We held the 99th Finkbine Dinner recently. Every spring, we gather in fellowship to honor exemplary student leaders, members of the faculty and staff, and one of our distinguished alumni. There’s much more to the Finkbine tradition, and it’s a great story, but not today’s story. Ask me about it some time.

The Finkbine dinner celebrates Learning, Leadership, and Loyalty, all of which are important characteristics. I’ve been thinking about learning recently. When we think of a university, a great public flagship university like the University of Iowa, I suspect that learning comes first to mind for most of us. That’s why young (and not so young) people flock to the University every year—to learn. Most imagine that learning taking place in classrooms, laboratories, and libraries, and of course that’s true. Those are the sites where students learn broad skills that they use for the rest of their lives. They learn things like how to clearly express themselves, how to reason critically, how to understand cultures and times in history other than their own. Even things that seem like useless bits of information when we learn them in class can stick with us and be useful years later. I really never imagined that I would use anything I learned in calculus once the class ended. Recently, though, I found myself commenting, if perhaps metaphorically, that something (I don’t remember what) would asymptotically approach zero over time.

What our public and our own students are less likely to recognize is the vast learning that takes place outside of the classroom, but in activities that are organized by the university. Student organizations, student employment, and living in student housing, to name a few, provide a lot of those learning opportunities. First those activities provide opportunities for practice of the broad skills I mentioned above (e.g., clear expression). In addition, they provide opportunities to practice very practical skills. For example, in your work or personal life today, do you have to do some project planning? I imagine that in your leadership role on campus you practiced the skills needed to do that well. Some of those skills seem simple, but need practice. For example, you probably know to count backward from the date the project needs to be completed and identify milestones along the way and the dates they’ll need to be completed. You might, indeed, have learned the importance of adding in some “contingency” time just in case. Or if you didn’t learn to include time for unanticipated developments, you might have learned something about flexibility in modifying the project when a deadline slipped!

Thinking about this has reminded me of what a marvel the public university is, and in particular, what a jewel the University of Iowa is. We are a place where in four short years, through a combination of experiences inside and out of the classroom, people learn transformative lessons and then go out to make the world a better place. I’m lucky to be able to go to work at such a place every day.