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[? SPEAKER 1: ?] Welcome, family and friends, to the 21st annual December graduate recognition ceremony.
[APPLAUSE]
My name is [INAUDIBLE]. I'm the vice president of the senior class council. The academic procession is about to begin. Please take your seats, and kindly clear all the aisles. Also, please take this moment to make sure that the ringers on your cell phones are turned off.
The event is being livestreamed. So please remain in your seats during the ceremony so as to not block the cameras by the video staff and professional photographers. The video can be viewed next week at Cornell Video. There will also be opportunities to take photos with your graduate after the ceremony.
Please also take this moment to locate the closest exit to you, as it may be behind you. In case of an emergency, listen carefully to the instructions over the PA system and proceed in a calm manner.
As part of today's ceremony, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogohó:no, the Cayuga Nation. The Gayogohó:no are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on the land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State, and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of the Gayogohó:no dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of the Gayogohó:no people, past and present, to these lands and waters. Thank you so much for being here with us on this special day.
[APPLAUSE]
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
POPPY MCLEOD: Good morning. I am Professor Poppy McLeod, the university marshal. President Pollack, candidates for degrees from Cornell University have gathered for the conferral of degrees from Cornell University. Members of the Board of Trustees, the faculty, university leadership, degree candidates, and guests are in their places. The assembly is now called to order. It is my privilege to introduce to you the provost of Cornell University, Michael I. Kotlikoff.
[APPLAUSE]
MICHAEL I. KOTLIKOFF: Welcome students, colleagues, families, and friends, to this well-deserved recognition of our students' accomplishments and the conferring of degrees. I'm delighted to be here with you this morning at this joyful event to celebrate and honor our mid-year graduates. On behalf of the faculty, some of whom are here today, I offer my congratulations to all of our degree candidates, whether you are now completing your bachelor's, master's, or PhD degree. Yes.
[APPLAUSE]
Congratulations on your achievements at Cornell and for all that you have contributed to this proud and wonderful institution. I hope that you leave here empowered to think critically, to learn from those with experiences different from your own, and to act with understanding and positive intention.
So many Cornellians have made a profoundly positive impact on our world. And we are counting on you to continue that tradition. I wish for all of you the deep satisfactions both of a life filled with intellectual discovery and adventure and of doing the greatest good that you can do.
Now, please join me in welcoming the 14th president of Cornell University, Professor of Computer Science, Information Sciences, and Linguistics Martha E. Pollack.
[APPLAUSE]
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you. Thank you, Provost Kotlikoff. Good morning, family. Good morning, friends. And good morning, graduates. Congratulations to all of you.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Before I say another word, I want to do what I always do at graduation, which is first to ask the graduates to stand up. Stand up. Turn around, and wave and thank your families.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
A major advantage of December graduation is that you can actually see each other. For all of you, our graduates and the family and the friends who love you so much that they dared come to Ithaca in December, today is truly a day to celebrate. A Cornell degree is rigorous. And a Cornell degree is a tremendous achievement. Whatever your degree, whatever your course of study, whether you're finishing early or you transferred or you took some extra time, whatever path brought you to Barton Hall on a Sunday morning in December and to today's celebration, it has been a path of determination and hard work, tenacity, curiosity, and success.
Your Cornell diplomas are a testament not only to what you achieved here, but also to how much you are capable of achieving in the years ahead because a Cornell education is designed to continue on long after you pass your last exams, turn in your last assignment, and head out on your next adventures. A Cornell education is designed to prepare you for rewarding and productive careers, but also, and as importantly, for rewarding and productive lives, enabling you to contribute to your communities and your world. And how does a Cornell education do that? By equipping you with the skills and the habits of mind to continue throughout your lives to learn from and to better understand our rapidly changing world.
Now, as a university president, I might be a little biased. But I believe that a life spent in learning and discovery and an active exploration of the world is one that enables you to understand and relate to that world and everything in it in deeper ways, in more meaningful ways, and, yeah, even in ways that are more fun.
One of Cornell's core values is exploration across boundaries, the very Cornell trait of following one's curiosity without much regard for what is or isn't supposed to be part of one's chosen discipline. Cornell's ninth president, Frank H.T. Rhodes, was particularly famous for this. And there's a story I love about an unusually hot summer day in Ithaca when the air conditioning in President Rhodes' house went out just a few hours before he was supposed to host a reception. So President Rhodes called the company that had installed the system. And he asked if someone could come out to fix it, explaining that the system was actually up on the roof, but he had a ladder that was long enough to reach.
When the technician showed up, Professor Rhodes showed him the ladder and explained the problem. And the technician went back to his truck to get his tools, coming back to the ladder that-- to find that President Rhodes had apparently gone back into the house.
Now, some of you have probably already guessed where this is going. When the technician got to the top of the ladder, standing on the roof was President Rhodes, eager to learn everything he could about the house's HVAC system and ready to hand over every tool as needed. The technician later said that President Rhodes, who, by the way, was a geologist by training, was the most overqualified assistant he'd ever had, but he'd have hired him again in a heartbeat.
Human beings come wired to learn. And our learning begins the moment our lives do. Our actions have effects. We drop things, and they fall down. We learn to look for patterns and order to predict from our experiments and our experience. Sound becomes language, which becomes its own tool for seeking knowledge, for asking what and how and why. I'll tell you, I have an almost three-year-old grandson. And the urge to ask why is deeply instinctual.
Formal education, from its earliest levels to the PhD some of you are receiving today, gives us the tools to deepen and organize our knowledge, to navigate and to make sense of the world. We learn, as all of you at Cornell have learned, the pleasures and rewards of intellectual stimulation, the feeling of wrestling a concept to the ground and coming away victorious.
We learn, as well, how to keep pushing forward when we don't understand something, when things are frustrating and they just don't make sense. There has to be a page missing from the lab manual because this is definitely not going to work. There's no way I can translate that cuneiform. There's not enough to go on, or, near and dear to my own heart, the code I just wrote-- it absolutely should work. And I have no idea why it's not.
Every one of you, in different ways, has had that experience of gradually, slowly making sense of things that at first make no sense at all. Those experiences are also a key part of education at every level because learning to engage deeply with difficulty, learning to use all of the resources at your disposal to find the answers to difficult questions-- those are the experiences that strengthen our intellectual capacity and our intellectual humility.
At each stage of our education, as our competence builds, we add more layers of complexity, each step deepening our comprehension with a layer beyond what we perceived before. The fractions that we could see in slices of pizza in third and fourth grade gave way to the abstractions of geometry and calculus, and then perhaps to differential equations and dynamical systems. The books we read as children, in their simplicity and their moral clarity, invite us into other lives. And then literature invites us into other worlds, showing us the sweep of humanity, its color and its light, teaching us that human beings are incredibly diverse, that every human being is formed by different forces and driven by different motivations and values, and that very few of us fall neatly into simple categories.
With each new idea, with each new layer of understanding achieved, the world comes a bit more into grasp. But at the same time, with each new layer of understanding, we come to see more layers, and so to appreciate the vast scope of human knowledge and experience and our own limitations. We learn to tackle problems with multiple solutions and to assess the quality of those solutions against one another. And we discover problems so complicated that they could potentially take the lifetime of the universe to solve.
We learn, in short, that the world is endlessly complex, that grappling with complexity demands hard work, patience, determination, and sometimes even courage. And we learn that the effort we invest in understanding our one, beautiful, but deeply imperfect world is meaningful. And it's worthwhile.
Dr. Tara Westover, who chronicled her own intellectual awakening in her memoir, Educated, was asked a few years ago how being educated changes us as people. She said, "I don't think education is so much a state of certainty as it is a process of inquiry. I don't think an educated person is someone who can recite an army of facts, but someone who has flexibility of mind, who is willing to examine their own prejudice, who has acquired a depth of understanding that allows them to see the world from another point of view."
That is what your Cornell education has given you, not just concrete skills and knowledge, not just tools for examining and considering evidence, not just the ability to make an argument clearly-- all of that, yes. But here at Cornell, you've also developed the intellectual capacity and integrity to change your minds and to amend your beliefs when faced with new information.
And you've learned, I hope, to communicate across difference, to seek and value diverse opinions, and to appreciate that not everyone interacts in the same ways, holds the same values, or sees the world the way you do. The same problem can look very different when examined from a different angle. The same facts can form different stories.
So as you leave Cornell and go out into the wider world, I hope that you, too, will view being educated not as a state you've achieved, but as an ongoing process to always engage in, and that you resist the temptation of easy answers and simple narratives, recognizing that a world of endless beauty and complexity will never fit into familiar patterns with predictable results. And what a joy that is. May you always follow your curiosity, wherever it takes you, even when it's up a ladder to the roof.
Congratulations, graduates. Cornell will always be a part of you, just as you will always be a part of Cornell.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: As always, thank you, President Pollack, for those inspiring words. We will now proceed to the conferral of degrees.
The first group to be presented to the president for conferral of degrees are those who have fulfilled the requirements for the degrees in the Cornell Graduate School. Will the dean of the Graduate School, Kathryn J. Boor, please come forward? Will the candidates for the doctoral degree please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
KATHRYN BOOR: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the Graduate School, having fulfilled the requirements for degrees of Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Science of Law, or Doctor of Musical Arts.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Boor. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the doctoral degree appropriate to your field of advanced study and research with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Cornell University welcomes the new doctoral graduates to the ancient and universal company of scholars. Will the doctoral graduates please be seated? Will the candidates for the master's degree in studies that have been directed by the Graduate School please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
KATHRYN BOOR: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the Graduate School, having fulfilled the requirements for the master's degree, be it Master of Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Food Science, Master of Industrial and Labor Relations, Master of Landscape Architecture, Master of Professional Studies, Master of Public Health, Master of Regional Planning, or Master of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Boor. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the master's degree to which you are entitled, with all the rights, honors, privileges, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the master graduates please be seated? Will the dean of the law school, Jens Olin, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Master of Law from the law school please rise?
JENS DAVID OHLIN: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the law school, having fulfilled the requirements for the degree of Master of Law.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Ohlin. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree Master of Law with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: I don't see candidates standing. But if you are, please be seated.
[LAUGHTER]
Will the dean of the College of Engineering, Lynden Archer, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degrees Master of Engineering and Bachelor of Science from the College of Engineering please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
LYNDEN A. ARCHER: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, duly recommended by the faculty of the College of Engineering, having fulfilled the requirements for the degrees of Master of Engineering or Bachelor's of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Archer. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree Master of Engineering or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the Dean of the Cornell Ann. S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, Kavita Bala, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Master of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, and Bachelor of Arts from the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
KAVITA BALA: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the Cornell Ann. S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, having fulfilled the requirements of the degrees of Master of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, and Bachelor of Arts.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Bala. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree of Master of Engineering, Bachelor of Science, and Bachelor of Arts with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Now we will recognize graduates from the three schools that form the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management. Will the dean of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, Andrew Karolyi, please come forward?
ANDREW KAROLYI: Thank you. Thank you, university marshal. Will the dean of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, Vishal Gaur, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Master's of business Administration, Master's of Professional Studies, and Master of Science in Business Analytics from the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
VISHAL GAUR: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, having fulfilled the requirements for the degrees of Master of Business Administration, Master of Professional Studies, or Master of Science in Business Analytics.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you. Thank you, Dean Gaur. On the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degrees of Master of Business Administration, Master of Professional Studies, or Master of Science in Business Analytics with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
ANDREW KAROLYI: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the dean of the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, Kate Walsh, please come forward?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Will the candidates for the degree of Masters of Management and Hospitality and Bachelor of Science from the SC Johnson College of Business and the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
KATE WALSH: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who have fulfilled the requirements and are duly recommended by the faculty of the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration for the degree Master of Management and Hospitality or Bachelor of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Walsh. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degrees of Master of Management and Hospitality or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
ANDREW KAROLYI: Will the graduates please be seated? The Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management is a shared program of the SC Johnson College of Business and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Will the dean of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Jinhua Zhao, please come forward?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Will the candidates for the degrees of Master of Professional Studies in Applied Economics and Management and Bachelor of Science from the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
JINHUA ZHAO: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the SC Johnson College of Business, having fulfilled the requirements for the degree of Master of Professional Studies in Applied Economics and Management or Bachelor of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Zhao. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degrees of Master of Professional Studies in Applied Economics and Management or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[APPLAUSE]
ANDREW KAROLYI: Will the graduates please be seated?
SPEAKER 2: Will the dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Benjamin Houlton, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Science from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
BENJAMIN Z. HOULTON: President Pollack, I have the honor of presenting these life-changing candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, having fulfilled the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Houlton. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree of Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the senior associate dean of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, Neema Kudva, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degrees of Master of Architecture, Master of Science and Advanced Architectural Design, Master of Science and Advanced Urban Design, Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Bachelor of Science from the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning please rise?
[APPLAUSE]
NEEMA KUDA: President Pollack, I have the honor to present these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning, having fulfilled the requirements of the degrees of Master of Architecture, Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design, Master of Science in Advanced Urban Design, Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Fine Arts, or Bachelor of Science in Urban Studies.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Kudva. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the authority vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon you the degrees of Master of Architecture, Master of Science and Advanced Architectural Design, Master of Science and Advanced Urban Design, Bachelor of Architecture, Bachelor of Fine Arts, or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
NEEMA KUDA: And all amazingly terrific.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Michelle Smith, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the College of Arts and Sciences please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
MICHELLE SMITH: President Pollack, I have the honor to present these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences, having fulfilled the requirements of the degree Bachelor of Arts.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Smith. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree Bachelor of Arts with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the dean of the College of Human Ecology, Rachel Dunifon, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Science from the College of Human Ecology please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
RACHEL DUNIFON: President Pollack, I have the honor to present these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the College of Human Ecology, for the degree of Bachelor of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Dunifon. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degree Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the dean of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, Colleen Berry-- Barry, sorry, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degrees of Master of Health Administration, Master of Public Administration, and Bachelor of Science from the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
COLLEEN L. BARRY: President Pollack, I have the honor to present these candidates, who are duly recommended by our faculty of the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, having fulfilled the requirements of the degrees of Master of Health Administration, Master of Public Administration, and Bachelor of Science from the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Barry. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degrees of Master of Health Administration, Master of Public Administration, or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? Will the dean of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Alexander Colvin, please come forward? Will the candidates for the degree of Master of Science and Bachelor of Science from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations please rise?
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
ALEXANDER COLVIN: President Pollack, I have the honor to present these candidates, who are duly recommended by the faculty of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, having fulfilled the requirements of the degrees of Master of Science or Bachelor of Science.
MARTHA E. POLLACK: Thank you, Dean Colvin. Upon the recommendation of the faculty and by the power vested in me by the trustees of Cornell University, I hereby confer upon each of you the degrees of Master of Science or Bachelor of Science with all the rights, privileges, honors, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: Will the graduates please be seated? This concludes the conferral of degrees. Please join me in congratulating our graduates for their academic achievements at Cornell University.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
And now, will everyone please stand and join us in singing Cornell University's "Alma Mater"?
ALL: (SINGING) Far above Cayuga's waters, with its waves of blue, stands our noble Alma Mater, glorious to view.
Lift the chorus, speed it onward. Loud her praises tell. Hail to thee, our Alma Mater! Hail, all hail, Cornell!
Far above the busy humming of the bustling town, reared against the arch of heaven, looks she proudly down.
Lift the chorus, speed it onward. Loud her praises tell. Hail to thee, our Alma Mater! Hail, all hail, Cornell!
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
SPEAKER 2: We thank you for joining us today. And again, congratulations. This concludes the December recognition ceremony for these degree candidates for the 156th graduating class of Cornell University. Please remain standing during the recessional. And then exit as the volunteers direct you. And thank you, again. Have safe travels.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
[UPBEAT MUSIC]
Sunday 12/17/23., Barton Hall, 10 am-noon
Congratulations to our December graduates and proud Cornell families! A university ceremony to recognize all December graduates will take place in Barton Hall on Sunday, December 17.
