Giving voice to our values

Two years ago, we resurrected the tradition of singing the alma mater at the opening convocation of the College of Arts and Sciences. The result of reviving a long-forgotten song—out of favor since the turmoil of the late 1960s—was that hardly anyone in attendance knew the words.

Not surprisingly, the experience was a bit unnerving at first. Everyone had been given a copy of the music in advance, though, and as the Lewis & Clark Wind Symphony intoned the melody, people began slowly to find their place. Then a miracle happened. Voice after tentative voice joined the chorus, the tune began to take hold, and by the end of the first stanza, we were all singing together in glorious unison.

That’s not a bad metaphor for what we are about at Lewis & Clark. Many voices, finding their place, chiming in when ready, and finally providing a fullness of sound that has the power to change the world. I listen to the voices emanating from Palatine Hill, and I hear in their diversity and daring, their range and reach, the wonderful community that is Lewis & Clark.

And our voices grow in ever-increasing numbers:

• In the five-year period ending May 31, 2007, our combined enrollments grew by 16 percent.
• Our College of Arts and Sciences received a record 4,694 first-year applications in 2006-07. For 2007-08, the number of applications continued its climb to 5,360.
• Our Graduate School of Education and Counseling enrolled a record 928 students in fall 2006.
• Our School of Law sustains vigorous enrollments both in quantity and quality, even as legal education generally is experiencing declining enrollments.

Our voices also draw ever-expanding and attentive audiences. For example:

• The National Science Foundation recognized Greta Binford, assistant professor of biology, as one of the nation’s most promising young scientists, awarding her a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development grant, and the New Yorker magazine published an extensive profile of her in its March 5, 2007, issue.
• Graduate school faculty partnered with Portland Public Schools, the private sector, community leaders, and neighborhood parents and students to reenvision the physical and academic environment for transforming 1 North Portland’s John Ball Elementary School into Rosa Parks Elementary School. Rosa Parks, now hailed as a model of the 21st-century school, was recently named winner of the national Richard Riley Award for Schools as Centers of Community.
• National Jurist magazine recognized our law school’s Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center as one of America’s “winningest” law clinics and highlighted the key roles that students have played in recent victories.

Across our three schools during the 2006-07 academic year, we welcomed students from all 50 states and from 52 different countries. And our alumni currently reside and resound throughout the 50 states and in 90 other countries. Truly, Lewis & Clark thrives as both destination point and point of departure for those who are eager to pursue knowledge and to take on the increasingly complex challenges of the new global century.

So we may well ask, what draws new and renewing voices to our ranks year after year in such impressive numbers?

While there are as many answers to this question as there are voices in our community, I believe the heart of the draw is our capacity to advance our common mission in ever more uncommon ways, and our commitment to living institutional values rooted in Portland and the Pacific Northwest even as we expand global horizons and extend global experiences.

Our core mission—to advance knowledge and to enhance civic responsibility and public life—in fact finds expression through our core values: We are an incubator of and repository for academic leadership. We embody and extend the progressive vision and ethos of sustainability that signify our city and our region. And we are a community of global citizen-scholars who seek not simply to engage issues, but to make a real, substantial, and lasting impact on others wherever they may live, and on societies wherever they may take root.

The stories that echo through our mission and values proclaim that ours is a culture not of isolation but of interaction. For the Lewis & Clark community, interaction generates learning and discovery in many ways: through the stimulating giveand- take of robust academic inquiry in our classrooms, through intensely collaborative research and study in our labs and libraries, over coffee and conversation at Maggie’s Café, in daring rehearsals for imaginative performances at Fir Acres Theatre and Evans Music Center, during vibrant colloquies on the expansive lawns of South Campus, in the intellectual thrust and parry that signify our law school’s nationally and internationally recognized moot court and advocacy competitors, through shared experiences in urban neighborhoods and villages around the globe—indeed, through an almost endless variety of experiences and deep encounters on Palatine Hill and beyond.

Consider, for example, that our undergraduate students volunteered 22,452 hours of community service this year, a 26-percent increase over the previous year; that our law school provided 9,093 hours of pro bono work, the equivalent of one person working full-time for four and a half years; and that each year some 360 students from our Graduate School of Education and Counseling enhance the dedication of professional educators by working in practica and internships around the Portland metro area.

All this occurs even as we are extending our long tradition of enhancing Portland’s community, culture, and civic life. Examples this year include:

• The Hoffman Gallery exhibition Unembedded: Four Independent Photojournalists on the War in Iraq won praise from the Oregonian’s art critic D.K. Row: “Rare is the art exhibit that can render viewers speechless because what they’ve seen is so overwhelming, the social, artistic, and emotional impact of the work so breathtaking.”
• Our Graduate School of Education and Counseling explored social, political, and economic issues of compelling relevance through its Missing Pieces and Whole Stories Conversation Series. The series presented an array of topics, including the many faces and facets of immigration; living in Portland as an individual of Iranian ancestry; and the perspectives of veterans coming home from combat.
• The Portland Business Journal named Clinical Law Professor Maggie Finnerty and law alumni David Howitt ’94, Joshua Sasaki ’96, and Trung Tu ’00 to its Forty Under 40 list of Portland’s dynamic young leaders.

Our voices are distinctive, indeed. And so in this year’s annual report, we share a sense of the vitality and impact of our people, place, and programs by presenting stories that illuminate our:

• Innovative voices: Advancing knowledge and discovery
• Active voices: Thinking and leading locally and globally
• Powerful voices: Transforming communities
• Collective voices: Integrating learning and experience

You will find in these stories compelling evidence of our values brought to life. You will also find individual and collective answers to the question of what draws such wonderfully raucous voices to Lewis & Clark.

In sharing these few stories, we are telling many stories. For as rich and inspiring as the voices in the following pages are, they are not the exception—they are the standard. Theirs represent the many and distinct voices that benefit from your contributions to Lewis & Clark.

As you read these stories and scan the names of the many friends and donors whose generosity gives rise to them, know that we are ever grateful that you choose to affirm what we value.

I speak here of valuing the restless and relentless expansion of knowledge, valuing the power and joy that come from forging innovative collaborations, and valuing the ability to take knowledge and shared experiences into the world at large and work with others to transform lives and reshape communities.

Thomas J. Hochstettler
President