Wartburg Hall of Fame
The following is a speech I gave at Wartburg College’s Scholarship Day on February 23, 2020.
Jayson Stark is a baseball writer from Philadelphia. He started his career covering sports for the local newspaper and grew to national fame with ESPN. Last year, the Baseball Hall of Fame elected him as a member. During the induction ceremony, Stark found himself surrounded by all-time baseball greats: Sandy Koufax, Johnny Bench, Ken Griffey Jr., and dozens more. Stark described how—as a writer—he didn’t feel worthy to be part of the same Hall of Fame that includes so many athletes who played the game so well.
Despite his feelings, Stark experienced complete acceptance interacting with the ballplayers. Here’s how he put it:
From the moment Wade Boggs walked directly toward me…and said, “Welcome to the club,” that’s how they’d all been treating me, in the coolest, classiest way imaginable.
Like Stark, I feel the same way about Wartburg. There are far more impressive individuals than me who have graduated from Wartburg. But you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who is a greater champion for the school and what it offers for a meaningful education. Wartburg gave me more than a degree, and I’d like to speak with you about what I found here and what I believe you can expect if you decide to continue your education at Wartburg College.
First, an introduction. My name is Nathan Eberline, and I am the Vice President of Operations at ACBSP in Kansas City, a non-profit that works with colleges and universities around the world. Twenty years ago, I was sitting where you are, and it brings me great joy to look back at how Wartburg made my path possible.
I grew up in Grundy Center, Iowa, and one reality of small-town living—at least when I was a kid—is that everyone needs to participate if you’re going to have activities. This meant that I played sports year-round, sang in the choir, acted in theater, and competed in speech and academic competitions—a liberal-arts education before I even knew what the term meant. So it was appealing to visit Wartburg and learn that engagement is a critical element that makes this college so special. Not only would it be possible for me to continue in college athletics, choir, and student government, but it was encouraged!
I knew when I started at Wartburg, I wanted to be a lawyer. I studied Political Science and English, which proved an excellent foundation for law school. Outside of Psychology 101, I don’t believe I had another class that topped 25 students in a classroom. This meant that I knew my professors and my professors knew me. The good news? They invested in my education and my success at every turn. The bad news? It’s much harder to sleep through a class when there aren’t hundreds of classmates to hide behind.
My wife is one of those Wartburg graduates who is far more impressive than me. We had our wedding a short walk from here at the Wartburg Chapel, and we had the honor of multiple professors and deans attending our ceremony, which is only possible when you are part of a community that gives you a chance to be more than just a student number. Our professors invested in us and cared about our learning. I am confident that Wartburg will offer the same experience for you.
Obtaining a high-quality education is the main reason to attend college, and I cannot emphasize how critical it is to find professors who will pour into you their love of learning while emphasizing that education means more than just securing a skillset in preparation for a job. Certainly workplace skills are important, but an ability to learn and adapt is the type of education that will serve you throughout your life, and it is the kind of education that Wartburg offers.
Earlier, I mentioned a liberal-arts education, which is something I didn’t really understand when I started at Wartburg. As a Wartburg student, you’ll undoubtedly explore the principles behind a liberal-arts degree, but—for today—just think of it as a well-rounded education. That’s what Wartburg provides.
As I hinted at when mentioning my extracurriculars at Wartburg, learning goes far beyond the classroom at this college. It is easy to point to skills I learned as Student Body Treasurer. I learned budgeting, and how to evaluate and respond to financial proposals, and what it means to help lead an organization. But I also learned how to have difficult conversations with groups holding differing viewpoints. And I learned—the hard way—about the consequence of sending a message that makes you desperately wish you could hit un-send and take it back. Fortunately, I didn’t have to learn these lessons on my own. I had fellow students, faculty, and administrators who took an interest in helping me grow and better understand how to develop the best version of myself.
Similarly, I can point to my years of singing with the Castle Singers and discuss how I learned to be a better musician. But I also learned how to be put on the spot as a freshman and—in front of a bunch of upperclassmen who I respected—describe what lyrics meant to me. I traveled and performed around the world and saw how music can overcome language and cultural differences and create a beautiful commonality among strangers. Wartburg gave me an incredible education in the classroom, but the school’s instruction in community gave me so much more.
Now, it would be very easy to keep my comments focused on myself and all the wonderful experiences I had as a student at Wartburg. I really could go on like this all day. But to do so would miss the point about what makes Wartburg so great, and why I encourage you to make Wartburg your top choice. Although the four years you’ll spend at Wartburg will be filled with memorable experiences, it’s what those experiences equip you with when you leave that provides the lasting value.
Once I began my studies in law school, I quickly realized that I was much more interested in discussing what the laws should be instead of what they currently are. This preference stuck with me, and I subsequently spent ten years as a lobbyist working on behalf of communities in Kansas—advocating for my clients on what the laws should be. I saw the ugliness of politics, but I also saw how much can happen when people make connections and work together.
Over and again, I drew upon my time at Wartburg as a scholar, an athlete, a musician, and a student senator. My experiences gave me commonalty with others to build community on the small scale as a first step to help build community on a larger scale. While there is no requirement that you engage outside of the classroom in order to secure your Wartburg degree, I will let you know there is an expectation that you will. And it will be the path to make your education so much more than a piece of paper at the end of four years. Americans change jobs and even careers at an increasingly high rate. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer when I came to Wartburg, but I had no idea what it would look like in practice. You may have a vision today for what life might look like after college, but it’s impossible to predict what might come down the road. This college gave me the tools to become a lawyer. More importantly, Wartburg gave me the tools to thrive in all the settings I’ve encountered over the past 20 years.
Wartburg College’s mission is to prepare students for lives of “leadership and service as a spirited expression of their faith and learning.” Cast another way, Wartburg wants its students to take what they’ve learned and what they believe and put it to use in the world around them. There are endless opportunities at Wartburg to learn and serve as you prepare to lead, and I look forward to hearing in the years to come how you do so.
As I mentioned, I better understood in law school that I really love to change the laws to make them as good as they can be. But I really should have realized this truth while I was at Wartburg when I first helped change the laws.
During my junior year living in the Res, my roommates and I had a brilliant idea during Christmas break to bring a hot tub to our suite. So on a Sunday night before classes began, we carried my roommate’s hot tub up three flights of stairs into our suite and ran a hose from the utility closet to our room. The next day, we had a bubbling spa and the most popular room on campus. For the next few weeks, we’d end our days of classes with a nice soak and hosted a few pool parties on the weekend. It was perhaps our finest college moment.
Then one day, I received a call asking me to visit the Associate Dean of Students. I was Student Body Treasurer at the time, so the request wasn’t entirely out of the norm. Pete Armstrong sat me down and said, “I’ve heard rumors that there is a hot tub in your suite.” Neither admitting nor denying the presence of the hot tub, I simply responded that there is nothing in the student handbook that prevents hot tubs in the residence halls. With a smile, Pete said that he would look into it and would be sending campus security by our place on Monday to confirm that no hot tub was present. The next year (after one last pool party), the student handbook included new language that “water furnishings are not allowed due to safe weight-load regulations.” So when each of you starts at Wartburg in the fall, while you won’t be able to bring your hot tubs with you, your parents will be pleased to hear that the dorms are safer today because of my leadership on the critical issue of dorm-room hot tubs.
As I suggested before, there many people whose names come to my mind as members of Wartburg’s Hall of Fame—people who have done far more than change hot-tub laws in student handbooks. So while I may not have official status as a Hall of Famer to welcome you to Wartburg in the “coolest, classiest way imaginable,” I do want to give you the warmest welcome to one of my favorite clubs. Wartburg changed the trajectory of my life in countless positive ways, and I am confident that if you choose to join this club, you’ll find Wartburg is in every way a community that will welcome you warmly and prepare you well for all that is to come.
