seriousness of purpose coupled with warm celebrations of life and friendship.

The SMU Passport
Not long ago, each of you was handed a beautifully designed SMU Passport. This is the first time we have produced something like this – a one-stop handbook and journey planner on what it means to be a citizen of SMU. It resembles your most important travel document down to the very touch and feel. Now, what does it mean to be a citizen? The modern concept goes back at least to Classical times when it was a matter of great status and privilege to be, for example, a Citizen of Rome. With the rights and privileges, however, come responsibilities to the community. Citizens are expected to build and to sustain the community, and the same is true of you, the newest citizens of SMU.

The SMU Passport is a handy 101 survival guide to living the SMU experience to the fullest. Being a member of a world-class university comes with the advantage of a premium education highly regarded by employers and a modern state-of-the-art city campus with close links to the financial and business sector. At the same time, you are expected to be active in community service and student life activities, both of which provide invaluable opportunities for character-moulding and leadership development. The SMU Passport also contains helpful tips on maximising your time during internships as well as advice on when to start planning for an overseas exchange to get that extra global perspective. Carry it with pride while you are here – as a constant reminder of all that is available to you – and of your own important role in building and sustaining the SMU community.

SMU CIRCLE Values
Last weekend, while I was riding my bicycle out to Changi Village, I rode through the middle of your Team Building Camp. I did not intrude but watched – with amusement and also with pride – as you went about your projects. The main objective of this overnight camp – other than to get to know each other before school starts – is to introduce freshmen to the important SMU CIRCLE values. Instead of hazing new students by putting them through embarrassing stunts, SMU tries to treat freshmen as mature adults. The activities of your Team Building Camp are exactly what professional leadership consultancies conduct for large corporations during company team-building retreats. We hope you had found the camp meaningful and most of all that you enjoyed yourself. Let me reiterate the SMU CIRCLE Values:

Commitment – It means sticking to an agreement and seeing a project through to completion even though the going gets tough and relationships become difficult.

Integrity – Being honest and truthful with yourself and especially with others. It is critical for business leaders to be above board in all their dealings. Integrity, when earned, goes a long way to securing lasting relationships. Integrity, when breached, has devastating consequences from destruction of trust to criminal. News abounds with corporate scandals – deliberate actions taken by well-educated, successful people for short-term profit. Most cannot escape the heavy hand of the law.

Responsibility – This is an important core value because every employer treasures a worker who takes pride and ownership of his assignments and delivers a high quality of work.

Collegiality – These next few years as students are in many ways “practice years” for life. Networking, bonding and learning how to work with others will determine your long term success. Value people and value your relationships. Your team mate today could be your business partner tomorrow.

Leadership – An effective leader is one who knows how to recognise talented people, open oneself to all kinds of possibilities and risk, and not seek personal glory or ego gratification but take satisfaction in seeing long term goals brought to reality.

Excellence – Like Commitment and Responsibility, this final CIRCLE value is about the drive and discipline to bring out one’s best in all our endeavours.

The Ee Seng and Claire Lim Scholarship
Last month during our third Commencement, one of our top graduates, Mr Darren Lim who is also the Valedictorian of 2006, made history in Singapore by pledging a gift to SMU in the form of the Ee Seng and Claire Lim Accountancy Schola rship, named after his parents. He is the first graduate in Singapore, fresh out of university, to commit an annual donation of S$4,000 towards funding a scholarship programme for students with financial hardship. As a result of his philanthropy, one needy SMU accountancy student every year will benefit from this financial assistance. In a short while, we will be giving out the first Ee Seng and Claire Lim Scholarship. Darren Lim’s active citizenship is something I encourage all freshmen to emulate when you graduate.

The SMU Beat
In closing, I would like to just give a little curtain raiser to a very exciting performance you will see on stage later. It is called “The SMU Beat” and promises to be multi-media spectacular that takes a refreshing look at many of your good-looking seniors and their various talents. For the first time, you get to see freestyle basketball, kendo, roller-blading, samba dancing and cheerleading coming together in a confluence of slick choreography in unusual spaces within the new city campus. Stay tuned for this.

An SMU education will bring you many experiences. You will be challenged, stimulated and stretched to the limits of your capabilities. At the same time, you will be inspired, guided and nurtured. Our highly interactive learning pedagogy means that no one will go unnoticed. But what you make of your time here is entirely up to you.

I firmly believe everyone will go away from SMU taking away something of value, whether or not you make a conscious effort. I have that much faith in our system. Nevertheless, if you take full advantage of all that is laid before you, your experience will be so much the richer.

Once again, a very warm welcome to SMU.

Thank you.