PRESIDENT
Education is the Premise of Progress
I
n the 1990s, I worked at the United Nations in New York, writing speeches that sometimes wound up on the desk of Secretary General Kofi Annan. The Secretary General was born in Ghana, won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize and attended Macalester College in Minnesota where he studied economics. He liked to say, “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” Ripon College is proud to empower students who are the first in their families to go to college. Almost half of our student body are first-generation college students, more than all but a small number of schools in Wisconsin and in the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Our faculty and staff take the responsibility to these unique students very seriously. We can see the results of generations of Ripon alumni who also were first in their families to go to college. Many have gone on to achieve success in careers all over the world. But it took a lot of hard work to get there, and it still does today. Our outstanding Student Support Services staff, the Bridge program, the investment in the new Franzen Center for Academic Success in Lane Library, our emphasis on one-on-one tutoring programs and, of course, the care and dedication of Ripon’s faculty to individual teaching and advising make a critical difference. Being a school that truly cares about first-generation college students is doubly important to the Ripon community because many of our faculty and staff shared the experience of being the first in their families to graduate from college. They know just how critical an extra word of encouragement, thoughtful advice or a helping hand that goes above and beyond to find a solution can mean to a student
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who doesn’t have a parent at home who went through a college experience themselves. In this issue of Ripon Magazine, you will hear the stories of current first-gen students, faculty, staff and alumni and how Ripon College has made a difference in their lives and continues to do so today. A quick side note: Please pay special attention to the feature story starting on page 24 about Kassidy Walters, an exercise science major in the Class of 2022 from Greenfield, Illinois. Kassidy is back at Ripon after dealing with Hodgkin’s lymphoma last year. We exchanged handwritten letters during her treatments, sharing our mutual experience with chemotherapy and how much we love basketball. Watching Kassidy score a couple of baskets against Illinois College in January for the 2019 Midwest Conference Champion women’s basketball team warmed my heart — and others, I am quite sure! — on a very cold winter day.
ZACH MESSITTE PRESIDENT
