Every family has traditions that bind them together, and Samford University’s 175th Anniversary Convocation of Thanksgiving service will be a wonderful opportunity for the Samford family to celebrate traditions in a meaningful way.
Students and faculty from all areas of campus will congregate on the university quad at 2 p.m. Friday, Nov. 11. They will gather with members of their respective schools and line up in chronological order based on the date each school was founded. President Andrew Westmoreland and members from the board of trustees will lead the procession from the steps of the Harwell Goodwin Davis Library to Leslie S. Wright Fine Arts Center.
The thanksgiving service will begin once everyone is seated in Wright Center, and it is expected to last one hour, according to Michael D. Morgan, assistant to the president and coordinator of the yearlong 175th anniversary celebration.
Convocation credit is available to students.
The theme of the service is taken from Samford’s motto Deo, Doctrinae, Aeternitati, (“for God, for learning, forever”). The Latin word for “forever” is aeternum; Samford’s motto uses the word aeternitati, which literally means for forever, Dr. Morgan explained.
“In selecting the motto, the university didn’t want to indicate the university is forever; everything we do has an eye toward eternity,” Morgan said.
He added that it is fitting that part of the scriptural text for the service comes from Ecclesiastes 3:11: “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
“This text leads us to the celebration of ‘for forever,’” Morgan said. “We will be honoring the past and anticipating the future not only in this world, but in the next.”
The service will include musical performances from the Samford University Combined Choirs and the Samford University Orchestra in addition to scripture readings and an address from Westmoreland.
“It is truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the university to gather as one university family for the purpose of giving thanks for our blessings,” Morgan said. “Anyone who has benefited from Samford in any way has an opportunity to come together for this worship service.”
Olivia Williams is a journalism and mass communication major and a news and feature writer in the Division of Marketing and Communication.