121st Annual Meeting
of the Wellesley College
Alumnae Association
Wellesley College

Reunion Weekend
June 10, 2001

Diana Chapman Walsh
President
Wellesley College

What a pleasure it has been to have welcomed so many alumnae back to campus this weekend for this final beat in our 125th anniversary year. The alumnae parade is always a moving testimony to Wellesley's strength and our enduring connections to one another and to the College, across the years, and the miles, and the generations.

It's been an especially exciting reunion for me, with my own class, '66, back in full force - with our tasteful pink flamingoes and Mardi Gras necklaces, and with Nan Keohane here too, celebrating with her powerhouse of a class, '61. Someone said we should make this a condition for the presidency - being part of the mighty one-and-six reunion cohort - and the pattern holds for three of the four alumnae presidents in the history of the college. Ellen Fitz Pendleton was the class of 1886, but Margaret Clapp (my president) breaks the charm because she graduated in 1930, not 1931.

This annual meeting of the WCAA is not only the capstone of a historic year, it is also the first of the five reunion cycles that will be crucial in enabling us to achieve our ambitions to keep Wellesley strong in the years ahead. We today are setting the standard for class participation in The Wellesley Campaign that we launched publicly earlier this year.

We've planned a five-year campaign so that every class will have an opportunity to participate in the campaign during a regular quinquennial reunion cycle and so that the campaign will strengthen, in each class, the volunteer infrastructure that sustains our Annual Giving program. As leaders of this five-year endeavor, you will take us into the next year as we encourage each alumna to participate at the highest possible level each year of the campaign.

· Annual Giving is an integral part of the Campaign, because it provides vital support for the education of today's students. In fact the largest gift to this Campaign is likely to be the collective gift of Annual Giving support from thousands of alumnae. In just this first year, over 3,000 alumnae from the 2001 Reunion classes have contributed over $two-and-a-quarter million to Annual Giving.

· The flexibility of your annual support is invaluable as each year we juggle competing needs and work to maintain and strengthen Wellesley's excellence, as well as our financial equilibrium. These are the funds that you permit us to apply to our most immediate priorities. Your unrestricted gifts are also a tangible vote of confidence in the leadership and the direction of the College.

I want also to acknowledge those in the room -- and those (sadly) no longer with us -- who have made major gifts to other specific Campaign priorities, in addition to Annual Giving. Some of the women of the 2001 Reunion classes have already made it possible for the College to move ahead with important projects described in the blueprint for Wellesley's future that we sent to every alumna.

You have provided us vital support that will advance all three of our major goals. As you recall, we are committed, first to Advancing the Liberal Arts Ideal. Your generous gifts in support of our academic programs include:

1. 5 new professorships, one each, in: Neuroscience, Humanities, Comparative Literature, Computer Science, and Latin American History

2. New funds for creative uses of instructional technologies (exciting developments there as you saw if you visited the Knapp Centers in Clapp and Pendleton);

3. Support for internships that will enable our students to experiment with possibilities for translating their liberal arts experience into action. A lot of excitement there too.

In support of our second major campaign goal, enhancing community life, you have provided generous support that will enable us to build a new campus center and begin reclaiming the large and neglected area of the campus we're calling "Alumnae Valley." It's especially fitting - and not at all surprising -- that alumnae would rally to that cause, knowing how deeply we all feel about our landscape and grounds. You have provided significant funds to advance our goals in landscape restoration, and we thank you for those. There are funds here, also, to help with the renovation of both the Library and the Chapel, two of our most important buildings, historically and symbolically. When we inaugurate a new president, the chair of the board presents her with keys to the College ... three keys, one each to the library, the residence halls, and the chapel. Those three keys represent the three essential elements of a Wellesley education -- education for intellectual agility, for social integrity, and for spiritual depth. Both the chapel and the library are in need of a face lift and through your efforts that work is now closer to reality.

Finally, our third goal is to widen Wellesley's reach and your support of financial aid - for American students and for students from abroad - will be vitally important in helping to ensure that we continue to compete successfully for the best and brightest young women coming out of secondary schools around the country and, now, the world.

Our College is able to pursue these multiple (and expensive) ambitions because of the rich and dynamic partnership we enjoy with our alumnae. Your gifts are an important manifestation of that partnership; they make a palpable difference to what Wellesley is able to accomplish. I thank you for your hard work and for your generosity. Be assured that your gifts have a real and enduring impact. And they are especially significant-materially and motivationally-as we pursue our bold new campaign for Wellesley's future.

Celebrating your successes is an exciting finale to an especially gratifying year in the life of the College. When we set out several years ago - shortly after your last reunion -- to envision how we might mark our 125th anniversary, we knew we wanted to celebrate Wellesley's extraordinary strength and recommit to the underlying values that have carried a resilient institution through ups and downs. We knew we wanted to create a moment in which the entire College community would experience ourselves striding with purpose and confidence into a new century, as united and sure as we've ever been, ready to face new challenges-much in the spirit of this reunion and our annual alumnae parade. We joyfully accomplished that goal, thanks to help from literally every division and department of the College, and many generous volunteers around the country and the world.

We opened the year with a day-long celebration beginning with a special Convocation and ending with a carnival and fireworks display to which thousands of our neighbors came. The next weekend the Alumnae Association sponsored "A Day to Make a Difference," a Saturday on which hundreds of us fanned out into communities--here in Boston and around the world--to volunteer time in support of community-building efforts and to honor our motto of service.

Through the year, we had panels, symposia, and performances touching many facets of our history and our future. The Alumnae Association produced a special anniversary issue of Wellesley magazine and we published a beautiful scholarly book on the history of the landscape, written by three of our art history faculty. We displayed exhibitions and photo essays across the campus--and in cyberspace--and an anniversary web page featured a "person of the week."

Colorful banners on the lamp posts withstood a harsh winter, after we learned to fasten them to deter agile memento seekers. And, at an April symposium featuring more than 50 distinguished alumnae, on panels moderated by faculty and students, we enjoyed an unforgettable 24-hour celebration of our graduates and their life stories.

A rare joint appearance by two of our luminaries--the nation's first woman Secretary of State and the first First Lady to be elected to the U.S. Senate--filled our largest indoor space and provided many in attendance with a memory that will not soon fade. We garnered extensive positive publicity from these anniversary activities, including laudatory editorials in The Boston Globe and The Economist, news articles and radio interviews, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation." I had been carefully briefed with answers to challenging questions but all the reporters wanted to talk about was how strong Wellesley is--and why.

Meanwhile, we celebrated the public launch of our campaign with large and festive events on campus (in October) and in New York (in April at Radio City Music Hall), brought to a crescendo with a video of the launch - the day before our Boston campaign launch -- of our first astronaut into outer space. The campaign events were well attended and much appreciated. The 1500 who attended the evening at Radio City made that the largest off-campus gathering of Wellesley alumnae in the history of the college. Spirits were high and participants were proud of the College and excited to be part of its future-as we had hoped they would be. We are well positioned for the campaign now, with a terrific volunteer leadership team and an excellent professional staff. We are confident that we will bring our campaign to successful completion in June, 2005, thanks to the efforts and generosity of many assembled here.

And we're already implementing some of the plans the campaign is making possible. I hope that your travels across the campus this weekend provided a flavor of some of the progress we've made since your last reunion.

I won't take time to enumerate the initiatives advanced in that five-year period, but I did want to mention that we:clarified our thinking about why we need a campus center, selected an architect and a site, and secured an extraordinary ($25M) lead gift (from Lulu Chow Wang, trustee, chair of the investment committee, dear friend, and a member of the purple class of '66) that will enable us to realize that long-deferred dream.

So, we've made important progress and we have serious work ahead to ensure that the College is positioned to be as vital, vibrant, and relevant in this 21st century as it was through the 20th.

Luckily, Wellesley College has always been able to dream large dreams because of the generous support our alumnae continue to provide -- financial support, yes (the spectacular results we've heard today) that's vitally important and keeps us going quite literally -- but your support is that material help and so much more -- your volunteer support, your enthusiastic ambassadorship for the College, and the priceless gift of your inspiring examples: the stories you embody and tell about how Wellesley College has shaped lives throughout this century. At the dawn of a new millennium, this College is stronger than any of us -- 20, 30, 40 years ago -- could have dared hope we might be at this historic juncture. (Anyone except maybe Nan - I think you saw it coming).

In conclusion, I can think of no more fitting closing for this morning - and for this anniversary year - than words spoken by our own Madeleine Albright … first, in 1995 at our commencement exercises, second, just this April at our 125th anniversary symposium.

Part of what I like about these words is that she did deliver them twice. They were worthy of repetition, and eight years into this adventure I do occasionally repeat myself - a bit sheepishly I confess. But, we teachers often say, repetition is the highest form of pedagogy.

Listen with me, then, to the stirring words of Madeleine Korbel Albright '59, delivered to her Wellesley College sisters, now for the third time:

"It has been said that all work that is worth anything is done in faith. This morning, in these beautiful surroundings, at this celebration of warm memory and high expectation, I summon you in the name of this historic college and of all who have passed through its halls, to embrace the faith that each life enriched by your giving, each friend touched by your affection, each soul inspired by your passion and each barrier to justice brought down by your determination, will ennoble your own life, inspire others and explode outward the boundaries of what is achievable on this earth."

Thank you, ones and sixes, for your diversity of incomparable gifts. Thank you for coming back for this glorious weekend. Please return early and often -- and bring your friends. I wish you every happiness in the years ahead. Travel safely. Go in peace.