Power and equity take center stage at Opening Convocation

Students, faculty, and staff members gathered to celebrate the start of a new academic year at Opening Convocation on Aug. 31.

Students walking into Lehman Auditorium for the event were greeted by rows of faculty and staff members, who cheered and held signs welcoming them to campus. Bubbles filled the air outside the brick performing arts venue, while Kool & the Gang’s “Celebration” played on a loop.

As students filtered into the auditorium, they were welcomed by the drumming of adjunct faculty member Makinto GC ’26, along with his wife, Mukarabe, and members of the EMU Chamber Singers. They led the crowd in chants of “Together, we are power, EMU!”

Dr. Tynisha Willingham, provost and vice president for academic affairs, welcomed returning students, faculty, and staff, as well as those joining the campus community for the first time. “You are stepping into a world of endless possibilities, new friendships, and academic challenges,” she said. 

Willingham introduced “power and equity” as the university theme for the 2026-27 academic year and encouraged students to exercise, share, challenge, and transform the power they have. 

“Every day, through our choices and our relationships, we have the opportunity to use power that is entrusted to us to make EMU a place where more people, where students like you, can belong, learn, flourish, and contribute to the world,” she said.

Christina Harrison, director of intercultural programs; Dr. Gaurav Pathania, assistant professor of sociology and peacebuilding; and Brian Martin Burkholder, university chaplain, offered a blessing for EMU’s intercultural learning programs this semester. One of those programs, a trip to India led by Pathania and Dr. Mary Sprunger, professor of history, departed campus on Tuesday. 

Harrison recognized the 13 new international students at EMU this semester, who join 37 returning international students representing 24 countries. “They will be learning interculturally every day, while also giving us the opportunity to learn about their cultures as we welcome them into the EMU community,” she said. 

Davis Bert, a sophomore biology major serving as Student Government Association co-president this year, welcomed students and introduced the SGA Executive Team, which includes Co-President Esmé King Martin, Vice President Yuji Wenger, Marketing Coordinator Jose Lopez Vasquez, and treasurer Bennett de Tenley. He encouraged students to find new ways to get involved and support one another.

“There is no better time than now to get out there,” he said. “It’s a new semester for all of us.”

As someone who’s preached and spoken to hundreds of crowds on countless stages, President Rev. Dr. Shannon W. Dycus recounted the first time she stood on such a stage. She was a six-year-old girl in ballet class, and her teacher would often encourage her to “raise those beautiful brown arms and let us see your beauty.”

“Those words inspired me,” she said. “They empowered me. And I stand here today because those words still ring true in my heart and in my head.”

“I hope you know that this is a year that will encourage all that is within you,” she added, “and that there will be voices around you who will remind you to raise your beautiful arms and to show your beauty.”

This marked Dycus’ first Opening Convocation as EMU’s 10th president. She began her term on July 1.

Esmé King Martin, Troy Martin, and Maria Esther Showalter shared stories of how they have experienced power throughout their lives, while members of the EMU Jam Collective (pianist Dr. David Berry, vocalist Tabatha Parrott, drummer Dr. Benjamin Guerrero, and guitarist Adam Wirdzek) played musical interludes. 

King Martin, a senior environmental science and Spanish major and SGA co-president, spoke about how she had worked on a soft pretzel truck every summer since she was 14. Through that job, she learned to connect with customers over “something as simple as a soft pretzel.”

“These skills of connection are a form of power,” she said. “They will benefit me in future jobs and in future communities that I live in.”

She challenged students to expand their social webs by connecting with at least 10 new people this year. “What would it look like if the connection you made with a student in a different major, religious group, racial or ethnic group, or political group at EMU comes up again in 20 years when you need a lawyer, banker, doctor, or a couch to sleep on?”

Martin, director of financial aid, reflected on his father, Carl, a lifelong farm laborer and construction worker in rural New York who had “decades of dirt and sawdust” under his fingernails and thick calluses and scars on his palms. His father had an eighth-grade education and was mostly illiterate, while his mother worked as a hairdresser at a nursing home. Both parents worked hard and sacrificed so much to send him to college. That opportunity, he said, opened a new world to him and exposed him to new people and different cultures.

“While Carl Martin didn’t hold much of what we stereotypically think of as power in his life, he exercised a power through faith, service, and care for his family that created a lasting legacy,” Troy Martin said. 

Showalter, director of EMU’s language and literature program, shared how she accepted a call to serve as advisor of the fledgling Latinx Student Alliance during the spring of 2014 and watched it blossom into a “vibrant student club full of energy and life.”

During club meetings, members dreamed up all sorts of activities to celebrate Hispanic culture, including the LSA banquet that has become a highlight of the semester and the tradition of creating an Easter alfombra. 

Showalter also highlighted how past LSA members had gone on to serve as SGA co-presidents. “I am grateful to every LSA member for the impact you have had on my life and the EMU community,” she said.

President Dycus called on students, faculty, and staff to tell stories this year and listen for them, to be curious about which stories are missing, and to have the courage to ask whose experience still needs to be heard.

“Power is right here,” she said. “It starts in summer jobs on pretzel trucks, in the legacy of courageous and arthritic hands, and in sharing important parts of our identity and cultures as our LSA group does. It lives in our ability to shape what happens around us.”

“Where power allows us to influence a room, open a door, make a decision, or speak a word, we are invited to explore each of these in our intellectual exercises this year.”