During her commencement speech at St. John's College on Saturday, Victoria Mora, the school's dean, will deliver a simple message: "Be the author of your own story."

It's one that the first female dean at the liberal arts school in Santa Fe knows well.

And she's modest when she responds to a reporter's inquiry. "Yes, the first female Hispanic dean," she added Thursday afternoon as she sat in her office, taking a break from the final drafting of her commencement address.

"I'm also really proud to be part of an institution that isn't overly focused on my gender and ethnicity. Reading these books together, approaching all of our classes through conversation, really creates the conditions for discovering our shared humanity," Mora said.

On Saturday morning, Mora will address 92 undergraduates and 26 graduate students who have spent the past four years learning everything from ancient Greek to musical masterpieces. The liberal arts degree, unlike some majors at other educational institutions, is not focused on preparing students for a job, Mora said.

"Our college refuses that model. We're educating humans for the rest of their lives," Mora said. But, that will prompt such questions as "What do you do with an education like that?" Mora points out.

The possibilities are endless, she said.

Students who attend the St. John's campus in Santa Fe, which opened its doors in 1964, come from 22 countries and 50 U.S. states. Graduates go into fields such as law, business, medicine or the arts. It has a sister campus in Annapolis, Md.

The comprehensive program St. John's offers is not only for students, but for professors as well, Mora said. After receiving her bachelor's degree in English and philosophy from The University of New Mexico, the Albuquerque native continued her education at Yale and completed a Ph.D. in philosophy. But working at St. John's College for the past 19 years — five of those as dean — and learning from a spectrum of disciplines such as Greek and Isaac Newton's calculus, has made her the author of her own story.

"Doing the program prepared me in a way that a Ph.D. from Yale didn't," Mora said.

St. John's selects a new dean from within its staff every five years. This is Mora's last year. During her time as dean, she faced many challenges, but was able to master them, just as she has Plato, Immanuel Kant and Miguel de Cervantes. She helped increase enrollment. She reached out to the community and promoted the school; she was recently the main speaker at a Monte del Sol Charter School César Chavez celebration and participated in the Simon Foundation scholarship selection committee. One year, instead of serving on the committee, she met with Santa Fe High School students and gave them tips on writing strong essays, and told them about the importance of sitting up straight and making eye contact during interviews.

For the future of St. John's, she hopes more "underrepresented minorities, first-generation college students," especially from New Mexico, attend the campus, she said. Currently, 14 percent of students are minorities and 9 percent are international.

So on Saturday, the dean will push students to use their imaginations and will appeal to their "intellectual courage," just as they were asked to when they were in class.

"The extent to which you use your imagination will determine the story of you, not just how it ends, but how it begins and how it unfolds," Mora said. "It will determine what sort of author you end up being."

Contact Sandra Baltazar Martínez at 986-3062 or smartinez@sfnewmexican.com.

VICTORIA MORA

• B.A. in English-philosophy, University of New Mexico, 1985; Yale University teaching fellow, 1986-88; M.A., M. Phil., Yale University, 1990; Ford Foundation dissertation fellow, 1990-91; Ph.D. in philosophy, Yale University, 1992; philosophy instructor, Albuquerque TV-I Community College, 1991-92; tutor, St. John's College, Santa Fe, 1992; dean, St. John's College in Santa Fe, 2006-2011.