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ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE---“It’s What We Do!”
Each spring St. Francis de Sales High School recognizes the outstanding academic achievements of its students by inducting them into the Collegium Honorum.
Membership in the Collegium Honorum is composed of students from each class who have a cumulative grade point average of 4.000 or better. Membership is determined each year at the end of the first semester. Seniors who average 4.333 or better will receive the Collegium Honorum traditional blazer displaying embroidered emblem of the school’s crest.
Joel F. Harrington, a 1977 graduate of St. Francis de Sales was invited to address the students during the program. Harrington who has a B.A. in English & History from the University of Notre Dame, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor has taught at Vanderbilt University since 1989 and is currently a professor of history and member of the Graduate Department of Religion.
He teaches courses on the history of Christianity, the Renaissance and Reformation, religion and the occult in the early modern era (ca.1500-1800), and other topics in European history. His research specialty is early modern Germany and he has published widely on various aspects of social history, particularly marriage, children and the family.
Harrington has been awarded fellowships from--among others--the Fulbright-Hayes Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), and the American Philosophical Society.
Since 2004 Professor Harrington has served as Vanderbilt's senior international officer, a full-time administrative position. His responsibilities as associate provost for global strategy include: identifying institutional needs and opportunities in order to fulfill the university’s internationalization goals; developing selective international partnerships at the university, school, and departmental level; coordinating international faculty and student exchanges; enhancing international dimensions of the undergraduate learning experience (both on-campus and abroad); and promoting Vanderbilt’s academic reputation abroad. He has direct administrative oversight of the Vanderbilt International Office (VIO), the Office of Study Abroad, and the English Learning Center. He also chairs the Advisory Council on International Affairs, and regularly represents Vanderbilt around the world.
Harrigton shared with the students some of the same advice that he gives to his advisees at Vanderbilt, in the hope it might in some way enhance their upcoming university experience. He limited himself to five points that are worth repeating here:
1. Balance your schedule
 Freshman year will be already more demanding than you might expect in a variety of ways: personally, socially, and academically. Balance your schedule to a reasonable number of hours, including one or two courses on subjects that you find truly intriguing. You will enjoy your university experience more, grow more personally, and do better in all your classes. As in college, so in life: all grind and delayed intellectual and personal gratification is not a sustainable strategy. Try to enjoy your work, your friends, your pastimes, and even your parents. You will not only be happier but also more successful in the long run. As a wise man once said, “Moderation in all things, except the love of God.”
2. Embrace your ignorance
 The reality is that your ignorance of most subjects, academic and otherwise, will always be infinitely greater than your personal store of knowledge. Even those topics on which we each feel most comfortable, it is not false modesty but truth to admit that there will always be huge gaps in our understanding. Humility, another Salesian virtue, does not mean pretending that each of us is small and limited but rather accepting that this is a fact. While no reasonable person expects you to know it all, admitting it is both liberating and empowering (not to mention truthful). Pretending to know about something you don’t—as I expect you’ve all found out—might save you embarrassment in the short term but always causes problems in the long term. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know or to ask questions but do it in a way that is both respectful and open-ended.
3. Stay open to new ideas
You may have already even decided on a college major and career trajectory. I don’t want to discourage that sense of direction and purpose, if you have it, but I also urge you not to set your plans in stone, especially at this point in life. There are many, many ideas and experiences you can’t even imagine right now, not to mention unexpected dimensions to academic subjects that you think you know fairly well. Even more unexpected—there are dimensions to your own self that you may not even be aware of yet. College is an incredible gift, which allows you to explore entirely new ideas and dimensions of yourself as well as progress in areas where you already have interest and ability. Genuine personal growth requires openness to the new, unexpected, and above all, change. You are each much too young to be settled in your ways. We all are.
4. Follow your bliss
 College is a rare moment in your life when you are allowed to pursue any of your current intellectual interests with leading experts in a variety of fields. Yes, it is also lots of work, and yes, also lots of fun outside the classroom. But it is above all an opportunity, available to less than 1% of the world’s population, to identify what stimulates your mind and incorporate that knowledge into your own forging of a career. Every job will incorporate elements that you don’t like, perhaps even a few that you dread, but your educational prowess has put you in the position to steer your own professional destiny to a much greater degree than most of your fellow humans. Do not squander this opportunity.
 You will grow more in self-understanding and abilities if you pursue your intellectual interests in college, rather than marginalize them in favor of what you’re supposed to be good at or expected to take. For those alarmed parents of potential pre-med, pre-business, or pre-law majors, let me clarify that virtually any major will provide good background for professional school, since admission committees look for the skills and test results that any good liberal art major yields: strong analytic capability, clear writing, and mental flexibility. You will also tend to do better (i.e., get better grades) in the courses that most motivate your intellect. Thus, at Vanderbilt, we regularly have science majors who go on to law school or even History majors who go on to medical or business school. Obviously pre-med students still need to take the required science classes and engineers have admittedly less flexibility in their curriculum but even in these cases the opportunity to pursue your intellectual passions is there.
5. Study abroad
 I can’t stress enough how much this one experience enriched my own life, as well as the lives of everyone else I know who has done it. Living for a semester or year abroad is the college experience on steroids. You are exposed to new people, new ideas, new practices, new foods, new languages (even in England and Australia), and most of all, new ways of thinking about yourself and your home. The experience is both exhilarating and terrifying, in the sense that it is virtually impossible to know where it will all lead. In the memorable words of one recent Secretary of Defense, there are not only the known unknowns (for instance, aspects of the local language and customs), but also the unknown unknowns—in which ways will my worldview and beliefs about myself be affected in the end? There are currently more than a quarter of a million American undergraduates studying abroad and that number continues to rise annually, with ever more students venturing outside of Europe to Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Virtually any college you attend will have some study abroad options, or at least the opportunity to transfer in credits if you go on an independent program. I strongly urge you to consider this experience. You will grow personally as well as academically; you will become more marketable in any job field (esp. if you developed proficiency in a foreign language); you will have fun; and you will develop a sympathy and understanding for different points of view that is especially valuable in our increasingly interconnected world. Studying abroad will not delay your progress towards graduation—almost every major has course and program options—and in most instances your financial aid package will apply in full. True, living abroad can often be challenging, but in a truly life-enhancing way. Ok, I feel the point has been made—just go!!
In keeping with my promise of brevity—the soul of wit—I’ll come to a close. But before my avuncular moment passes entirely, I’d like to underscore the common thread I’ve detected in these five nuggets of wisdom.
The ‘’real” you, the “real” me is always a work in progress; the potential for personal growth is always there. The fact that you have succeeded academically on your current path does not mean that you know where the path is headed in the years ahead or that you should expect to know where this path will lead. It is undoubtedly somewhat frightening to think of the future in such an open-ended way but I believe it is also liberating, empowering, exciting, and most of all true to life. I congratulate you all on your success at St. Francis and your membership in this prestigious body.
The following students were than named as new inductees in to the Collegium Honorum:
Class of 2014
Tyler Barton, Jacob Beakas, Mark Beauch II, Jackson Bonfiglio, Kyle Bueter, Joshua Caraballo, Austin Carter, Benjamin Cook, Samuel Corbin, Matthew DeDad, Jacob Delo, Elvhin Encarnacion, Jonathan Fankhauser, Jesse Filiere, Louis Filipiak, Joseph Flom, John Fudacz, James Gallagher, Bradley Geordt, Joseph Granata, Harrison Guhl, Michael Irvine, Cameron Kaiser, Derek Kastner, Colin Kenney, Neil Kujawa, John Kulka, Devin Lanz, Matthew Lenz, Zachary Lucas, Ryan Maraldo, Hunter Markus, Mark Mossing, David Nees, Connor Nowakowski, Corey Ortiz, Noah Peeps, Matthew Pellioni, Arthur Pollauf, Andrew Rutkowski, Evan Shearman, Daniel Siebenaller, Matthew Spegele, Benjamin Steingass, Tyler Thebes, Joshua Thompson, Joseph Treece, Joshua Truscinski, Zachary Uram, Steven Will
Class of 2013
Connor Aossey, Skyler Baugher, Alec Best, Andrew Boellner, Brendan Brown, Jacob Coleman, Patrick Davis, Marc Elfering, Shelton Evans, Patrick Evans, Alec Georgoff, Joseph Gospodarek, Kevin Greenoe, Eric Hinkle, Andrew Husted, Jesse Jewell, Andrew Kott, Ryan Kwiatkowski, Kyle Lach, Daniel Lenart, Connor McAlear, Nicholas Mitchell, Kurtis Myers, Kevin Olszewski, James Roach, Christopher Schenk, James Smith Jr, Elijah Spang, Zachary Vigneau, Michael Wagner, Peter Yeager, Matthew Zmuda, and Eric Zmuda
Class of 2012
Tyler Agard, Joseph Antonini, Jonathon Berardinelli, Matthew Britsch,
William Cameron, Joshua Cline, Joel Cohen, Michael Czerniakowski,
Bryan DeSelms, Charles Filipiak, Ian Gerken, Alex Getz, Kelan Grohnke,
Tyler Halicek, Jonathan Hankenhof, Samuel Jagodzinski, Nicholas Jannazo,
Justin Kay, Matthew Kirian, Matthew Kubiak, Daniel MacDonald, Anthony Maraldo, Devon McGibbeny, Austin McHugh, Andrew Meinert, Kevin Piel, Bryce Sidel, Adam Spegele, Nathaniel Steingass, Scott Wawrzyniak, Mitchel Wise, and Joseph Yanos
Class of 2011
Franklin Michael Bonfiglio, Johnathan Michael Britsch*, John Albert Cameron, Brock Anthony Chamberlain, Jeffrey Jian-Wen Chin, Jacob Tyler Corbett, Eric Docis Farell*, Jeffrey Joseph Fuzinski, Christopher Robert Gelardi*, Lawrence Jajou*, Nathan John Lamp*, Matthew Michael Laney, Scott Michael LaVoy*, Luke Thomas Mallory, Ian Joseph McCarthy, Daniel Henry Miller, Andrew Paul Mocek*, Tyler James Murphy, Sean Daniel Oberle*, Aaron Randal Okuley, Keon Kevon Pearson*, Dustin Andrew Peth*, Michael Sam Petros*, Tyler James Popil*, Mitchell Allen Seifert*, Colin Daniel Shortridge*, Timothy John Szaroleta, Austin Michael Thees*, Christopher John Wasung*, Jacob Andrew Wawrzyniak, Matthew Thomas Weeks, Benjamin Joseph Williams*, Daniel Murphy Yodzis*
(* Seniors receiving the Collegium Honorum Blazer)
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