An excerpt from USM President Richard Pattenaude’s commencement speech:


I want to take a few minutes to talk about how, in many cases, you and I have followed similar paths, which brought us to this ceremony.
As I told you earlier, I’ve been president of USM for 16 years. How did that happen?

Oh, it’s a simple story. In the 9th grade, many years ago in Seattle, I went to a high school assembly for a speech on careers. I decided right then and there to be a university president.

Not true, of course. If only it were that simple!

In reality, I did not grow up in that environment. I had a great childhood but there was nothing in my family’s career or educational backgrounds to suggest that I ever would be standing here today.

My dad was a truck driver, and then, a bus driver.  My mom earned her G.E.D. and then worked part-time as a librarian. Good, hard-working people. But they wanted me to go to college. And that’s what made my journey possible.

I, too, wanted to go to college, and I wanted to get out of Seattle.

I was a pretty good student in high school. I also worked 20 hours a week in a grocery store, listened to the guidance counselor, paid attention and got a scholarship to college.   

I called my aunt and uncle in California and asked if there was a decent, inexpensive university near them. They directed me to San Jose State, which I had never heard of.

So, six months later, my father handed me $400, gave me a hearty handshake, and put me on a bus to San Jose. Yes, I do know the way to San Jose.

My undergrad career started out great. Just superb.
I flunked my first test.
I then buckled down and at the end of my first semester earned a 3.5., and realized, for the first time, I can do this!

Professors supported me and mentored me. I thought about being a teacher. I changed my major three times.  But, finally, I graduated with honors in economics.

An advisor said I should go to graduate school. “What’s that?” I asked. That’s how you become a professor. Sounded good to me!  

Graduate school did not go smoothly.

I was drafted and spent a year in Vietnam. Needless to say, it was a very difficult time for this country and our troops. Not unlike today.

I returned to the University of Colorado. I met Michele … That was the really good part.  

I found that I hated economics, changed my major to political science and finally earned my Ph.D.

My professional career began at Drake University, first as a professor of political science and then as an associate dean. And then on to SUNY Binghamton, and later to Central Connecticut State as vice president for academic affairs.

Michele, our fourth-grade daughter Lauren and I came to USM in July of 1991, expecting to stay for a few years. We had never lived in Maine. Now, Maine is our home.

These last 16 years have been the best, and the most rewarding, of my life.

What really made this wonderful journey possible? Education.

It is what made your journey, and my journey, happen.

As a public university, USM is expected to do, and to be, many things: an engine of economic development; an integral part of the communities in which we are located; a leading institution of research that creates new knowledge.

But at the end of the day what counts most is what we do for the people of Maine.

That point has been driven home to me on each and every commencement during the past 16 years.

It is you – and the more than 15,000 other graduates I have congratulated on this stage – who remind me that public higher education opens doors. For all of us. For me. For you.

To opportunities we could not have imagined.

To places we never knew existed.