Hillsdale College Celebrates Fall Convocation
History professor Charles Yost spoke on the Medieval approach to tradition, and education professor Jonathan Gregg received the Daugherty Award for Teaching Excellence.
HILLSDALE, Mich. — Hillsdale College hosted its annual Fall Convocation in Christ Chapel on Nov. 14. The traditional academic ceremony included remarks from College President Larry P. Arnn, a speech by Assistant Professor of History Charles Yost, and recognitions of academic and teaching excellence.
Yost, whom the class of 2024 voted professor of the year, spoke on the Medieval approach to tradition. His address was titled, “The Middle Ages on the Cutting Edge.”
“The wisdom of the ancestors was a well from which the makers of Medieval civilization drew strength in order to build, not to sit idle.”
“What leaps off page after page of the writings of the Medievals is a pulsing sense of the radical newness of their times, of the insufficiency of ancient solutions to address modern problems, a deep and abiding concern to reconcile the wisdom of the past with the utterly changed conditions of their world, which they knew to be situated in the last age of human history, and so on the cutting edge of modernity,” Yost said.
According to Yost, the men and women of the Middle Ages sought to learn from both the triumphs and failures of the past, not merely to imitate it.
“The wisdom of the ancestors was a well from which the makers of Medieval civilization drew strength in order to build, not to sit idle,” Yost said. “Medieval men and women knew that tradition only became itself when it linked the dead to the living in one great communion which allowed them to see themselves, in the words of the 12th century scholar Bernard Sylvester, as dwarves on the shoulders of giants.”
Dr. Arnn presented the Fall 2024 Emily Daugherty Award for Teaching Excellence to Jonathan Gregg, assistant professor of education. Gregg, a 2011 graduate of Hillsdale College, earned his M.A. in humanities from University of Chicago and his Ph.D. in mathematics education from Michigan State University. Before returning to Hillsdale, he taught at a classical charter school in Phoenix.
Hillsdale College Provost Christopher VanOrman announced spring 2024 academic performance statistics and awards. Kappa Kappa Gamma won the Sorority Scholarship Cup with a GPA of 3.552, and Alpha Tau Omega won the Fraternity Scholarship Cup with a GPA of 3.442. The all-women’s GPA was 3.548, and the all-men’s GPA was 3.392. The all-school grade point average was 3.471.