In deed and in truth the faculty at Gustavus Adolphus College is a community of highly educated persons dedicated to teaching. Year after year, class after class, students move to take their places in a glorious alumnae that remember and continue to praise the many fine teachers who have inspired them and have had an influence on their thinking and feeling, and therefore on their lives. The Gustavus faculty is chosen for these qualities, maintained for these qualities, and, as on this day of commencement, honored for these qualities.
Education comes from the Latin e ducere – to lead out. An educator is not one who imposes knowledge on a student, but one who helps to lead the student out from the confines of the self into the glorious world of the truly and fully human, to the responsible exercise of intellect and free will. The great poet John Milton stated, “I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a [person] to perform justly, skillfully, and magnanimously all the offices both private and public…”
A teacher’s vocation is to see to such things. Our 1996 Edgar Carlson Award winner for distinguished teaching indeed sees to such things, inspiring, motivating, understanding, leading students toward their true potential as human beings. As one student said, “students feel obligated to learn and pass along” what they have learned. Dr. Christopher P. Gilbert, will you please join us at the podium?
Dr. Gilbert, for five years you have shared your considerable knowledge and unbounded enthusiasm with the students at Gustavus, always going the extra mile, and, at times, as a colleague observes, virtually “hundreds of miles for a student.”
Your standards are high, yet students are willing to reach for them, even for an eight o’clock class. One of these early morning scholars’ comments: “It is hard to get up at 7:00 a.m. and come to class, but [this] instructor makes it easy. He is full of energy in the morning and excited to teach the subject.”
Dr. Gilbert, you have the gift to inspire. One student expresses what many feel: “I am not certain I can explain the impact that Chris Gilbert has had on my life. I have the utmost respect for this man. He has pushed me to my limits and then one step beyond. Chris has not only encouraged me to dream and set my goals, but bas been a driving force behind [my] seeking them!”
Others exclaim: “The man loves to teach. He loves his job.” “He is a powerful and genuine person.”
Dr. Gilbert, your colleagues praise you as a recognized scholar through your writing, presentations, and radio appearances. Now you have been named a prestigious Humphrey Institute Policy Fellow for 1996.
Dr. Gilbert, you embody something Mark Van Doren says of the liberal educator: “A real teacher is [one] whose conversation is never finished, partly because it is about real things and so cannot be finished, but partly because there is always a new audience, which itself takes part… There is a skill in instruction …but there is also a skill in discovery, and it is our own discoveries that best persuade us. The rut of being taught is the art of discovery, as the art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery to take place.”
Dr. Gilbert, today your colleagues and students salute you as one who never ceases from opening doors for your students to pass to their own discoveries.
Presented by Ann Brady
Professor of English
1995 Recipient of the Edgar M. Carlson Award
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