Good Evening, on behalf of my fellow scholars, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your support of the Presidential Scholars Program. Your generosity has been the foundation of an incredible experience.
As a prospective student visiting Boston College, I learned of the program and its roots in the intersection of BC’s two mottos: men and women for others, and 
ever to excel. Though their relevance to a college experience of scholarship and service is quite evident, I did not at first understand the depth of this unique synthesis. For me, a fuller understanding of this intersection came to shape my entire experience at Boston College.
Months after my first visit to BC, I was involved in a car accident in rural Mexico that left me comatose. When I awoke days later, I learned of everything that a poor indigenous community had done for me: doctors performing emergency surgery with no access to proper tools, and families with few resources giving what they could to mine. This boundless compassion affected me tremendously, and the most indelible mark of the accident was the guilt I felt knowing that a person of privilege could benefit so much from a community with nothing. These people gave so readily of themselves--I began to wonder if I could ever be so selfless.
The Presidential Scholars Program helped me see that question not as some “burden of privilege”, but as a motivation to serve. Almost immediately upon my arrival at BC, the program provided me with a wide range of service and leadership opportunities. I participated in two service trips to Mexico, the first to work and live in an indigenous community, and the second to study immigration issues on the Arizona border. Apart from being instantly immersed in an incredible web of educational and travel opportunities through service, the program gave me a home at Boston College. And this home gave me, an underweight, hospital-prone freshman, a family of friends and mentors more valuable than any seminar.
One cannot spend four years, however, recovering from an accident, or adjusting to an exciting new environment. At some point my aspirations took shape, and while service remained the most integral part of my experience at BC, I began to question the lasting effect of my service, and recognized the need for a more positive and sustainable change.
And the Presidential Scholars Program taught me to strive for more through our summer service program by giving us an in-depth look at a full-time, intensive service learning experience, and by encouraging us to embrace our passion, and link service to that passion. We evaluated our skills, our desires, and our goals, and made service an essential aspect of our educational and personal growth. Dr. Sardella reminded us that while serving food in a soup kitchen is important, perhaps we might be more effective using our gifts to devise ways to serve more people. Being men and women for others need not be a sacrifice of time or growth, but a stepping stone to making a profound impact in the community.
As a linguistics major, I decided that English tutoring would be a perfect place to explore the intersection of service and learning. I spent two years as an ESL teacher at the Joseph Smith Community Center where I was able to grow as both a person and a student, simultaneously authoring term papers on language acquisition that cited my students, and understanding better the position of immigrants in Boston. More important than any personal gain, however, was the opportunity to see my service make a visible impact on the lives of my students by helping them understand bill statements, verb tenses, and other services available to them.
And I saw many of my fellow presidential scholars do the same. Graduating from the food line at a soup kitchen, Matt Hamilton designed a comprehensive program that employed the homeless as bakers, and sold their cookies in BC dining halls. After working at the Brookings Institute, Amy Kyleen devoted her time to designing an economically-focused service trip to the Arizona border. While BC professors lauded these endeavors as perfect marriages of business and service, Matt’s and Amy’s most salient achievements lie not in their greater understanding of entrepreneurship or economics. Instead, they lie in the enduring stability provided to Boston’s homeless, and the sustainable profits incurred by Sonoran fair trade coffee outlets. As Matt and Amy know, the most important thing we learned from the Presidential Scholars Program is this ability to develop our talents and see our aspirations through the lens of meaningful service.
Thanks to this knowledge, we Presidential Scholars understand that success in any field does not preclude successful service. We understand that to truly be men and women for others, we must continue to excel as we did at BC. As graduating seniors, you can expect sensible, talented, and creative approaches to serving others, whatever our profession may be.
That knowledge, to me, is the unique gift of the Presidential Scholars Program to its students. Thank you for giving us this gift. Many of us might not be here today were it not for your generosity to this scholarship program, and I know I speak for all of my fellow scholars in saying that we look forward to joining the ranks of Presidential Scholar alumni, and using this gift to make a difference in our world.
