University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy delivered the 2025 Convocation address on Aug. 29.
Remarks:
Good afternoon. I’m Joan Ferrini-Mundy. I’m the President of the university. We are deviating from the program just a little bit because we have a special addition to the program. I’ll speak with you more formally later. Let’s give the band another round of applause, and the dance team.
More of a welcome coming. As I was drafting my remarks today, I had a section about students and alumni.
I wrote, “Today, my husband Rick and I had lunch with our friend Merritt David ‘DJ’ Janes. DJ is an accomplished stage actor and singer who has performed on Broadway and in national tours of Broadway shows like ‘The Wedding Singer,’ ‘Sweeney Todd,’ ‘Shrek the Musical,’ and more. He’s appeared on this very stage with Broadway Rocks.”
Three hours ago, at lunch, I told him we were having this convocation and asked if he’d make a cameo appearance, say hello to you, and he accepted without hesitation because he just loves UMaine. Without further ado, welcome Merritt David Janes, UMaine, Class of 2004. DJ.
Good afternoon again. No more singing in this part, but wasn’t DJ wonderful? Thank you so much Provost Paquette. Hardy Maine hello, Class of 2029. Welcome to the Fall 2025 Convocation gathering at the University of Maine. I want to thank you all for choosing the University of Maine.
I’m now in my eighth year as the President and I learn something new at this great university every day. I guarantee that you will too. We have 2,078 first-year students. There are 471 new transfer students. You represent 46 states and 22 countries.
133 of our Division I athletes have been here for a few weeks already, beginning their training. Bridge Week students have been here for a week. Maine Hello is today. It’s great to begin to meet you all and to get to know you and help you settle into your new home.
This time of year, for me, always brings back a little bit of that first day of school feeling. I hope you feel that too. I’ve been in an academic setting of some kind every fall since I started kindergarten in Portsmouth, New Hampshire a while ago. You might be thinking, “She’s from New Hampshire. That’s a rival.” It’s all OK.
Classes begin next Tuesday. Take a “first day of school” selfie to keep, but more importantly, maybe send it to someone who cares about you. You can send it to me if you’d like. I’m on Instagram and I can get it that way, I suppose.
I ask you to focus now for a few minutes, as Provost Paquette so ably helped us to begin to do, on the academic part of university life. A convocation, an academic convocation such as this, is a longstanding tradition in universities, dating back centuries. At some universities even today, it includes regalia and ceremony that you will see when you graduate.
This tradition has evolved at UMaine over the years, but it’s fundamentally an occasion for us to come together as a community and welcome our newest community members. There’s so much I want to tell you about our university, now your university.
One great thing about universities is that more than a quarter of our community is new every year. You shape this community as you’re here. Let me remind you that we’re a world-class institution with a Research 1 designation that comes because our faculty staff and students are breaking ground in research and scholarship.
I could brag about the honors that our faculty have received. We have members of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Thousands of books, academic papers, and professional presentations by our current faculty staff and students have been done. You will be meeting them, working with them, learning from them.
I don’t need to tell you about some of the other interesting things going on because you can see the construction on the campus. You can see the new factory of the future Green Engineering Materials building, the GEM building, right across the street as it’s going up.
The work on our iconic Shawn Walsh Hockey Center and Alfond Arena, the new soccer field, and the new track and field complex all signaling our investment in our university’s future and in your success.
Just yesterday, I got to meet two honors college students and learn about their work. Ruth Griffith developed a novel methodology to quantify economic fluctuations across the regions of Maine in her honors thesis. My guess is Ruth didn’t anticipate, the day she walked in, the day she was sitting in these seats, that that’s what she would do.
Madeline Myers received the Stanhope Study Abroad scholarship to fund her study of bioarcheology in Greece, where she worked on coprolites — You could look that up. It’s quite interesting — as a part of a Climate Change Institute project.
Maybe you’ll start a company, like alums Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding, Class of ’17, who founded Marin Skincare right here in Maine, a growing company that specializes in products that use lobster glycoprotein, or be the inventor of a life-saving device, like alum Dr. Bernard Lown of Lewiston, who graduated in 1942 and invented the original defibrillator.
I doubt that Amber, Patrick, or Bernard expected to make such a difference in the world when they got here at the beginning of their University of Maine careers. Probably most of you haven’t given thought yet to how you will shape your time here so that you’ll be able to make the kind of difference you wish to make when you leave.
We could talk a lot about excellence in athletics, with women’s soccer winning their America East conference title, men’s ice hockey winning Hockey East. Men’s and women’s basketball also both had remarkable showings last year. The place is excellent. You’re a part of that now. We look so much to you to shape this institution as we go forward.
You are one of the most talented first-year classes in UMaine history. Sitting among you are students from right here in Maine, including individuals who served as leaders of their high school classes, competed in math meets and mock trials, invented award-winning apps and were top athletes in numerous sports.
You come from small towns in Maine and from big cities across the nation and the world. You need to make the most of who you all are as a community together in these coming years.
As Albert Einstein said, the important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. We ask that you develop your curiosity and your questions because here, you can intentionally explore where those will take you. If you do, by the time you graduate, you will have your own list of accomplishments.
I would venture to say that for most of you, they’ll be different from the accomplishments you imagine right now. You will be ready for whatever’s next, graduate school, professional school, a great job in Maine, and to live a rich and happy life and make a difference for others and be ready to tackle the challenges that come all of our way.
As you start to explore, go online and find the list of the 50 things to do before you graduate from the University of Maine online here. It’s interesting. It includes items like taking a photo with the Paul Bunyan statue in Bangor, a testament to our state’s heritage in forestry, which, by the way, is one of UMaine’s strongest research and development areas.
Or drive by alum Stephen King’s house with its spooky wrought iron gate. Maybe you will even spot him. As President, I’m going to add a couple of items of my own to that list, items about how to push yourselves as curious learners.
Here it is. Number one, take a class just because you are curious. I know you have a lot going on. You’re working on your major, maybe a minor, your job, your social life, but this might be the only period in your life that you’ll really have the opportunity to learn about something simply because it intrigues you. Sign up for astronomy, anthropology, or agriculture.
No matter what you are here to study, you should make time to learn new things. For me, as an undergraduate at UNH, it was a course in sociology that opened my eyes to the social sciences and to the fact that people actually studied, in a formal way, human interactions and groups. This class turned out to be a grounding for my later work in education and policy.
I began college assuming, as maybe some of you do, that you just continued in the same areas you studied in high school. My first semester, I took calculus, chemistry, English, and French, but then I realized there were more areas than that to study at the university.
Number two, visit one of our laboratories or research centers. The labs are not only for students in the sciences and engineering. They are hubs of innovation and discovery. Check out the robotics at the newly opened Advanced Manufacturing Center BOT Loft and learn how businesses, entrepreneurs, and researchers are working together on this very campus.
Visit Witter Farm, where cows milk themselves with a new on-demand milking machine. That’s extremely cool. If there are ways to get out there and visit, you should do that. Or go to the Downeast Institute, where UMaine Machias students are learning how clams are adapting to increasingly acidic ocean water.
Number three, study in the Fogler Library. Find a quiet spot in Fogler and spend maybe an hour a week there, doing your homework, reflecting, or writing, maybe without your cell phone. The library is more than a building with books and events. It’s a laboratory for thinking and practice being silent and alone with your own thoughts sometimes.
Fourth, in contrast, talk to other students as well as faculty and staff about your classes. How does what you’re doing in your classes relate to what they’re doing? What are they thinking about? Where are they having debates?
What are your friends’ favorite books? What makes them excited about college? Why do your professors do research in certain areas? Maybe even ask me, a mathematics educator, why I love helping people understand about numbers.
To that end, Class of 2029, there’s something maybe significant. Have you been thinking about whether 2029 is a prime number? No? Oh, come on. At least one person here must have thought about that. All right. Well, I’ll keep trying.
Finally, fifth topic, do a research project. Look for a lab or a faculty member whose work interests you and ask them if you can help. Maybe you’d like to work on a project about robotics or in the visual arts or in AI. Doing research will build your skills, hone your ideas, and make you ready for the future.
To recap my five points, take a class that you never plan to take, visit places where inquiry is going on, take advantage of the beautiful Fogler Library, talk to other people, and do research. Everything about this class, in its own way, is special and unique. We’re thrilled to have you here.
One thing that will define your time is the ubiquity of AI tools. Speaking of them, what’s the thinking on 2029? Anybody willing to say whether they think that’s prime or not or, actually, no? Really going to have to work on the math.
Everywhere you go, in your time, of course, the ubiquity of AI will be central. It will be the subject of course discussions, of conversations with your faculty and it will be everywhere you look. I asked ChatGPT to develop a message to you on the occasion of this convocation, with my own prompt.
Here is the “lyrical, inspirational version.” I guess they also might have had a dull and boring short version, but whatever. Here it is. Quoting ChatGPT-5, “I am your companion in this new world of ideas, a spark to ignite your curiosity and the lantern to light some of the paths you’ll walk.”
“I can give you knowledge in an instant, but wisdom will only come from the choices you make, the risks you take, and the questions you refuse to stop asking. Trust me to broaden your horizons, but do not surrender your voice or your responsibility. In the end, it is your mind, tested, sharpened, and alive, that will carry you forward.”
With that, I want to emphasize that this university is a place of incredible opportunity. It’s up to you to both shape it and to seize it. I can’t wait to get to know you and to see all that you will achieve. Thank you very much and welcome to UMaine.
