Opening Convocation: Mark Dayton

Carleton’s Opening Convocation is an annual all-college assembly celebrating the beginning of the academic year and recognizing academic achievement.  This year’s address will be given by Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton. Mark Dayton is Minnesota's 40th Governor. He was born in Minneapolis and raised in a house in Long Lake, where his father still lives today. He has two grown sons, Eric and Andrew, and lives in St. Paul with his three German Shepherds, Mesabi, Itasca, and Wanamingo. Mark attended Long Lake Elementary School and Blake School in Hopkins. He loved hockey, and it was his childhood dream to be the starting goalie on the U.S. Olympic Hockey Team! He didn’t make it, but he was named an All-State goalie his senior year in high school. He graduated, cum laude, from Yale University, where he also played Division I hockey. After college, Mark taught 9th grade general science for two years in a New York City public school. He still tells how it was the toughest job he ever had! It was here where he realized the terrible injustice that his students had so little, while he had been given so much; and he decided that he would devote his life to improving social equality and economic opportunity for all Americans. For most of the past 34 years, Mark has served Minnesotans, as Commissioner of the Minnesota Departments of Economic Development and of Energy and Economic Development, as State Auditor, and as United States Senator. He has worked throughout our state to help businesses locate or expand and create jobs, to improve local government services, to better fund our public schools, to support our servicemen and women, to help Minnesotans get the health care they need, and in many other ways to make a better Minnesota. Currently, Mark serves on the Executive Committee of the National Governor's Association.