Skip to main content
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
Sections
  • All News
  • Arts & Culture
  • Business & Economy
  • Campus & Community
  • Health & Society
  • Media, Law & Policy
  • STEM
  • Veterans
  • |
  • Alumni
  • The Peel
  • Athletics
  • Home
  • About
  • Faculty Experts
  • For The Media
  • ’Cuse Conversations Podcast
  • Topics
    • Alumni
    • Events
    • Faculty
    • Students
    • All Topics
  • Contact
  • Submit
Campus & Community

New Student Convocation Welcomes Freshman, Transfer Students

Monday, August 31, 2015, By Kathleen Haley
Share

School and college marshals enter the Carrier Dome with their respective banners during the Syracuse Welcome 2015 New Student Convocation Thursday.

Senior Class Marshal Tatiana Williams ’16 offered four pieces of wisdom to incoming students during the University’s New Student Convocation Thursday evening in the Carrier Dome.

Find your crew. Discover yourself. Have fun. And follow your vision.

“Welcome to the place where you will meet your second family, and the people who will contribute daily to your growth. Welcome to the place where you will meet yourself, and get to know yourself in your truest form, walls down and minds open. Welcome to the place where you define fun and learn to seize every moment,” Williams said.

“Welcome to the place where your visions and desires will be cultivated into existent realities,” she said.

Williams was one of several speakers, including Chancellor Kent Syverud and Interim Vice Chancellor and Provost Liz Liddy, who greeted students at the traditional academic event welcoming first-year and transfer students—about 3,800—to campus.

Syracuse Welcome 2015 New Student Convocation

Senior Class Marshal Tatiana Williams addresses students during the Syracuse Welcome 2015 New Student Convocation.

Academic procession

The event, which officially kicks off new student orientation, Syracuse Welcome 2015, also featured a procession that included academic deans, faculty and University leadership from Syracuse University and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, with musical accompaniment by the Syracuse University Marching Band.

Students sat in the lower levels in front of the stage, while families and friends looked on from the upper levels.

For the students, Chancellor Kent Syverud told them about the charge he would give them that was developed from the first charge given in 1871.

“The Chancellor who first spoke them, Erastus Haven, and the students who heard them could not have imagined what Syracuse University would become in 2015. And yet those students in 1871 discovered many of the same things that all of you will discover here,” Syverud said.

“Education is not something bestowed on you but something earned through hard work and discipline and seriousness and occasionally humor,” Syverud said. “A good education encompasses the full breadth of all disciplines from arts and humanities to the sciences.”

He asked students to leave the University a better place—as others did before them.

“We want you to know this is your university and you should make it your own,” he said.

Syverud also thanked the parents for preparing the students of the 2015 entering class.

Sacred trust

“Like all of us at Syracuse, like every faculty and staff member here I know, I daily remember that I am the beneficiary of all your great work in developing these wonderful adults that I have the privilege to teach,” Syverud said. “Because of your work these students are our most sacred trust and we will remember this.”

Another speaker, faculty member Breagin K. Riley, assistant professor of marketing in the Whitman School of Management, encouraged students to contribute to the community at Syracuse University and access faculty members, who are thought leaders, Fulbright Scholars and researchers doing important work.

“We will do our best to facilitate your efforts at excellence. In exchange, we need you to do three things: Plan for excellence. Prepare for excellence. Pursue excellence,” Riley said.

She told students to plan to study and to fail, and be prepared for class, so they will be able to think creatively about the material and motivated to go deeper.

“When you feel that motivation, pursue it. Satisfy your curiosity,” Riley said. “Excellence requires this of you.”

Syracuse Welcome 2015 New Student Convocation

New students join together to sing the alma mater during the Syracuse Welcome 2015 New Student Convocation Thursday.

  • Author

Kathleen Haley

  • Recent
  • A&S Chemistry Professor Receives Award From the American Chemical Society
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By News Staff
  • ‘Guys and Dolls’ opens Syracuse University Department of Drama 2023/24 Season
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Joanna Penalva
  • Libraries Add MindSpa Wellness Rooms
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Cristina Hatem
  • Syracuse University Announces the Opening of the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy and Astrophysics
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Kerrie Marshall
  • iSchool Professors, Students Honored With ALISE Awards
    Friday, September 29, 2023, By Anya Woods

More In Campus & Community

Libraries Add MindSpa Wellness Rooms

Syracuse University Libraries is adding two ‘MindSpa’ wellness rooms, designed similarly to the Barnes Center at The Arch Crowley Family MindSpa, on Sunday, Oct. 1, in Bird Library. The Bird Library MindSpa consists of two rooms – a Massage Chair…

LGBTQ History Month: A Milestone to Reflect, Celebrate and Grow Community

Each October, the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Resource Center unveils a calendar that through the lenses of intersectionality, LGBTQ and global communities reflects on their history and contributions while looking to the future. The University’s official kickoff…

Christine Stallmann Named University’s Chief Compliance Officer

Christine Stallmann has been named the University’s chief compliance officer. The position, which will report directly to Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Brett Padgett in the Division of Business, Finance and Administrative Services, is a key component of…

What to Expect With the Link Hall Renovations

Machinery and power tools echo throughout Link Hall as construction workers bustle about the building. Since the spring of 2022, Link Hall has been undergoing renovations, and big changes are on the horizon. Bruce Molino, director of space management and…

New Student Association Leaders Aim to Get More Students Involved

Neither Will Treloar ’24 nor Yasmin Nayrouz ’24 possessed any previous experience as student government leaders when they stepped onto the Syracuse University campus as first-year students three years ago. Now in their final year at Syracuse, Treloar and Nayrouz…

Subscribe to SU Today

If you need help with your subscription, contact sunews@syr.edu.

Connect With Us

  • X
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
Social Media Directory

For the Media

Find an Expert Follow @SyracuseUNews
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
  • LinkedIn
  • @SyracuseU
  • @SyracuseUNews
  • @SUCampus
  • Social Media Directory
  • Accessibility
  • Privacy
  • Campus Status
  • Syracuse.edu
© 2023 Syracuse University News. All Rights Reserved.