Temple University - Templar Yearbook (Philadelphia, PA)

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President ' s Message To The Class of 1981: It is the year 2000. Most of you are in your early 40s and already mully the philosophical and physiological concerns of middle age. On a whim, you take down the dusty Templar yearbook of the Class of ' 81, thumb the pages and find the President ' s Message near the beginning. And the message is this; years from now, we trust you will still value your Temple University education. Let me define education. I am not speaking about that portion of a college education, however valuable, which deals with the accumulation of facts, statistics, dates and tables. A good portion of this kind of education will not wear well with time. In our era of the explosion of knowledge, some of the things you learned in 1981 will be outdated before the ink dries on your diplomas. Space research provides a vivid example of the incredible acceleration of information. Several years ago, we launched a successful series of probes to Venus. In 90 minutes ' time, this expehment told us more about our so-called sister planet than earth-based astronomers had learned in all the centuries since Galileo. If anything, the accumulation of knowledge in all fields of endeavor is going to speed up, not slow down, in the years ahead. What this means is that all of you will be required to update your knowledge periodically in order to keep up with the professions you choose. But there is another part of education. It provides a foundation for rational thinking and ethical decision-making, and it produces a thirst that cannot be slake for more knowledge. If your Temple professors were successful, you will never cease to value learning for its own sake and you will be able to use your critical thinking power to make decisions based on a sense of values. Some graduate from college and never pick up another book unless they have to for their jobs. Others, long out of school, continue to pick up Cicero, a new psychology textbook, a lames Joyce novel, or a biography or a book in the field of history - not because they are required to do it but because they relish the experience of learning. In an essay about growing old, Sean O ' Casey wrote about two sisters who had decided to take up the difficult study of ancient Creek. What was remarkable about this was that the sisters were both in their nineties. They had never lost their enjoyment of learning. If you have learned to value learning, you possess something that can never be taken away from you — not now, not by the year 2000, not ever. Marvin Wachman

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Vice Presidents Dr. Bernard C. Watson Vice President for Academic Administration Dr. )ohn Rumpf Vice President and Dean of Faculties I Dr. Leo M. Henikoff Vice President for Medical Affairs and Dean of School of Medicine 26