The first draft of this year’s commencement address at Elon University was written the year the graduates were born. Over the course of the past two decades, the speech has been crafted and revised, carefully prepared for the day it would be delivered.
On May 25, Elon philosophy professor John Sullivan will finally get a chance to share his thoughts with graduates. His years as a standby Commencement speaker are over, and this time the spotlight belongs to him.
The decision to name Sullivan as Commencement speaker was made in early April when scheduled speaker, former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison, cancelled due to a family illness. Calling on a member of the campus community to take her place seemed logical, especially since Elon’s 112th Commencement exercises are the institution’s first as a university.
“I had always thought it would be a last minute type thing,” Sullivan says. “I envisioned it being a situation where a plane didn’t come in, or the speaker collapsed as they came on stage, and I would come rushing in out of the crowd. This way, my name’s going to be in the program and it seems more like the real thing.”
Sullivan says he has modified the speech every 2 or 3 years to stay current with the times. “The students change, I change and what’s appropriate to say changes.”
Over the years, he has kept the contents of the speech a secret, refusing to give any hint about what he wants to say to graduates. He has also been careful not to pass judgment on previous speakers, declining to say whether his standby address was superior to the previous 22 addresses he has heard while waiting in the wings.
The benefit of knowing he will speak well ahead of time has afforded Sullivan the chance to tailor the speech especially for this year’s class. But he has yet to give it a title. “I’m still thinking, still ruminating on that one.”
A member of the faculty since 1970, Sullivan has earned a reputation as one of Elon’s most respected teachers and scholars. He has received the university’s highest award for teaching, the Daniels-Danieley Award for Excellence in Teaching, and was chosen to speak at a campus gathering of students, faculty and staff a day after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Over the last three years, he served as chair of Elon’s Carnegie Committee on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
His professional activities extend well beyond Elon. Sullivan is co-founder of the School of Philosophy and Healing in Action (SOPHIA), a program at the Traditional Acupuncture Institute in Columbia, Md. The program, started in 1987, teaches healing principles based on ancient Chinese beliefs.