McCarthy first in Last Lectures

By Winston Yu

Mick McCarthy, S.J., will impart his wisdom about what's important in life onto the student body in the first presentation of the Last Lecture series.

Santa Clara's series is loosely based on the Last Lecture series from other schools, where professors are asked to reflect on their lives and what really matters to them. Essentially, professors are asked to give advice to the world if they knew that it would be their last opportunity to do so.

According to Student Senate Chair Chris Freeburg, the idea of having the series had been contemplated for a while.

"Last year, on the Current University Issues Committee, we discussed having a Last Lecture series at Santa Clara and having notable professors give a lecture, because we feel that we have really great faculty and staff here who not all students get to hear from," he said. "It didn't really happen last spring, but this year we wanted to make it happen."

Through considerable help from sophomore Meghan Skarzynski, a member of the Community Development Board, Freeburg was able to secure a partnership with the Activities Programming Board and revive the series, with McCarthy as its first speaker.

Freeburg's experience in McCarthy's class convinced him that the classics and religious studies professor would be an interesting speaker to hear from.

"I approached him because we had discussed him, and I think he's a great professor," he said. "He speaks very eloquently."

The concept of death is intimately linked to the idea of the Last Lecture, and McCarthy said his lecture will not stray from this norm.

McCarthy draws upon his Jesuit background to elaborate on his message.

"Ignatius of Loyola told us that one of the ways we should make a decision at any time of our lives is to imagine ourselves on our deathbed," he said "Looking back from that point, we have a certain perspective from which we can actually more easily see that this is really important or not."

McCarthy also said, "Death gives us a perspective about what is important."

McCarthy added that he was very honored that he had been asked to speak. He said, "It's kind of a privilege to give a talk about this. There is a privilege to say look, this is what matters to me, not the fact that I get through the syllabus, what matters to me is to say this, right here."

Such series have been conducted at other universities before, but it was the late Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch's speech that drew national attention to the long-standing tradition.

Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer only a few weeks before giving the speech, and his decision to continue and speak to a standing-room only crowd drew considerable media coverage.

Pausch subsequently garnered even more media attention, and the video of his speech has received millions of hits on YouTube.

His book, "The Last Lecture," is a New York Times best-seller and was ranked number one on the list for several weeks.

When asked what he hopes students will take away from his lecture, McCarthy said he wanted students to come away with a sense of hope.

"I think most people have the choice of looking at their life through the lens of absence or through the lens of presence," he said. "I hope they leave the talk asking themselves, 'How can I look at the things in my life through the lens of presence?'"

McCarthy graduated from Santa Clara and has taught here since 2003. He received a Master of Divinity from the University of California, Berkeley and a doctorate from the University of Notre Dame.

"I was lucky enough to have him as a professor," Freeburg said. "I think it's great that the rest of the student body has the opportunity to hear from him."

The lecture will be next Thursday, Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m. in the Recital Hall.

Contact Winston Yu at (408) 554-4546 or wyu1@scu.edu.