SGA President Elnaz Moshfeghian speaks to incoming first-year and transfer students and their families.

President John Anderson, Provost Alan Cramb, and Dean of Student Katie Murphy Stetz, joined by the deans of each IIT college and school as well as current SGA President Elnaz Moshfeghian and 2007 SGA President and IIT alumnus Jason Tenenbaum, welcomed incoming first-year and transfer students to the university at the 2011 University Convocation in Hermann Hall on Wednesday, August 17.

“The goal of an IIT education is to prepare you for the first year after you graduate and the 25th year after you graduate,” said Anderson, stressing that success is reliant upon ability to embrace change and demonstrate leadership through change. “The goal of education is to teach students to teach themselves.”

SGA President Elnaz Moshfeghian encouraged students to get involved in the IIT community, through student government, student organizations, and other activities beyond the classroom.

“What you do outside the classroom will have just as large an impact as what you do inside,” said former SGA president Jason Tenenbaum, who returned to IIT to discuss the positive change students can foster through organization, communication, and tenacity, recounting the story of how he and other student leaders successfully lobbied to bring back The Bog, the campus pub located in Hermann Hall. Tenenbaum, a mechancial and aerospace engineerin alumnus, now lives in California and works as a systems engineer on Dragon Spacecraft Operations at Space Exploration Technologies, which plans a test flight to the International Space Station in November.

“Faculty and staff are here not only to support you but to challenge you,” added Tenenbaum. “You’ll find the opportunities that you have at IIT over the years are endless, and by realizing these opportunities and taking on these challenges, you’ll not only make your time here more memorable, you’ll take those lessons on and they will help you through your career and give you the tools to make a difference in society.”

“This is your university,” Provost Cramb said in closing the first University Convocation at IIT in six years. “This is your time to be successful. This is the time for you to learn and grow as a person. This is the time that it all begins.”