Editor’s note: Hanni Muerdter of Haywood County graduated from the prestigious N.C. School of Science and Math earlier this month. She was selected as the senior speaker based on an anonymous essay contest. Muerdter will teach English in Hong Kong next school year and then attend Oberlin College in Ohio as the recipient of a Stern Science Scholarship. This is her commencement address:

Once, more than 20 years ago, a motivated governor and some enthusiastic state legislators spurred the idea of a place where high school students showing enthusiasm and intelligence in science and mathematics would get unconventional education and opportunities. Initially, the plans for this school were huge, consisting of a residential three-year plan with 1,000 students, a swimming pool, planetarium, and a wind tunnel. The head of NASA and Jimmy Carter were supporters, and the initial board even included Jesse Jackson.

As the legislators kicked around this idea of a science and math school, some thought that the school would fuel elitism. Rich parents would send their kids who, after three years, would become a snobbish group of super-educated wealthy children. Others thought that producing highly educated kids would be great, because at the time North Carolina was the number one importer of college students in the nation. We would finally be sending North Carolina high school students to North Carolina colleges and universities. When the votes were cast, the outcome was dead even. The final vote of the lieutenant governor broke the tie to establish the science and math school.

The next issue in this school’s development was where to put it. Cities from all over the state wanted this science and math school. Asheville thought that they should have it because there were not a lot of distractions for students in Asheville, they said, thus promoting a good study environment. Raleigh thought they deserved it because they were the capital. Many other cities made offers, but no other city offered a building and land other than Durham.

The governor selected Borden Mace, whom the library is named after, and Charles Eilber, the man who the PEC is named after, to spearhead the school. Almost immediately they declared an opening day for this science and math school, because they thought that there was little point in trying to develop a curriculum without students there. However, the opening day had to be postponed because the dorms were not ready. They would not have been ready again had it not been for all of the faculty and staff who came just hours before the students were to arrive in order to finish the preparations. They put all the mattress covers on the beds, swept up the final paint debris, cut the grass, and did all of the other necessary tasks for the students who were soon to arrive.

The school opened up with its first library in a closet, no athletic fields, and a swimming pool. This was a time when the entire faculty fit around a wooden table in the Bryan Conference room, a time when jackhammers were constantly going off during class and the first summer reading was a James Fenimore Cooper novel with a very appropriate title: The Pioneers.

In that first year, the school was full of spontaneity and the invention of new processes. During the first November, all the teachers wondered whether or not they were going to have exams, and if so, what would they be like? One language teacher took each student on the same 11-minute walk around the campus, talking to him or her in Spanish. At the end of their stroll the exam was over and the student had his or her grade.

The school originally didn’t have athletics, but in the spring of the first year a couple of students asked if they could run cross-country. The athletic director then found some hand-me-down uniforms and asked some schools if they wanted to compete. When a softball team developed, it practiced in the parking lot because there wasn’t a field. The school made things happen though, and people had pride, because they were the founders, the pioneers and the molders.

One morning a teacher came into a classroom and found that a pipe had burst leaving water all over the floor. The teacher got a mop and started to clean up the water. When the first person came in, he handed him a mop and the next person grabbed another mop. By the time it was over, all the water was gone and everything was clean. This was part of being in the community of this science and math school. It was their own and they were the creators, so they took care of it.

These are some moments of The North Carolina School of Science and Math’s past. Things have definitely changed, but we experience the same kinds of events, connections, and relationships today. These stories are not only of the past, but segments that weave a repeating and ongoing tapestry that defines the Science and Math story. Pipes are still bursting and residential halls are still flooding.

Today, Frisbee players on sunny afternoons are still distracting students sitting in the Hill classrooms just as teachers complained of swimmers at the pool distracting the students years ago in the same place. The academics are still stellar, and students today are still making amazing discoveries. However, those are just events or physical things that keep happening. Yet, there is a certain, specific thing that keeps this Science and Math story not just an assortment of many events but a continuous and cohesive one. This thing that weaves our stories together is not the fact that they all happened at Science and Math, but instead the answer to a question posed by my English teacher.

One morning this semester he stopped class and told us that as alums, we would inevitably come back to visit NCSSM. He told us that if we come to see him, he will ask us the same question that he has been asking alumni since this school’s existence: “What was best about your experience at science and math?”

He also told us we would probably give the same two-word answer that most all alumni give him. Sure enough, as my eyes scanned the lips of my classmates, they all mouthed the same two words that Science and Mathers had been echoing for years and years: “The people.”

We all know that the academics and opportunities here are excellent. Yet there is that human bond that glues our total experience together to create the science and math experience. To say you graduated from NCSSM does not only mean that you had the opportunity to be in some of the best physics classes or be taught by some of the best calculus teachers in the country. It also means that you were laughing with your best friends, breaking in-room at 3 a.m. while supposedly studying for your biology test. It means that you played Frisbee on the quad or took long walks under the trees of Sprunt Street. It means you sometimes became so stressed and overwhelmed over all the things going on in your life that you didn’t know how you were going to make it through the next day. It means that you sang your favorite song at coffeehouse in front of the people you live with. It means that you ate giant burritos on the roof of Cosmic Cantina. All of these things were done with the people you have grown to love, and your experience here wouldn’t have been anywhere near the same without them.

Our time at NCSSM is drawing to a close today. I shared with you the history of our school to give all of you a sense of the beginning of the NCSSM story. We all know that this school’s story has not reached its end and hopefully not even its middle. Each one of us, with our own personal thread, has woven a little more to the Science and Math story. You might think that our threads in this tapestry are cut loose with the closing of these ceremonies. However, I am here to remind you that this Science and Math story we have created is made of interwoven people, not physical experiences. As long as we live, we will be connected with the people surrounding us this morning. We are even now distantly intertwined with those first Science and Mathers who read “The Pioneers,” and to those initial teachers who cut the grass and made the beds for the opening day. Your own individual thread is now merely taking a separate direction to continue its own unique story. This experience has created some of the most special bonds and relationships that we have yet encountered, and many of us will be tightly linked to our closest friend]s threads for our lifetime. Other people’s threads will be farther away; yet no matter how distant or close your piece of the tapestry is to another’s, the Science and Math story wouldn’t be complete without everyone’s.

Now, we step back and must loosen our thread in the Science and Math story, because it is time for other people to take command. However, never forget that your influence is what helped shape this story, and the powerful bond of people is what holds it together. You are always intertwined.

 

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