To read a complete version of President Frawley’s speech, go to www.umw.edu/inauguration
For Immediate Release: September 30, 2006
UMW INAUGURATES WILLIAM J. FRAWLEY AS ITS SEVENTH PRESIDENT, SEPT. 30
Fredericksburg, Va. – The University of Mary Washington celebrated the Inauguration of William J. Frawley as its seventh president on Saturday, September 30.
The program included remarks from Gov. Timothy Kaine, Virginia State Sen. John Chichester, Fredericksburg Mayor Thomas Tomzak, George Mason University President Alan Merten, and George Washington University President Stephen Joel Trachtenberg.
During the Installation Ceremony, Dr. Frawley spoke about convergent moments, when two separate things align in a stark and instructive way. He described the University of Mary Washington as currently experiencing such a moment, marking the juncture of yesterday and tomorrow as it prepares to celebrate its nearly 100-year-old past while embarking on a new century of excellence.
“Having been offered the opportunity to lead the institution at this crucial convergent moment leaves me with both excitement and a little bit of stage fright,” he said. “I see my extended family with people they have never before met, my old friends and new ones, my past teachers and my present ones. My own hopes and aspirations merge with those of the institution.”
He added, “convergence is at the heart of the university. Here we harness unbending tradition with the risks of the pedagogical cutting-edge; here we actively promote disagreement, dissent, and divergent thinking, all the while tempering it with respect, balance, and a sense of others.”
Dr. Frawley then asked how a university can fulfill its responsibilities to individuals, the state and the nation. He provided four lessons in response. First, he said, it is essential to avoid sweeping generalizations through “sloganeering” or “eduspeak,” which can result in the absence of new substantive ideas. Instead, he asked that the university be led by guiding principles that outline specific actions for the future, such as teaching that includes “continuous embedded assessment, varied short writing assignments, small reconfigurings of class time and physical classroom space, and linking advising to actual classes rather than disconnecting it from university life in special advising meetings.” He also offered advice for the administration, saying that it can be improved “by a series of well-defined, well-supported, and well-connected actions rather than the endless grand overhauls.”
His second lesson was that the university should support the notion of trying out the thoughts of others. “It could just be that if you try on other people’s ideas for size and fit, you may see that they, and not you, are correct,” Dr. Frawley said. “If, in doing this vigorous ‘trying on,’ we then come back to our original positions, our pasts, we will have done so responsibly, through a series of changes of mind that allow us to see our old ideas again as if they were new.”
He continued, “We have the obligation to allow our students to think with us, a task much harder to do than just telling people things, and then testing them, because you have to be willing to let down your guard and have extra time for those convergent moments.” He suggested that learning also occurs outside of the classroom and can be facilitated by opportunities to work in peer groups, to solve problems in a hands-on way, to participate in internships and through problem-driven discovery.
His third point was that in order to demonstrate that the university is genuinely fulfilling its responsibility to serve the public good, empirical evidence must be provided during the evaluation process. “If activities work and we know it, they should be advanced and supported; if they do not work, and we know it, we should have the courage to acknowledge the problems and fix them or stop the activities altogether,” he said.
Dr. Frawley’s final lesson was that making the future requires teaching to the future. He said, “I would press the university not to teach so much for the moment, but to take the risk of teaching at least a decade out.” He added, “Drive the future. Don’t merely ratify the past. The worst that could happen would be that we would be wrong and thereby allow a well-made person and mind to do its regular work of self-repair and replication.”
He concluded his remarks by asking everyone in attendance to take a hard look at “our mutually changing and interdependent selves in this convergent moment that in doing so, we see the institution cleanly and clearly, and may know this place again for the very first time.”
Dr. Frawley was named as the university’s seventh president last February, and he officially started this new role on July 1. A linguist and cognitive scientist, he has held appointments at academic institutions in this country and abroad. He is an accomplished scholar, teacher and administrator.
In his most recent position as dean of the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, Dr. Frawley had responsibility for more than 40 academic departments, including the School of Public Policy Administration, School of Political Management, and School of Media and Public Affairs.
His administrative experience includes institutional fund raising. Dr. Frawley helped raise more than $45 million for George Washington’s College of Arts and Sciences. Individual donor gifts were as high as $5 million and external funding from grants increased 28 percent during his tenure as dean. He also is skilled at developing collaborative partnerships with corporations and with state and federal agencies.
Before joining George Washington University, Dr. Frawley served for 23 years on the faculty and administration at the University of Delaware. He was appointed to the highest faculty rank – professor – at the age of 32 and held a variety of administrative positions at Delaware, from department chair to director of undergraduate studies. At Mary Washington, Dr. Frawley will continue teaching as Distinguished University Professor of Linguistics. His academic specializations in linguistics include meaning systems, cognitive and computational architectures for language, and discourse and text structure.
Dr. Frawley holds a doctorate from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from Louisiana State University, both in linguistics. He graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English from Glassboro State College, now Rowan University. He has authored or edited more than a dozen books and has published more than 60 scholarly articles. Dr. Frawley has served on editorial boards of numerous academic journals, including his current role as editor and member of the advisory board of Oxford University’s U.S. Dictionary Projects.
Dr. Frawley and his wife, Maria Frawley, associate professor of English at George Washington University, have a son, Christopher, and a daughter, Emma.
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News release by: Teresa Mannix