Farewell speech

Farewell

Well, the time has come. It's been 39 years since I first set foot into a university classroom. That was at West Virginia, in 1968. It took me all of about six weeks to decide that I really liked being "Professor Whitaker" and that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my working life.

 I had a wonderful dean who pointed out that unless my first name became "Doctor," I wasn't going to go very far in the profession. So a year later I moved over to Ohio University to begin Ph.D. work as part-time faculty and graduate student. That was right at the height of the student protests over Vietnam. We were in the shadow of Kent State and, after two nights of rioting, our university was closed and the National Guard was called in to maintain order. Looking at the sun glinting off the helmets and bayonets of the soldiers, some of whom seemed as young as some of my students, I began to realize the narrow line separating freedom from tyranny, and responsibility from license.

I  became "Doctor Whitaker" in 1972-my goodness, that was 35 years ago; where'd the time go so fast? I moved out to San Jose State, from where I'd received my undergraduate degree eight years before, and I started learning the basics of our craft of teaching.     

We had some highly-motivated young people in our television news sequence-my responsibility-and a number of them went on to media jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area. Years later, when I'd go back to visit, I'd hear the voices of some of my students on the radio or see them doing field reporting pieces on television. That gave great pleasure, because I knew that they took some of me and my values with them.

Thirty years ago I took a promotion to associate professor and became graduate coordinator at Central Missouri State University, southeast of Kansas City. The students were very polite, very hard-working. I especially enjoyed our graduate students. We took about 40 percent of the applicants, so we were able to choose the very best. Again, I could see the impact of what my colleagues and I were accomplishing. Our students took media jobs in Kansas City. In fact, meetings of the Kansas City Press Club increasingly looked more and more like an alumni reunion. 

From there, I took one of the most audacious leaps of faith in my life and took a teaching appointment at The American University in Cairo. It was probably the most valuable three years of my teaching career. Admission was selective, so we had some very bright students. Primarily Egyptian, but also from the rest of the Middle East and from sub-Sahara Africa, many of them from war zones. I was there at a good time-from 1981-84, when they still liked Americans-and the government was loosening the reins on the media. Our graduating students took jobs with the newspapers, with state broadcasting and in public relations and advertising. Once again, I could see the impact of what we were doing, and it was good.  

I became department chair the year after I went there. We were a department of economics, political science and mass communication. The experience allowed me to develop management skills in dealing with very talented people of different disciplines, nationalities and religions, with all the built-in potential pitfalls that those demographics entailed. For me, it was a time of tremendous personal and professional growth.

My life changed dramatically there, too, because I met Ramona twenty-five years ago this September. She was there on a post-master's fellowship from the University of California at Berkeley and I soon became awed at her capabilities. She not only spoke enough Arabic to get us around Cairo, but she could also read twelfth-century Hispano-Arabic poetry, her comparative literature research interest. We were married about a year-and-a-half after we met, and we decided to return to the U.S. 

I was looking around for a chairmanship of a communication program that seemed to be on the move, with a good faculty and located in a place with a strong quality of life. Buffalo fit the bill, and we settled in to make this our home. It's been a fine fit for the past 23 years.
 You've heard about my chairmanship here. I am proud of the solid department that was built on my watch. We hired some excellent full-time and part-time faculty; we were given the physical resources to grow and develop. Over the years I've played a role in the personal and professional development of hundreds of young people. Many have gone on to media careers. Others have simply gone on to live their lives in a variety of ways, which is equally as important. 

So, what does it all mean? Those of you who know me are aware that it is one of my favorite questions. I've spent 39 years in this academic vineyard of ours, and what have I accomplished? 

Well, I wish I could give you a definitive answer, but I can't. It's an unanswerable question. There's no way that somehow we can put our students on a scale and measure a knowledge quotient. For some, it takes a while before the pieces start to fit.  Some understand right away and pick up on what we're trying to teach. It's a joy when that happens. I use the phrase "watching the lights come on," and it's wonderful to behold. 

I like to think that over the years I've helped my students build a strong foundation in order to be competitive in today's much less predictable world. I've come to realize that what we do in higher education is one of the most important jobs in the world today.

I  have been privileged to have in my classes thousands of young people who have gone on to live their lives. And they've taken a bit of me with them, along with a bit of all the people who have influenced and mentored me. That's a wonderful and awe-inspiring realization. I'm stepping down from what I've been doing for nearly four decades, but I know my influence will go on.
 

I could tell dozens of stories about my years in the classroom. I have enough wonderful memories that I could keep us here for a couple of hours, though I won't do that. I remember one of my African-American students at Ohio who never made the same mistake twice on his newswriting assignments, and who, at the end of the term, thanked me for the confidence he said I instilled in him. A dozen years later, I read in the alumni news that he'd been elected to the Cleveland city council. A Mexican-American student who told me years later that I opened the door to his professional career in TV news by arranging an internship for him at the local station. I'd forgotten, because it was something I tried to do as a matter of course for many of my good students. The last time I saw him on the air, he was South Bay bureau chief for the CBS TV station in San Francisco.
     

All the students here at Buffalo State who have taken my classes and those for whom I've written references and encouraged. They, too, have been a joy.
 

For those of you who are graduating or being honored this evening, my congratulations. Well done! And I wish you success in this great adventure of life. A few years ago, at a similar occasion, one of our long-time speech faculty members, Dr. Julia Piquette, told the assembled students, "Always maintain your dignity." I'd add two corollaries to that advice. Enjoy your work, whatever you do. And, do your utmost. If you put your name to something, make sure it's the best you can make it.
 

What does it all mean? Beats me. All I know is that it's been a wonderful ride and I'd do it all again. I'm going to do some of the things that I've wanted to do for a long while. We have a bed and breakfast business that takes up a lot of time. And I want to do some writing. And there are a lot of books I've been waiting to read. And I hope to do some volunteer work in public information to give something back to a community that's been good to us.
 

For my colleagues, I pass the torch to you. Just as for me, there will be some good times, some not-so-good ones, but the former always outweigh the latter. You, too, will experience that exhilarating feeling of "watching the lights come on" during the coming years. You have my best wishes for success.