Welcome graduates, families, friends, alumni, and distinguished guests! What a morning to be gathered to celebrate our graduates’ great accomplishments! I am delighted to see you all here today, at the University of Vermont’s 2018 Commencement ceremonies.

“Commencement” is an impressive word to describe a new beginning. It is a time and a place, also, to reflect on a mission well accomplished, a hard-won journey to the summit, a place at the finish line. But it is, indeed, a beginning, a moment of stepping over the threshold into a new era in your life, into a new moment full of potential.

And, what a moment you are entering! This year, we have seen a tumultuous time for many in our country, in communities and on campuses from the East Coast to the West—including our own. The tumult can breed anxiety, adding a measure of unease to the uncertainty about what lies ahead.

But, as we gather here on this spring day, I am reminded that spring is a sign of hope and joy. As we look at this vision of you here in the robes and colors that signify your achievements, I think back on discussions with so many of you this year—student activists and artists, debaters and writers, environmental scientists and elementary teachers, researchers, first responders, volunteers, medical doctors, community builders. As I think back on those conversations and hold you in our gaze now, I know you’re ready for this new beginning, this step over the threshold and into a world undergoing fervent change, sometimes unsettling change.

Let me take you back for a moment to four short years ago—August, 2014. Do you remember the anxieties you felt standing here on the Green at Convocation? Or the feelings that emerged when you stepped into the class the first day? Perhaps it was just a vague unease about being in this new place, or maybe it was full-out anxiety about whether you would belong or about the academic challenges ahead. 

Whatever your uncertainties then, those seem like a lifetime ago, as we have watched your development as students, with your personal growth and maturity, as well as your intellectual growth full of new knowledge and curiosity.

This moment in which we’re living now demands all your creativity, your attention, and your drive for the discovery that you have been developing in your time here.

In many ways, you have been on a journey of discovery here at UVM: understanding your identity, learning about what drives you, what energizes you, how you’re wired for searching and answering questions that persist for you, how you want to bring your particular expression of self, of intelligence and creative thinking, into our world, and who you are and who you have become as a young adult.

Our mission at UVM is to prepare our students to carry on the UVM tradition of lifting humankind, preparing our students to be accountable leaders dedicated to the emerging global community, and who bring to our world knowledge and skills for nuanced understanding, for creative solutions, and for building effective and respectful communication. Our world needs your particular individualized insights and skills.

The philosopher Aristotle articulated the critical role that education plays in society when he wrote: “All who have considered the art of governing have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of the youth.” While he was writing in a far-distant time, the spirit of his words lives on today. Because in this time of change and disruption, our world needs the capacities you’ve been developing here at UVM. It needs your active and informed participation, your compassion and the pride you have been growing as a part of our UVM family, your skills for listening and for speaking out respectfully, clearly, and with conviction.

All of these characteristics or attributes speak to leading, and the kind of leaders UVM graduates.

Today, we ask you to take this great educational experience you have received from UVM—yes, the one that you have strived for and sweated over—take this education into your new world. No matter how local or expansive your new community, take this education to make our society a better, more resilient place for all humankind. You are ready to take the next step into life with hope, positivism, and inspiration from your education, experiences, and friends made here at UVM.

Come back, often, to visit your home here at UVM. We all, together, are UVM. Congratulations to all!