Congratulations, graduates!

What a tremendous accomplishment you have logged in completing your degree. Your hard work – the investment you have made in yourself – will serve you well going forward. Of that, I have no doubt. 

Here are a few reasons why.

While completing your degree, you will have learned how to navigate a complex system by making the best possible choices – not least, which courses to take – that draw upon available options, align with your interests, and help you accomplish your goals. That is a skill you will use again (and again and again). Did you know that the average worker changes jobs a dozen times throughout a career and may change careers at least four times?

While completing your degree, you will have developed a well-stocked tool kit that enables you to encounter, process, and effectively utilize new information, to gain and deploy wholly new competencies and skills. Many of you will have nurtured innate curiosity. These habits will serve you well as you navigate your career(s) and life. Did you know that half of all workers’ core skills will need to be updated every five years? By obtaining your degree, you didn’t pack your suitcase for the long haul. No. You equipped yourself to “evolve your wardrobe” as the consummate lifelong learner.

While completing your degree, I hope and pray that you will have learned to engage with respect, appreciate, and — in a humanistic way — even love people who are not like you, people from different backgrounds, and with other world views, cultures, and habits. Goodness knows respect, common decency, tolerance — these basic values — are in short supply. I’ve always believed that universities are among the few places left in this country where people naturally encounter others unlike themselves and, by so doing, hone their humanity. This trait will serve you well, but also will serve your communities and our nation.

Please thank the people who supported you in acquiring your degree – your family and friends, our faculty and staff. And take a moment to acknowledge your accomplishment.

Most importantly, be as proud of your accomplishment as I am.

Celebrate!