Well, our trip back to the US is long over, but life in Cambodia has been so crazy recently that we haven't had time to do much blogging about it. In a three week period, we had cabinet-level trade talks, hosted three congressional delegations, the Naval commander of the Pacific fleet, a 3,000 person navy ship, and umpte
en Assistant Secretaries and other high-level visitors. Phew! We are all exhausted, and with good stories to tell. In the period of one week, I had to tell a cabinet member that she was dressed inappropriately and deal with a sick Senator. So that's what it means in my job description when it says "other duties as assigned"!
Anyhow, here's a go at chipping away at sharing news and photos from our trip back to the US. Our last big event in the US was attending our 10th anniversary reunion at Gustavus. Oddly, we didn't see that many people who weren't in our immediate circle of friends, but it was nice to have a good excuse to see them!
Amber and Marte (always in my mind, known as Marte-girl, but I assume she's moved way past that by now)There were a few fun surprises--we got to meet Marte's fiance, Don, who has already earned the Spande seal of approval. Rachel's waist was about twice its normal size and she was declining alcohol...hmmm. And we finally got to meet Dan's and Erica's second child, Ethan.
Ellie enjoys the moon bounce
Anna, Ben, Ethan, and Ellie think the stage is a hoot.
The co
llege also foolishly gave me a podium and a captive audience. With degrees in philosophy and political science, they should have known that was a dangerous move. Nonetheless, people seemed to really appreciate what I had to say, and Marissa tells me I even moved someone to tears. Really? Maybe just bad cafeteria food. (Gustavus has a nice write up of the event in the most recent Quarterly:
http://gustavus.edu/quarterly/files/current.pdf I'm on page 44.)
They had to use a crowbar to get me down.Chris Gilbert gave an amazing introduction:
I feel privileged tonight to do this introduction for one of my all-time favorite students. Those of you who have seen Gustavus publications or visited the college website in the last few years have noticed our emphasis on what President Peterson has termed our five core values – justice, service, community, faith, and excellence. Some of you may have collected the complete set of core value buttons from the Gustavus State Fair booth. There are a ton of great stories behind each of those core values. In reviewing everything that Jen Pleuss Spande has accomplished, I’m struck by how her life and work reflect not just one or two, but all five of these values – in her time at Gustavus and in her professional and personal life, she is the embodiment of the qualities that make this college what it is. Most of all, her work reflects excellence, in more ways than I have time to list.
That excellence was apparent to just about everyone who encountered Jen in her four years at Gustavus. Double majors, minors, Curriculum II, a semester in Namibia, a J Term in Costa Rica, student-faculty research, research on her own, two huge competitive national scholarships to pay for graduate school. Just a typical Gustie, right? And in the midst of all this she also met Nathan, an extraordinarily talented person as well. They’ve made a great team for over a decade.
Back in the spring of 1997, Jen’s senior year, the associate dean called our department chair at the time, Norm Walbek, wondering about yet another request for travel funds for Jen to present her research at yet another national political science conference. Not an undergraduate conference, but the real deal. The associate dean pointed out that Gustavus was expending more funds for Jen’s professional travel than for the political science faculty’s travel. Norm pointed out that Jen was writing and presenting more papers than the political science faculty. The money was approved. Jen was one of a handful of extraordinary students from that era whose professional activity put Gustavus on the map nationally as a leader in undergraduate research. It was a lot of fun to travel across the US to witness all of this, and rather odd to have people congratulate me and my colleagues for all the work Jen was doing. My main contribution, as she reminded me yesterday, was to provide Gustavus letterhead stationery so she could apply for all these things.
Jen’s career at Gustavus propelled both her and the college forward in another way, too. In 1996 she was one of 80 college juniors in the nation to earn the Harry S Truman Foundation Scholarship for graduate study; she was the first Gustie to win the award in a decade. Her achievement put us back on the Truman Foundation’s map, and in the decade since she won we have had six more finalists and two more Truman scholarship winners. To this day the annual packet of information from the Truman Foundation arrives with a brief handwritten note on it: “Send us another Jennifer Pleuss.” Two years ago, our most recent finalist had to arrange travel to her Truman interview in Minneapolis; the student was studying that semester in Madagascar. Gustavus was able to pay the costs of her trip because, years before, anticipating exactly this situation since she had experienced it herself, Jen had made a gift to Gustavus specifically designated to assist students with such travel costs.
That level of foresight is an extraordinary quality, one that would serve a person well in just about any vocation. But it seems a particularly appropriate quality for a diplomat to possess, and we shouldn’t be surprised that Jen has become just that. Her Truman led to a Marshall Scholarship, one of just 40 in the U.S. her senior year, and both of these led her to Oxford University where she earned a master’s degree in international relations. After working in for-profit and nonprofit organizations in DC, the U.S. State Department finally wised up in 2002, and Jen joined the foreign service. She has served so far at U.S. embassies in Mexico and now in Cambodia, where last year she received the 2006 Award for Excellence in Labor Diplomacy from the departments of State and Labor. Today Jen serves in the Political and Economic Section of the U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she and Nathan live with Elena and Benjamin; what a great set of stories those two are going to have for a lifetime, growing up all over the world. She talked with our students yesterday about this work, and it was an extraordinary experience for all of us – the breadth of her knowledge base, language skills, and people skills required to do the job at all, let alone to do it in an award-winning fashion.
Jen is one of a handful of people serving as the public face of the United States in this particular corner of the world. I know we can all appreciate both the difficulties and the critical importance of serving in this capacity in today’s world with all of its challenges, old new and emerging. It would be hard to imagine many people better equipped to deal with those challenges than Jennifer Spande. Even with all that she has accomplished already, it won’t be surprising to any of us to find that her best is yet to come.
I present Jennifer Pleuss Spande for the First Decade Award for early professional achievement.
And I seized the opportunity to thank Gustavus, and give my idealism full reign. In the actual speech, I ad-libbed a bit at the beginning, mostly about how I really wanted to meet this Jennifer Spande person Chris was talking about. Here's the text of my prepared remarks:
Thank you, Chris, for that warm introduction.
It is an incredible honor to receive this award today from an institution that has already given me so much. Like the other class of 1997 graduates here today, it’s a great opportunity to remember what a special place Gustavus is, to reminisce about our time here, and to think about ways that we can make sure that other students have the same amazing Gustavus experience that we had.
Gustavus is such a wonderful place to spend four years. This school is unparalleled in the support it gives to its best students. As I think back on my time here, what is so striking to me is how much the faculty invested in me, and how seriously they took me and my ideas and passions, even as a young adult.
Chris has told you some stories about our research adventures, which were one of the greatest opportunities I had here. Not only is Gustavus’s emphasis on undergraduate research unique, but the emphasis on student-directed research is really amazing. Chris is a wonderful scholar who does terrific work on the intersection of religion and politics. But what is remarkable to me is that rather than just being invited to join him in his research, he went out of his way to support me in my own research interests, which couldn’t have been further from the voting behavior studies he was doing at the time.
So many other faculty members made such an investment in me. I became seized with questions about ethics in my freshman year and developed an interest in philosophy. While I was hoping to find an answer to those ethical questions in the philosophy department, what I found instead was so much more valuable: the awareness that there is no one right answer—or, to put it another way, an appreciation for ambiguity and respect for a diversity of opinions--and the development of a rigorous approach to considering these fundamental questions that I will have for the rest of my life.
Two other professors I had early on also made an especially strong impact. Dennis Johnson, who was the Vice President for Church Relations, and later became the VP for College Relations and interim college president, taught just one class a year, which I was fortune enough to take: a first term seminar called the “Literature of 20th Century Religious Social Activists”. Just like my philosophy major, that class gave background and rigor to the struggle we all face with how we are called to live faithfully in an unjust world.
The other professor who was such an important part of my Gustavus years was one who touched many of us in the class of 1997: Ron Christenson, the founder of the political science department, and a man with an incredible passion for history, law, travel, and especially his students. Ron’s death several years ago was a huge loss to the college, but I know that his student-centered approach lives on at Gustavus. Just one quick anecdote about Dennis and Ron, to exemplify the spirit they brought to campus. Dennis and his wife Carol had all of the students in his first term seminar over to their house for pizza and a movie. A few friends and I decided to reciprocate, and we invited Dennis and Carol and Ron and his wife Kathryn (who is here tonight) over for dinner at our place. We served an inelegant dinner of spaghetti in a very cramped lounge in Johnson Hall, but to look at the gracious and enthusiastic reaction from our guests, you would have thought it was the classiest dinner they had ever been served. To be treated with so much respect and taken so seriously as 18 year old serving pasta in a dorm room was a rare honor indeed.
Terrific faculty, of course, is just one part of what makes Gustavus so special. I was also fortunate to be inspired by my fellow students. Just reading about the other ’97 graduates nominated for this award is a humbling reminder of the high caliber of people Gustavus attracts. And perhaps the biggest thank you I need to say to Gustavus is for giving me an opportunity to meet my husband, Nathan—whom many of you know as Ed--who is also a ’97 grad. We started dating at the end of our freshman year and have been together ever since. And it is Ed who kept me sane when I was applying for all kinds of scholarships, facing grueling exams at Oxford, and trying to balance work and life. Ed has also made the tremendous sacrifice of slowing down his own career in computer security to follow me around the world and be a stay-at-home dad to our two children, giving me the freedom to focus on my career. So this award is one that really belongs to both of us.
Coming back to Gustavus after ten years is also an opportunity to reflect on how much our lives have changed and how much we have done since we graduated. While at Gustavus we had the flexibility to live inside the ivory tower, indulging our youthful idealism through class debates, student groups, volunteering and service learning. But after graduation, we had to turn our attention to the real world and develop a more inward focus on living our own lives. Leaving college is a shift from a life where the biggest stressors were exams, roommates, and jobs at the caf, to one where we had to deal with things like renting an apartment, finding a job, getting married, having kids, and buying our first house. We’ve traded tracking how much money we had in our cafeteria account to tracking how much money we have in our 401ks. Last night my husband and I did something that would have been unthinkable ten years ago. We went back to Mexican Village, the Mankato restaurant that everyone’s parents seemed to take them to when they came to visit, and we actually paid for our own meals!
But as we look back on the last ten years, and reflect on how much we’ve changed and how much Gustavus has given us, I think we all need to return to some of those lofty concerns of our college days. After ten years, we are beginning to get to the point in our lives where just getting established doesn’t take all of our energy. We can think more seriously about ways to give back to Gustavus and the other institutions that have helped us on our journey.
But we shouldn’t stop there. What attracted so many of us to Gustavus was the idea of going to a small, supportive liberal arts school. While Alex and I are being honored today for our professional accomplishments—and there are so many other Gusties who have done amazing things in their careers--Gustavus’ greatest strength goes far beyond its role in preparing students for the work world. The term liberal arts originally referred to the skills that free men—as opposed to slaves and yes, women—needed to be productive members of society. These were the skills of critical thinking, writing, and persuasion and the knowledge of history, math, music, and other disciplines. Ten years after our graduation is the perfect time to reflect on how we are using our liberal arts education to be productive members of society.
Perhaps because I live in Cambodia, the privileged position that we occupy as educated Americans is particularly evident to me. Cambodia is a country still struggling to recover from one of the most destructive genocides of the 20th century. It’s a place where few children can expect to finish junior high school, much less college, and those few that go on to higher education will find few jobs waiting for them. Cambodia is a country where women routinely die in childbirth, and the lack of something as simple as a mosquito net or clean water leads to tens of thousands of deaths each year from diseases like malaria, dengue fever, and even diarrhea. And as I spent $3 yesterday buying a delicious chai latte—one of the American treats that we can’t get in Cambodia—I remembered that that is three times more than most Cambodians live on for an entire day. And, of course, this picture isn’t unique to Cambodia. The majority of the world’s population lives in developing countries like Cambodia and faces similar struggles.
To be sure, there are struggles here in the United States as well. The current debate about the role of government in providing health insurance for poor children reminds us that basic health care is a luxury, not a right in this country. While the United States is experiencing unprecedented levels of prosperity, the gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Even the great education which we all benefitted from and which is supposed to serve as the engine of social mobility in our country is not open to all. A recent New York Times article highlighted studies which have shown that students from the top quartile of the socioeconomic hierarchy are 25 times more likely to attend a “top tier” college than students from the bottom quartile. And, perhaps most importantly, we are in the midst of a political campaign which will define how our government sees its responsibilities towards its people and its role in the world.
So, as we close this evening, I would like to challenge all of us--Gustavus alumni, current students, faculty, staff, and parents--to think not just about how our Gustavus experience makes our lives better, but how we can use our education to improve others’ lives. To paraphrase a speech that Robert Kennedy gave to Berkeley students in 1966:
We live in the most privileged nation on earth. We are the most privileged citizens of that privileged nation; for we have been given the opportunity to study and learn, to take our place among the tiny minority of the world's educated men and women. By coming to this school we have been lifted onto a tiny, sunlit island, while all around us lies an ocean of human misery, injustice, violence, and fear. We can use our enormous privilege and opportunity to seek purely private pleasure and gain. But history will judge us, and, as the years pass, we will ultimately judge ourselves, on the extent to which our have used our gifts to enrich the lives of others. In our hands, not with presidents or leaders, is the future of our world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of our own spirit.
Thank you.
