Dr. Ayers on SPCS at 50

The School of Professional and Continuing Studies doesn’t always invite a keynote speaker to address the graduates. Its tradition is to have a student, an adjunct professor and an alumnus or alumna address the graduates—they offer our graduates the laudatory inspiration expected from a Commencement ceremony address.

But a fiftieth anniversary comes around only once, so for the School’s 2013 Commencement Exercises, only the University president would do. As a result, Dr. Edward L. Ayers addressed the graduates on May 11, 2013—the culminating event of the School’s year-long fiftieth anniversary celebration—reflecting on the School’s past, present and future.

The story of the School of Professional and Continuing Studies—originally named University College, later renamed the School of Continuing Studies—is one of optimism, an essentially American story. And that makes Ayers, a student and scholar of American history, the perfect candidate to offer some reflections.

Elaborating on a theme he introduced during the School’s inaugural event of the year-long anniversary celebration—the Opening Gala on September 17, 2012—Ayers enumerated ways in which the School’s unique character enriches the University.

“Today, SPCS embodies much of what the University of Richmond is and much of what we are trying to become,” he noted. “That’s unusual, in all honesty, for we are the only top 50 national liberal arts college with a school of continuing studies.”

“I love that!” he continued, for its gives the University a “capacity and power” it would not otherwise have.

And how does Ayers define that capacity and power?

• SPCS gives the University the power to reach thousands of members of the Richmond community each year through its credit-earning, noncredit, Osher and summer studies programs.
• SPCS gives the University the capacity to hold classes in which learners of all ages engage in scholarship together.
• SPCS makes the University accessible to everyone, to be a university for Richmond and the University of Richmond.
• SPCS makes the University a national leader in integrating international experiences in continuing education.
• SPCS has led the way in diversity, enrolling the University’s first African-American student.
• SPCS leads the way in enabling first-in-family members to attend and succeed in college.
• The University contributes to local businesses, companies, organizations and nonprofits through SPCS.
• SPCS students and alumni are ambassadors of the University throughout the Richmond community, and their examples inspire others to excellence and greatness.

The School’s past reflects its agility and entrepreneurial spirit—a willingness to reinvent itself in response to changing markets and demographics.

When it opened in 1962, most of its students were men, freshly out of the armed services and building a career with G.I. Bill funds. By the decade of the 1980s, 70 percent of the School’s students were women, reflecting changes in the workforce and society. Today, the School’s students, men and women, work harder than ever to balance their professional and personal priorities between themselves, their children and their aging parents.

Despite these demographic changes, the present offers a portrait of unprecedented growth during which the School has reaped the benefits of its agility and entrepreneurial spirit.

During his Commencement address, Dr. Ayers concentrated most of his remarks on the School’s past and present. But his reflections contain within them the seeds of what the School is to become: an integral partner in a University that continues to build on excellence in diversity, in accessibility, in internationalization, in intergenerational learning, in community engagement and in a university for Richmond.

Ayers addressed his closing remarks to the graduates, in heartfelt appreciation for their legacy of scholarship and engagement: “Thanks, for making the University of Richmond what it is, and what it is to be—excellent.”

And so we begin the next 50 years of agility and entrepreneurship in partnership toward excellence.