Convocation 2023 Address

Dr. Corinna Crafton, Head of School, delivered her first Convocation Address at the 141st Convocation Ceremony on Thursday, September 7:

Beginning this year together creates for us what will be a mutual memory. We don’t know what the coming months will bring but we stand ready and eager to start. 

I would like to extend a special warm welcome to all new students, parents, faculty, and staff. 

Those of you who have known me for a while know that I am a Trekkie – that means a super fan of the Star Trek franchise, beginning with the original series from the 1960’s all the way to the present day series such as Picard, Discovery, and Strange New Worlds. The future is itself a strange new world – unknowable today but tantalizing and inviting.

Star Trek is set in the future – a time when calendars reference star dates, not solar dates. It is also full of new things that the earthbound could never have imagined.

Perhaps most intriguing about the future presented by Star Trek is the hope of a better tomorrow, one that is led by a new generation of imaginative and resourceful minds – minds like yours, students.

Young minds need cultivating, nurturing, opportunity, and support. That is our responsibility and our honor. The most fascinating part of our work here is the provision of tools you will need to make what you imagine take shape and become real. We must give you what you need to “make it so,” as Captain Picard, of Star Trek The Next Generation, would say. 

In the immediate future, what are the tools you will need?

Well, some tools are the ability to analyze information and make sense of data. The skill of critical thinking and conveying your ideas and findings with clarity and precision. You will also need to be expert collaborators, working with peers near and far, in real time and asynchronously, virtually and side by side. 

We hear an awful lot lately about artificial intelligence, Chat GPT, and we are barely beginning to grasp its implications. Some are afraid of it, but AI will not dominate human creativity unless we let it. As Captain Janeway, of Star Trek Voyager would say – “fear exists for one purpose: to be conquered.” When you leave LA, you will do so with tools to confront fear of the unknown, examine it, encounter problems—even fearful ones—with resources you will have cultivated here.

As you develop and hone skills and knowledge across a variety of academic disciplines, athletic, artistic and service activities, you will also enjoy the unique opportunity to do so in an environment rich in diversity of opinion, background, experience, and perspective.

And so, we launch the journey of this new school year. Together. Our mission, like that of the Star Trek crews I have come to love, is to boldly go forward. We will travel together, students, faculty, staff in and beyond these buildings. The campus will be our base for now, but not forever. School is a launching pad. With the opportunities you have before you here at LA, you will be prepared to shape your future and shape the world, so get ready for takeoff. Here we go!

And now, it is time to usher in a new school year, our 141st. It is my distinct pleasure and honor to declare the 2023-2024 school year officially open!

ONWARD!