Feature Story
SVU Convocation Encourages Students to Find Purpose and Think for Themselves
On Sept. 11, the Southern Virginia University community gathered in Knight Arena for the annual Convocation to mark the start of a new academic year. Provost Brent Yergensen and professors Michael King and Kim Anderson challenged students to consider what will guide them through the year, and how purpose, community, and careful thinking can help them navigate an unpredictable world.
The gathering also took place on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. In recognition of the anniversary and the lives lost that day, Yergensen led the university community in a moment of silence at the request of President Aaron Hale.
Professor King began with an unusual example: What happens when someone is dropped into an unfamiliar forest and simply instructed to walk in a straight line?
He shared a study in which participants were asked to do exactly that, without the help of navigation aids. While some maintained a straight course, others walked in circles. The difference was determined entirely by whether they could see the sun and use it as an external reference point.
“Having an external reference point will be just as important for your journey,” King explained. “One of those external reference points can be a sense of purpose, or having a why. Students who have a sense of purpose are less likely to experience depression, anxiety, and burnout.”
“Whatever your answer may be, having a why gives you something to strive toward—an external reference point that will help you keep on course, and even more importantly, help you endure when things become difficult,” continued King.
Drawing on Emily Dickinson’s poem “Dwell in Possibility,” Professor Anderson contrasted Dickinson’s vision of expansive openness with Henry David Thoreau’s solitary experiment. While respecting Thoreau’s devotion to intentional living, Anderson pushed back against the idea that growth happens through self-reliance alone, emphasizing that true growth occurs within a supportive academic community.
“Our mission is to gather, lift, and launch,” Anderson noted. “But we cannot lift unless we gather. We cannot launch or be launched without the steps that come before.”
Being open to possibility, Anderson suggested, also means being willing to encounter people, ideas, and experiences students may not have expected.
“Opening ourselves to possibility means we get to sometimes encounter the thing we didn’t even know we needed,” Anderson continued. “To dwell is to live, and to live in possibility is to live intentionally.”
Closing the program, Provost Yergensen challenged students to think critically about the cultural influences shaping their ideas and choices. Drawing on Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” and the life of Frankfurt School scholar Theodor Adorno, Yergensen cautioned students against falling into a “factory form of thinking” dictated by external influences.
“Your call and your charge and my invitation to you is to lead,” said Yergensen. “It’s to lead, not be absorbed by discourses that will distract you. Be able to discern what suffering is and understand that it is an individual process.”
“Whether you’re a freshman, whether you’re a faculty member, whether you’re simply a member of the community, be different,” continued Yergenson. “Be the mission of Southern Virginia University.”
The event featured the traditional processional and recessional of faculty in their regalia. Attendees joined together in singing “Nearer My God to Thee” to open Convocation, and the university choirs and alumni closed the gathering with the traditional performance of “Shenandoah.”
