Readers of this issue of The Campbellsville Review will have noticed by now a strong focus on current issues in academia and the world today. In spite of our myriad accomplishments in medicine and technology, there are always those topics for which the measuring rod sometimes has to struggle to register significant achievements. Such can easily be the case when it comes to privacy on the world wide web, relationships with constituents, our awareness of micro-pollutants, or our reaction to poverty in our own nation. While hindsight tends to be excellent, it doesn’t always guarantee that we will hit the target when looking to the future.
And yet we are called upon as an academic community to be looking ahead as much as looking back. The very nature of academic studies is shaped by its internal disciplines and its broader set of general studies. Our effort to instruct, with an eye to the past and an ear to the future, requires a keen sense of knowledge, perception, and wisdom. And while our tight-knit community may on one hand seem forbidding to the outsider, it can (and we hope) be reassuring to all who enter in. Indeed, our own perspective and passion, as we are reminded in these pages, has the potential to make a difference to those around us and even to the world.
It was no doubt this potential which sparked the curiosity of scientists such as Georges Lemaître to push his discipline into the unknown, inspiring in turn his students toward their greater potential. Never mind that the Nobel Prize went in another direction, even though he provided the framework for discovery. The history of great leaders would be empty without the creative and disciplined labors of others before and alongside them.
As Campbellsville University looks back from time to time to celebrate its own accomplishments, let us continue to look ahead, striving to inspire our students to reach their own potential. Who would have imagined that a President of the United States would be born only thirty miles from Campbellsville? While such an event may never happen again, the potential for great leaders from our region is as strong as ever. May we never lose sight of this possibility and the challenge which lies before our institution as we train our students for the mission of today and the opportunities for tomorrow.
Wesley Roberts
June 2010