Graduation address by the Principal and Vice-Chancellor
As Principal, it now falls to me to deliver today’s graduation address, and it is customary to begin such remarks by offering wholehearted congratulations. Each of you, our new graduates, has every reason to be very proud of the degree you have earned, and we – the tutors, staff, family, and friends who have helped you through – are very proud of you. A St Andrews degree is one of the finest that you can attain anywhere in the world, and that means it is not easily earned but requires innumerable hours of concentrated study and hard work – without which you would not have made it this far.
Each day at the University will have reshaped you slightly because studying – and the contemplation it entails – demands that you consider new perspectives and fold them into your comprehension of the world. I am sure you will all have experienced the feeling of your brain expanding at some point – either when deep into an essay, observing the results of an experiment, or listening to a particularly powerful lecture – and that addictive sensation can inspire you to keep learning throughout your life. One of your fellow alumni, Anne Carson, a Professor of Classics and renowned poet, describes how in this ‘act of thinking, the mind must reach across this space between known and unknown, linking one to the other.’ These graduation rituals serve in part to remind us that this broadening of the mind’s reach has made those of you who have just received degrees entirely different people from those who arrived to pursue them.
Our congratulations are owed to you more than most. It is almost a year and a half since the pandemic reshaped the way we live and work, and we have each felt some measure of difficulty in response to the challenges it has presented. That is most acutely felt by those amongst us who have lost loved ones, but people untouched by grief have reckoned with physical separation from friends and loved ones and resultant feelings of loneliness. As students, you have also forgone many of the conventional University experiences of your final year.
I want to recognise the superlative acumen and resilience you have demonstrated. The way our student body has responded to the pandemic and the community-building activities have been inspirational. It is such a privilege to lead an institution at which each person has demonstrated integrity and responsibility in the face of previously unimaginable challenges, and I am truly thankful to each of you.
Whilst our present time is one absolutely unto itself, analogies to the University’s perseverance tell us things on which it is beneficial to reflect. Over time you will come to see this period as one incredible phase in your lifetime, but one that you can take and use to shape the rest of your life positively and for your own and others’ good. 110 years ago, in September 1911, the University celebrated its five-hundredth anniversary. The proceedings were overseen by the then Principal, Professor Sir James Donaldson, who had at that time led the University through twenty-five years of growth, and the ensuing sense of prosperity inspired anniversary events of jubilation and no small expense. The centrepiece was an anniversary ceremony attended by over 3500 people including representatives of over 145 universities and learned societies – and which was complemented by quintessential St Andrean activities such as symposia, theatrical productions, and torchlit processions.
This era of prosperity was curtailed by the onset of the First World War in 1914. Dr Norman Reid, a historian of our University, reports that our student population declined by 30% between 1912 and 1915, and that of the around 1000 graduates, students, and staff who served in trench warfare, 130 died in action whilst many more suffered internment or lasting health difficulties. Meanwhile, those staff and students who remained at St Andrews were requisitioned into the war effort. Much as in the current pandemic, our staff worked throughout the UK to render their skills – both practical and theoretical – to the national effort, and academics provided insight into many of the health, logistical, and strategic challenges of the time. The laboratories of the Bute Medical School were reoriented to research materials with the potential for military weaponization – including mustard gas, and the chemistry laboratories of the United College were recast to meet medical demands.
Central to this wartime research was James Irvine, later Sir James, a Professor of Chemistry who subsequently served as Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University for over three decades from 1921 until his death in 1952. Those decades are renowned as some of the most transformative in our history because Sir James was determined to rebuild the University after the war and develop it into the institution of global renown that it is today. Yet Irvine was a student at our University much like any of today’s graduates, who excelled and changed the landscape of our town – physically and metaphorically, through simple determination and commitment.
James was born in Glasgow and developed an early passion for chemistry at school before successfully applying to be a research assistant to Professor Thomas Purdie, a chemist of distinction at St Andrews. Recalling his arrival to St Andrews in October 1895, aged 18, Irvine remarked: ‘I stood amazed beneath St Salvator’s Tower and I knew I had come home’ – a sentiment many of you will share. Irvine matriculated as a student in 1896 – with Purdie’s encouragement, and read chemistry with zoology, physics, and botany whilst continuing to work as an assistant. He graduated in March 1898 as a decorated scholar and having revelled in the delights of our town, including runs along West Sands, dinners with friends, and ambles along the beaches at sunset.
Irvine’s path took him away from St Andrews: he moved to Leipzig to pursue doctoral research, and it was in Germany that he met his future wife – Mabel Williams, from Belfast but training in Leipzig as a musician. Irvine returned to St Andrews in 1901, where he was joined by Mabel whom he married in 1905, and he established himself as a researcher of global renown in the field of carbohydrate chemistry. Irvine’s years in Leipzig were funded by scholarship provision, and his time as an early career researcher at St Andrews was underwritten by support from the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, both of which attuned him to the transformative utility of philanthropy.
2021 marks one hundred years since Irvine’s assumption of the Principalship, and his legacy can be felt around us – both physically and culturally. Irvine led the expansion of our subject offerings, and student numbers increased accordingly – from just over 350 students in 1915, to over 1000 students in the 1930s and with a drastically increased proportion of women. These new students required new homes, and Irvine led the fundraising for, and development of, some of our finest halls of residence to compensate for the squalor of his own student accommodation years earlier. His tenure saw the redevelopment of Chattan House, later expanded to become McIntosh Hall, as well as the building of St Salvator’s Hall. He led the development of the Younger Hall, which opened in 1929, as well as the redevelopment of St Salvator’s Chapel, the former Student Union on North Street, and many other University properties across the estate. Irvine paired this physical reconstitution of our University with an overhaul of its reputation, and he became known globally as an academic ambassador for St Andrews but also for British higher education more broadly – crucially establishing, in particular, many of the links with North America that we continue to enjoy today.
The vision, courage, and love for St Andrews that Irvine exemplified gave shape to our town over a lifetime and have established a lasting legacy. All of us have the power to do that, including you who are just starting. Sir James has certainly inspired me throughout my tenure, in his role as a former Principal but also as an exemplar of the commitment to excellence that is ubiquitous at our University, and which we have sought to instil in each of you during your time here. His example has adopted new resonance since the inception of the pandemic, and the steadfastness he exhibited during the war, and the determination with which he sought to rebuild in its conclusion, are instructive for us all at our present historical juncture. Over a long career Sir James never stopped thinking what he could do for the University that would improve its standing and the experience of its students and its staff. Ever to excel was emblematised by him across his life, as it can be by you in yours, in whatever you go on to do.
Sir James exemplified one further thing to which each of us can attest: the knowledge and belief that one goes on being a St Andrean right throughout one’s life. Wherever you are viewing this from, and wherever your path may lead from here, you are always welcome back to our town, and I invite you all to stand ‘beneath St Salvator’s Tower’ before too long and know you have ‘come home.’
Professor Sally Mapstone
Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews