110th Convocation
Monday, August 26, 2024
4:30 PM Palmer Auditorium
Good afternoon! Welcome esteemed faculty, dedicated staff, Board Chair Alvord and, most importantly, welcome students. Thank you to all who are participating in convocation today, and to the many who helped make this ceremony happen.
It is with great honor that I, as your new president, declare the 110th year of academic exercises at Connecticut College to be officially open.
Welcome to our new students. The 471 members of the Class of 2028 hail from 34 states and 22 countries, including Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Finland, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Slovakia and Uzbekistan. We welcome each of you to Connecticut College, a place where your ideas will be nurtured, your beliefs challenged and fortified, your character strengthened, and your potential discovered and realized.
We gather to mark the beginning of your academic journey at Conn and the start of a new academic year. Collectively let us all take this moment to reaffirm our mission: to educate students to put the liberal arts into action in a global society - and our core values – equity and inclusivity, shared governance, moral standards, community service, global citizenship and environmental stewardship. And let us also celebrate the spirit of curiosity, perseverance and academic excellence that has defined Connecticut College since our founding in 1911.
May this year be one in which we embrace challenges and opportunities, engage in open and civil discourse, and strive always to discover new facets of our world, of each other, and of ourselves.
Again, welcome to our new academic year.
I now have the pleasure of introducing our keynote speaker, Associate Professor of Economics Mónika López-Anuarbe, who joined Connecticut College in 2006.
Professor López-Anuarbe, or "Coach" as her students call her, teaches students how to address issues of access, costs and quality of healthcare for different populations, and how strategic behavior among individuals, firms and other economic agents affects those interdependent relationships. Keenly aware of how inequalities operate, she also uses her teaching and advising to minimize them. In class and in office hours, she mentors her students, working to diminish inequities of information, academic background, socioeconomic disadvantage, under-representation and cultural unfamiliarity.
As a health and inequality economist specializing in aging, caregiving, equity and health-care disparities, Professor Lopez-Anuarbe works on behalf of those who do not have a voice, using large datasets for national, regional and local studies impacting public policy in healthcare, aging, caregiving, disparities, equity and intergenerational transfers affecting vulnerable populations. She also utilizes qualitative tools such as focus groups to deeply and humbly understand her respondents. For example, she was part of the Connecticut COVID-19 and Long-Term Economics Recovery taskforce in charge of implementing the COVID-19 vaccine and reaching out to vulnerable populations.
Professor López-Anuarbe is the recipient of the 2017 Helen Mulvey Faculty Award for Fostering Student Achievement, and she is the current Public Health pathway coordinator and co-chair of the Economics Department.
Please join me in welcoming Professor López-Anuarbe.