Congratulations on completing the 2015-16 academic year with style! We in the College of Arts & Sciences graduated over 2,000 students, celebrating with them and their families this milestone on what we hope will be a lifelong path of connection and learning with Boston University. The dean’s commencement week is longer than most, but I am grateful for the emotional journey it led me on and the deeper connections to BU I made through the many alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and students I met and heard.
My first Commencement at BU captivated me with stories of grit, of striving against the odds, and of triumph. At departmental ceremonies I witnessed the bittersweet end of great BU careers, from the outstanding BA/MA students who are moving on to graduate school to the retirement valedictory of retiring philosophy professor Manfred Kuehn. I heard BU English alumnus Mike Rezendes speak movingly about the victims in the priest sex-abuse scandal he and his Spotlight colleagues at the Boston Globe uncovered. I heard Computer Science Distinguished Alumnus Eswar Priyadarshan present his five rules for crafting your village. The Baccalaureate speech of Carrie Hessler-Radelet urged us to serve others in the cause of peace and justice. At the University Commencement we heard Nina Tassler share her story of embracing fear and shattering the glass ceiling. We all had a chance to applaud Travis Roy’s achievements and hear again his story of courage and perseverance in the face of the ultimate bodily injury.
Commencement celebrates what we do as educators, our students’ hard work and their families’ dreams and sacrifices made to achieve them. It is also a time for our worldwide community of alumni to return to celebrate their lifelong connection to and successes made possible by their BU educations. Commencement reminds us how, in our student speaker Debra Marcus’s phrase, a great university education teaches us “how to be our best selves.”
Like many of you, I hit the road immediately after Commencement, and I will be doing significant travel this summer. My travel season includes alumni and donor meetings in DC, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, New York City, London, and Denver. I will be visiting the Discovery Channel Telescope at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, AZ, in a couple of weeks. I will also be doing some philosophy, writing and presenting work at a conference on contractarianism in Dubrovnik, Croatia. We in the dean’s office will be working through merit recommendations, hiring proposals, policies, and strategic plans, but we will each take some time to re-energize and enjoy family and friends. In the quietest time of late July and early August, I will take a couple weeks to relax, hike, and bike in the Colorado mountains.
I wish you all a fun, productive, and relaxing summer!