SU Community Welcomes Author Warren St. John for Fall Convocation

“This is really one time in your life where you get to build a community from scratch,” popular author Warren St. John today told some 1,360 first-year students at Salisbury University. He added, when he was in their shoes, he wished he better understood “the degree to which you can have an impact on that community.”  Transition, with which his audience could relate, is a theme of his bestseller, Outcasts United. It chronicles efforts to use soccer to bring together, into one community, immigrants from war-torn countries and residents of the small town of Clarkston, GA.  The book is SU’s 2016 New Student Reader. 

This year’s Fall Convocation, which St. John keynoted, was held on Red Square, outside the new Patricia R. Guerrieri Academic Commons (GAC).  He was welcomed, appropriately, by SU men’s soccer player Kevin Miller, a junior nursing major, as well as President Janet Dudley-Eshbach.  Last night, the author gave a public talk about his book.  After Convocation, students split into discussion groups for their first official academic experience on campus. Pictured, from left, is Dudley-Eshbach, Miller and St. John inside the GAC after the ceremony.