Contact: Sammy McDavid
A retired Mississippi State vice president urged the university's summer graduates Friday to consider some counsel given to their predecessors 100 years ago.
"There is a right way to look at everything; you are here to fix yourselves to live in this world; and quicken your blood and get ready for competition," said Rodney Foil in remarks at morning commencement exercises in Humphrey Coliseum.
Foil said the three points of advice first were given to students in 1899 by John C. Hardy, the newly named president of then-Mississippi A&M College.
"Since Dr. Hardy managed to triple enrollment and quadruple the budget in his 12 years here, he set a pace that may challenge even President [Malcolm] Portera," Foil said in a humorous aside to MSU's current president seated nearby.
Foil, a 30-year MSU administrator, retired June 30 after 13 years as head of the school's vast Division of Agriculture, Forestry and Veterinary Medicine. As such, he had ultimate supervision of three statewide service organizations--the MSU Extension Service, Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, and Forest and Wildlife Research Center.
Foil asked 1999 graduates to reflect on the vast achievements that awaited the 20 graduates in A&M's Class of 1899.
"Chemical and mechanical discoveries of the first half of this century, coupled with electronic, medical and biological advances of the last 50 years, created a world that would be totally unrecognizable to the 20 sons of Mississippi who so bravely left here 100 years ago."
Nearly 850 men and women received degrees at the end of MSU's 1999 summer session.
Anticipating that even more dramatic changes will arrive during the 21st century, Foil urged the departing students to maintain close involvement with their alma mater.
"Universities today are more and more providing their alumni and friends with a point of reference, a sense of constancy and stability in a rapidly changing world, and an outlook on the future that can be found nowhere else," he said. "In that relationship, both the university and her alumni accept greater responsibility to each other and to the world around them."