Spring 2005 Speech to DePaul School for New Learning Graduates 

Good afternoon and welcome to guests, faculty, family and friends, and congratulations to my fellow graduates.

I’m guessing that most of you who are graduating from SNL with any degree, chose to go to SNL with your own wealth of experiences but not the level of formal education you wanted and/or needed. That you found here a program schedule you could navigate and still maintain the responsibilities you already were committed to and that would continue to require your time and attention.

And, if like me, you found that the time spent in SNL allowed you a new sense of space to think about different things, explore new ideas and reactions to them, communicate with people with different takes and perspectives than you might otherwise entertain or address, and that this helped you do more and be more creative and effective, then let me suggest that with the tools you have learned here you are a life time learner. 

The School for New Learning provides a context in which to make the educational process that is our life intentional.

With or without a formal education, every experience in our life is part of our education and development as human beings. Every choice we make gives us our opportunities for learning.