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 THE GOAL OF U.T.,THE FLAGSHIP UINIVERSITY OF THE SYSTEM, IS TO PRODUCE LEADERS

1. Why should becoming a leader be your primary goal at this university?

    1.a. This university produces leaders. Who are some of the leaders associated with this university?

    1.b. Leadershipis the essence, the living teaching, the self-perpetuating tradition, the genius loci, of the university, to use the words of John Henry Newman.In 1984, Peter Flawn, President of U.T. and Regents Professor of Higher Education Leadership, discussing the purpose of U.T. in his annual address to the faculty, said "In thinking about this issue, I reread John Henry Newman's The Idea of a University, a classic treatise familiar to all who are interested in higher education."

(Newman's idea of a university was based on his alma mater, Oxford, one of the primary sources of the leaders of the English-speaking peoples. It is no accident that its seal appears on the Main building:)

According to Newman, a university "will give birth to a living teaching, which in course of time will take the shape of a self-perpetuating tradition, or a genius loci, as it is sometimes called; which haunts the home where it has been born, and which imbues and forms, more or less, and one by one, every individual who is successively brought under its shadow."

This genius loci of U. T. is embodied in the official "Core Purpose of the University" -- "To transform lives for the benefit of society" -- and in its five core values: "Discovery, Freedom, Leadership, Individual Opportunity, and Responsibility." Obviously, "to transform lives for the benefit of society," leadership is essential.

2. How is leadership defined as a core value of this university? "Leadership" here is officially defined as "The will to excel with integrity and the spirit that nothing is impossible. 'A university both leads and is a catalyst for leadership. By its creation, expansion, and transmission of knowledge, a university leads society to beneficial changes. University faculty both demonstrate and teach leadership to new generations of students. The quality of a university's leadership helps to determine the quality of our culture. The University's challenge is to provide informed, ethical, compassionate, and respectful leadership'. Larry Temple, BBA '57; President, Ex-Students' Association 1997-1998."

3.Why are students of the University of Texas in particular expected to become leaders in society?

Let's take a look at the seal of the university. It features a Latin version of this statement of Mirabeau B. Lamar, second President of the Republic of Texas: "The cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy, and, while guided and controlled by virtue, the noblest attribute of man. It is the only dictator that freemen acknowledge, and the only security which freemen desire." This statement appears in the Hall of Noble Words in the Main building, also known as the Tower:

4. The goal of a "cultivated mind ... guided and controlled by virtue" reminds us that composing a self, building character, is the traditional focus of a college education.

4a. What exactly is meant by that? Newman wrote:

When the intellect has once been properly trained and formed to have a connected view or grasp of things [unity], it will display its powers with more or less effect according to its particular quality and capacity in the individual. In the case of most men [and women] it makes itself felt in the good sense, sobriety of thought, reasonableness, candour, self-command, and steadiness of view, which characterize it. In some it will have developed habits of business, power of influencing others, and sagacity. In others it will elicit the talent of philosophical speculation, and lead the mind forward to eminence in this or that intellectual department. In all it will be a faculty of entering with comparative ease into any subject of thought, and of taking up with aptitude any science or profession. [diversity]...  He profits by an intellectual tradition, which is independent of particular teachers, which guides him in his choice of subjects, and duly interprets for him those which he chooses. He apprehends the great outlines of knowledge, the principles on which it rests, the scale of its parts, its lights and its shades, its great points and its little, as he otherwise cannot apprehend them. Hence it is that his education is called "Liberal." A habit of mind is formed which lasts through life, of which the attributes are, freedom, equitableness, calmness, moderation, and wisdom.... Moreover, such knowledge is not a mere extrinsic or accidental advantage, which is ours today and another's tomorrow, which may be got up from a book, and easily forgotten again, which we can command or communicate at our pleasure, which we can borrow for the occasion, carry about in our hand, and take into the market; it is an acquired illumination, it is a habit, a personal possession, and an inward endowment.

With this definition of composing a self, of permanent character change, as the goal of a university education, let us return to our question, Why are students of the University of Texas in particular expected to become leaders in society?  And let us return to the Hall of Noble Words in the Main building. Lamar's statement appears on the ceiling next to this one:

This statement is by the first President of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston.

4b. "The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation of a free government." Houston's distinction between education and useful knowledge was a common one in the nineteenth century. Newman stresses that "education is a higher word; it implies an action upon our mental nature, and the formation of a character; it is something individual and permanent, and is commonly spoken of in connexion with. . . virtue." Newman elucidates not only Houston's statement, but also Lamar's stress on a "cultivated mind ... guided and controlled by virtue."

In other words, when you matriculate at U. T., the State of Texas is investing in your education because your leadership is essential to maintaining democracy in this state and nation.

5. Thus, here at U.T. you are asked to become conscious of your life as a journey motivated by a higher purpose, a pilgrimage, and of the truth[s] that you seek and/or have found that will set you and others free.

As the image of the scallop shell below the motto on the tower reminds us, particularly important are pilgrimage goals that can endow you with a compelling vision that inspires others to follow you. Hence especially valuable are truths that tap into that which is greater than the self, truths that enable you to make a contribution to society that can be thought of as your legacy when you are gone.

Consider the student at the university looking back on his or her freshman year.  As Newman says, "when he is leaving for the University, he is mainly the creature of foreign influences and circumstances, and made up of accidents, homogeneous or not, as the case may be." Then, if she or is a good student, she will have experienced at least one "sensation which perhaps he never had before. He has a feeling not in addition to or increase of former feelings, but of something different in its nature. He will perhaps be borne forward, and find for a time that he has lost his bearings. He has made a certain progress, and he has a consciousness of mental enlargement; he does not stand where he did, he has a new centre, and a range of thoughts to which he was before a stranger... We seem to have new faculties, or a new exercise for our faculties, by this addition to our knowledge; like a prisoner, who, having been accustomed to wear manacles or fetters, suddenly finds his arms and legs free:

But now for these students, Newman continues, "every event has a meaning; they have their own estimate of whatever happens to them; they are mindful of times and seasons, and compare the present with the past; and the world, no longer dull, monotonous, unprofitable, and hopeless, is a various and complicated drama, with parts and an object, and an awful moral."

This is the key to your leadership training at the University of Texas: to transcend the accidents of being born in a particular place and time, and to mold your own character, to find your own truths that set you free.

 As you think about this, ultimately you will be hammering your self into unity. You will be composing yourself. The word "compose" connects "pose," that is "to place," to "con" ("together"), and its root meaning is thus "to place together," "To put together (parts or elements) so as to make up a whole" (Oxford English Dictionary). As Newman puts it, your mind takes a "connected view of old and new, past and present, far and near, and ... has an insight into the influence of all these one on another; without which there is no whole, and no centre. It possesses the knowledge, not only of things, but also of their mutual and true relations." Such a mind "makes every thing in some sort lead to every thing else; it would communicate the image of the whole to every separate portion, till that whole becomes in imagination like a spirit, every where pervading and penetrating its component parts, and giving them one definite meaning. Just as our bodily organs, when mentioned, recall their function in the body, ... so, in the mind of the [student], the elements of the physical and moral world, sciences, arts, pursuits, ranks, offices, events, opinions, individualities, are all viewed as one, with correlative functions, and as gradually by successive combinations converging, one and all, to the true centre."

What is your true center?  The answer should lead you to your leadership vision embodying the "living teaching" of your university, tapping into its "self-perpetuating tradition," embodying the genius loci of the University of Texas at Austin.    

‘One day when I was twenty-three or twenty-four this sentence seemed to form in my head, without my willing it, much as sentences form when we are half-asleep, ‘Hammer your thoughts into unity’. For days I could think of nothing else and for years I tested all I did by that sentence [...]” William Butler Yeats, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (cited in Frank Tuohy, Yeats, 1976, p.51)