August 19, 2026
President Robert W. Iuliano
Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania
As Delivered.
Thank you for that inspiring speech, Tina [Gebhart].
Happy Opening Day, everyone! Before I begin, I’d like to express my deepest thanks to Prof. Caroline Hartzell, as she leads her first ceremony as College Marshal. Congratulations on this well-deserved honor, Caroline!
Welcome, Class of ’30! On behalf of the entire Gettysburg College community—faculty, staff, fellow students, and our neighbors in the borough—we’re thrilled to have you as part of the fabric of this special place.
I know that your arrival on campus has been a bit of a whirl and you’re undoubtedly sitting here with a mix of emotions. Excitement. Some nervousness. Anticipation. Uncertainty. All of that’s entirely natural. Trust me, every one of your classmates is feeling the same way. It’s an inevitable part of the transition to this next, transformational chapter in your life.
I can assure you that things will settle down, and sooner than you think.
You’ll figure out the difference between Glatfelter Lodge and Glatfelter Hall. You’ll realize that there’s no lake in Stine Lake—a source of some confusion for me when I first arrived. You’ll begin to connect with our dedicated faculty, who will open your eyes to possibilities you can’t currently imagine. And you’ll begin to forge those friendships that, if you’re like most of our graduates, will be with you tomorrow, at graduation, and at your 50th reunion.
Enjoy this moment. Take it all in.
You probably know this, but academic institutions like their traditions, and we’re no exception. We’ll experience one of our most powerful traditions tomorrow, when we retrace the steps that President Lincoln took with our faculty and students before he delivered the Gettysburg Address.
Traditions situate us in a place and time, but they also ask us to think about who came before and what’s ahead. At their best, they transport, transform, transfix.
This tradition, Opening Convocation, carries special weight because it invites you into the academic community you will call home for the next four years. In truth, it’s more than an invitation; it’s a launch down a path that will broaden your horizons and ready you for the life you want to lead.
For those of us speaking today, our job is to help make that launch as successful as possible—and to do so with some words of wisdom earned over the course of our lives and through our time on this campus.
This is now my eighth opportunity to address an entering class as the president of the College. It turns out that the job of getting these comments right is harder than I initially thought it would be.
And that’s true for a basic reason, one built into the very structure of this tradition. There’s so much happening on your first days on campus that, if I’m being honest, it’s nearly impossible for you to absorb all the advice you’ll hear today.
That, too, is both okay and completely understandable. Knowing this, I want to simplify things and ask that you remember, and take to heart, one simple word—a word you probably say reflexively scores of times every day.
That word: “wonder.”
Let’s not roll over the word as we do in our everyday lives—as a bit of a filler. You all probably used it as such driving to campus.
“I wonder when we’ll arrive?”
“I wonder if I’ll like my roommate?”
Or, just now, “I wonder when this ceremony will end and I can go back to setting up my room?”
That’s all good, but those uses of the word are flat and unreflective. My ask today is that you really stop and think about the true majesty and power of the underlying emotion. Go back to the younger version of you, when everything seemed so unexpected. When you couldn’t help but ask one “why” question after another, because you found the world marvelously surprising and wanted to understand how it all worked.
I’m sure your parents fondly remember those days!
For me, I get that authentic sense of wonder whenever I look up to the night sky and open my mind to the enormity of it all. It was true of the 10-year-old me, and yes, even the version standing before you today. I know it’s not distinctive to me—and may even feel a bit trite—but it doesn’t change its power to mesmerize me—and may explain why my oldest son earned a Ph.D. in astrophysics.
So many stars.
So much mystery.
Such stunning beauty.
What’s out there?
How did it come to be?
How do we fit in?
When I create room for that sense of wonder to take over, so many emotions cascade—humility, gratitude, curiosity, awe, the determination to learn more.
Maybe the universe does the same for you. Or maybe it’s something else—the majesty of a mountain range, the marvelous interplay found in biology, the beauty of a well-composed sonnet. Maybe even what the building behind me witnessed on July 1, 1863, the heroism and selflessness on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Wonder. It’s one simple word. But, if you let wonder, in its fullest sense, guide you over the next four years, the rewards will be manifold.
Plato captured the point beautifully, in this comment he ascribed to Socrates: “wisdom begins in wonder.”
Wonder inspires us to dig deeper. It makes us curious, open to possibilities beyond our experiences. It encourages the sort of humility that fosters open, honest, and respectful listening to views that may not be the same as those you hold—and, from that, a deeper reflection on what you believe and why. That’s where the power of a Gettysburg education lies. That’s the root of authentic learning, of the sort of personal and intellectual growth that will lead you to what we call a consequential life.
I don’t want to pretend it’s possible to act with a vibrant sense of wonder every day or in all that you’ll do over the next four years. On that cold February day when a paper on the structure of the Mexican government is due in a few hours—and, yes, this is a moment from my time in college—it’s okay to keep your head down. The mysteries of the universe will wait. But the more often you can call on the curiosity wonder cultivates, the more you’ll get out of the next four years.
At the risk of ignoring my own advice about keeping this simple, let me introduce a second word—a close cousin to “wonder”—indeed, just one letter apart. And that word is “wander.” I offer it to encourage you to roam across our curriculum, to explore the unexpected, to take some risks by venturing into areas that are unfamiliar.
Because here’s what I also know. There’s so much to unravel about the world, an adventure around every corner, if only you’re open to it. You may find your great passion in the most unexpected place, but you need to step into the unfamiliar to find it.
Take Charles Darwin. He started out training for a career in medicine, then switched to studying divinity. He later stepped into the unfamiliar, when a professor of botany pulled him into beetle-collecting and geology field trips. Work that had nothing to do with his then studies. Everything changed for him after that. His personal growth—one might even say evolution—was made possible by his willingness to wander.
May that be true for you as well.
A Gettysburg education encourages creativity, curiosity, adaptability, and so much more—human characteristics that society will forever need, whatever AI has in store. All that’s available to you if you’re open to it. If you wander with a sense of wonder.
I’ll end by quoting the English writer, G.K. Chesterton, who said this: “The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.”
The stuff of wonder is all around you—in your classes, your labs, in late night conversations with friends, on the stage, on playing fields. It’s all yours to explore and to revel in the transformative education ahead.
And, so, I urge you to approach the next four years with a sense of wonder. To resist the narrowness and limits that often come from certitude. To act instead with curiosity, humility, awe, and openness. To embrace the difference in thought and experience you’ll find in your new home. If you do all this, the possibilities before you are endless.
Welcome, Class of ’30. I can’t wait to see all the wonderful things you’ll do over the next four years.