Remember… and Now Imagine!

We are often reminded that human beings are, in fact, animals. For some reason, we seem to be less frequently reminded that we are also spirits. That spiritual capacity is reflected in our being the only animals capable of imagining the future. As we approach the close of our 150th anniversary celebrations, imagining the future of Albright College is our most urgent task.

In the first part of the Sesquicentennial, we looked back and reflected on our past – as an institution, as a community, as a continuum of individuals all linked in a common heritage. But the theme of the Sesquicentennial, “History in the Making,” recognizes that at this very moment we are also imagining what will later become our history.

Hence the theme of Homecoming,“Remember… and Now Imagine.”

We are here today because of visionary dreamers who literally made something out of nothing in the early days of the Republic. We are the beneficiaries of their expansive imaginings of a school and a college, and their shared vision of a learning community, a place of academic excellence. For over a century and a half, we have held a shared vision of this place as one of caring and compassion, of tolerance, of humane values, of enduring friendships, and of civil, rational discourse in a world where the forces of intolerance and irrationality threaten the existence of all that we hold most dear.

In a sense, imagination is our line of work. Each fall we welcome new students to our community—more than 500 this year. Each arrives with a vision for himself or herself. For some this vision is clearer than for others, as research chemists, actors, entrepreneurs, senators, teachers, and so on.

Then the imagination of the faculty springs into play, because we educators also have visions of our students’ futures. For example, this summer in the Albright Creative Research Experience (ACRE) program, two faculty members had such a clear vision of one student’s future, they embarked together on a complex and difficult research project in chemistry, without the student having yet taken the prerequisite coursework!

Daily we imagine what the future can be like for our institution, the programs we might provide, the kinds of people who will come here, how the shape of the campus can change to make it all real. For presidents and trustees, we call that “strategic planning,” creating the vision and then figuring out how we will arrive at it.

This part of visioning is hard work. We must keep close at hand the best information, along with our sense of mission, our heart and our roots as we gaze into the crystal ball of the future. Can we expand the number of our students? Can we create a new program that is consistent with our mission and that serves a social need? Can we build a new facility? Can we find the resources or create new sources of revenue? For tuition dependent colleges with small endowments, like Albright, these are tough questions.

So we go forward – remembering and imagining. If we are to fulfill the promise of Albright College, we must continue to imagine a stronger and more secure future that remains firmly rooted in the strengths that have sustained us over the past 150 years.

We believe that if we are bold in imagining what Albright can become in the future, others will want to join us in this act of creative imagination and help us to make these dreams come true through their advocacy and support. If you are not already among those advocates and supporters, I hope that perusing the following pages will move you to join that growing number as we imagine a stronger and brighter future for Albright College.

Lex O. McMillan III, Ph.D.
President