A new beginning

They'll walk through the Sample Gates and descend upon Kirkwood one last time.\nThey'll stroll into Nick's English Hut for a celebratory drink with their parents, embraced this time as alumni.\nThey'll take a final splash through Showalter Fountain, fleetingly remembering those fragile first nights in Bloomington, when four years seemed a lifetime away.\nBut tomorrow they'll realize that time is elusive. Those years passed more quickly than they could have imagined.\nOne by one, the 6,064 graduating IU seniors will file into Memorial Stadium to pay homage to IU and the small town which embraced them as its own for four years. One by one, they'll listen to Chancellor Kenneth Gros Louis's commencement address, ruminating memories past and those to come.\nRelief may wash over some. Others may be overcome with joy, with unrelenting emotion. Disbelief and fear for the future might occupy still others' thoughts. Yet the promise of these graduating seniors far overshadows the doubt lingering in their minds.\nMusical theatre major and senior Angel Cabral recognizes that potential and lauds IU for the breadth of experiences it harbors. Cabral, who will head to New York to pursue theatre after graduation, entered IU as a Wells Scholar four years ago.\nCabral's interests in both theater and French proved difficult in meeting degree requirements, but the Wells Program helped her to be "fully committed to both," she said.\nLifting her voice in the Singing Hoosiers and Broadway Cabaret proved good practice for Cabral, who went on to become one of the founding members of IU's women's a capella group Ladies First.\n"I absolutely love this group," Cabral said. "They are incredible girls, and to make music with just your voices is so liberating."\nThe friendships established there, she said, helped shape her years at IU. She'll miss those women, who blended their voices with hers to coup the first-place title at the national women's a cappella semifinals. They're the same girls with whom Cabral shared a cone at Jiffy Treet while strolling the streets of downtown Bloomington. They're the same women who cheered Cabral on in her original senior thesis production, "Moving On," a musical revue in which she starred.\nBut Cabral isn't the only one moving on. Chancellor Ken Gros Louis, slated for retirement upon completion of this academic year, joins this year's graduating class as he steps away from thirty eight years of advocacy and dedication to the Bloomington campus, twenty-two of those spent as chancellor. One last time, he will play to the emotions of a captivated audience at Memorial Stadium, bidding a personal farewell in what will be his final valedictory speech as chancellor.\nAfter 38 years of mentoring, appointing administrators, and championing public higher education, Gros Louis will step down, leaving behind him a legacy that has been compared with that of the late Herman B Wells.\nGros Louis' modestly acknowledges the comparison to Wells, claiming Wells was a far more "visionary person" than he.\n"What I think I learned from him that I have tried to continue is the importance of every person in a university community to its success, the need to try to make a large place such as Bloomington seem smaller, and a notion of what a public university really is," Gros Louis said. "That is, a university that is accessible, open, and that expands the horizons of all students who come here."\nGros Louis noted his most significant experiences on campus as those "one-on-one" encounters with students, faculty and administrators. He lauded the Wells Scholars Program, the creation of the Arboretum, and the expansion of programs for minority students as initiatives of which he was most proud.\nLeaving campus will certainly be a difficult task, he admits. He is, he said, "graduating" as well. Yet he maintains hope that his commencement address is "of interest and sharply focused enough to be remembered," a message that will doubtlessly resound in the ears of eager graduates, equipped with the support their families and friends and the promise of a successful future.