Incoming students in the College will gather in Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on Sept. 26 for the annual Aims of Education address, a celebrated UChicago tradition in which a distinguished faculty member speaks about the meaning and value of liberal education at the University.
This year, the Class of 2023 and transfer students will hear from Prof. Deborah Gorman-Smith, the Emily Klein Gidwitz Professor and dean of the School of Social Service Administration. In her address, which will be webcast beginning at 6:30 p.m., Gorman-Smith will discuss the importance of challenging conventional wisdom.
A leading scholar in youth development and the prevention of violence, Gorman-Smith said she’ll talk to students about “the need to challenge assumptions with critical thinking, learning by engaging outside the walls of the University and education for impact.”
Gorman-Smith also will discuss how SSA’s founders “challenged conventional wisdom, defined a field and created a school that could only have happened at the University of Chicago.”
An Orientation Week tradition dating to 1962, the Aims of Education address provides students with the opportunity to reflect upon the purpose and definition of education, and to begin to engage in the type of discourse that is integral to the College experience. Following the address, students will be joined by faculty members in their houses for colloquia to discuss the speech.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
