Great Job Choosing Worcester State

Now let’s be great together.

By Hy Ginsberg, Ph.D.

Out of all of the places you could have gone, you chose Worcester State. Well done. Great choice!

Let me tell you why. First of all, when we hire new faculty here, our top priority is teaching excellence. You might think that’s the case everywhere; it’s not. Schools that are perhaps a little more prestigious than we are—places like UMass Amherst, for example—they prioritize research—they’re looking to hire faculty who publish lots of papers, and if they happen to be decent teachers as well all the better, but it’s research first, and teaching second. At Worcester State, teaching comes first—we don’t hire anyone who isn’t a truly great teacher. There’s research here, too, and we have a lot to be proud of in terms of faculty research, but because we prioritize teaching, we really have nothing but truly excellent teachers here. I’m not going to pretend that every teacher you have at Worcester State will be the best teacher you’ve ever had, but some of them really will be, and not just one or two—you’re going to have lots of great teachers here. So you did a great job picking Worcester State—well done, good choice.

We also have a great administration here—they work hard and they really care. Nobody in the administration ever says, “Well, we’re good enough.” No—there’s a constant, ongoing struggle to improve, to keep getting better, and so we do—we keep getting better, every single year.

My point is this: Worcester State is a place where you can get a great education. It’s a place where you can get as fine an education as you could get anywhere else, and I don’t exclude the famous Ivy League schools like Harvard or the giant research universities like Amherst. But there’s an old joke about education: It’s the only business where the customer demands less for their money. Maybe you’d like to do less homework, or take fewer classes, or cover less material. Look, if you really want, for the same price, you can get a worse education—you can try to get through your courses and your whole program here doing less, or even as little as possible—you can try to learn as little as possible. You might still graduate (you might not, but you might), and if you do you’ll get the same piece of paper in the end. 

But here’s the thing: It really isn’t about the piece of paper—that’s just a piece of paper—what it’s really about is the actual education. And you can get a great, world-class education here, but you have to want to. And you have to work hard for it, and when I say you have to work hard, I mean you have to work very hard. You have to understand and appreciate that it’s there for you if you want it, and you have to try to get the most out of every course you take—get the most that you can out of every meeting of every class, out of every homework assignment, every reading assignment, every project, every essay. If you skip classes, miss homework, cut corners on projects, then you’re cheating yourself out of the education that you’re paying for—you’re getting less for your money. 

And so today I’m urging you to prove the old joke wrong—demand the most for your money, get the best education you can while you’re here. Work hard, get everything you can out of this place, leave with more than just a piece of paper, leave with a world-class education—you really can.

I started by saying that we have a great faculty here, and a great administration as well. That’s part of what it takes to make a great school, but it’s only part of it. The rest is you—all of you—Worcester State is a great school if you make it a great school by getting a great education here. So, please do your best, and let’s be great together. Thank you and welcome to Worcester State—we’re very excited to have you.

Editor’s note: Each year, Worcester State welcomes its incoming students to campus with a celebratory Convocation event that features student, alumni, and faculty speakers. For September 2023, Professor Hy Ginsberg was the faculty speaker. Ginsberg has been a mathematics professor for 13 years at Worcester State, and in 2023 he was recognized with the George I. Alden Excellence in Teaching Award. At Convocation, he delivered a talk to students that both inspired and perfectly captured what makes Worcester State such an outstanding educational opportunity. We share his remarks here for future generations of students.