This is a post that first ran on graduation day in 2012 and ecah year since. We are all proud of the University of Massachusetts at Boston, Boston’s great public research university with a teaching soul. It’s so gratifying to see our students rewarded for all their hared work and to be renewed in appreciation for the fits they bring out community. The details are dated but the resilience and brilliance of our students is renewed each year. So here is a little bit about graduation day at UMB
The statistical portrait here at UMB shows that our undergraduate students are 42% minority and 56% female. Last week we graduated 3810 undergraduate and graduate students and they came from 101 countries. We’re very proud of that.
Our students may be the most resilient you have ever seen. We teach veterans thriving in an academic environment, others struggling with university life or recovering from physical and psychological injuries. I’ve had students fighting through serious medical issues, and recovering from addictions. More than a few of my students have been on the streets long before their sixteenth birthday. Almost all UMB students hold down jobs to help them get through school, and quite a few are parents of young or even grown children. Once after I bragged about a 75-year-old Soviet émigré student, a colleague visited me with his 82-year-old Soviet émigré who couldn’t get enough of class work. Don’t get me started on the wonderful students from Belarus who struggle through years of hardship to get their education. They are outstanding and so are the students from Bosnia, Brazil, Nigeria, Bangladesh — well there are 101 countries so I have to stop there.
Last Wednesday I attended the College of Liberal Arts Convocation and was amazed at the students’outstanding achievements. Steven Campbell won an award for Classical Studies; he found his love for the subject when he started reading Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars during two tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq. Political Science student Dino Dzino won the Maurizio Vannicelli Award for his work on genocide in his native Bosnia. Huyen T. Do graduated magna cum laude with a double major in Sociology and Criminal Justice. She is the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants and volunteers to help other immigrants get the services they need. She will attend the Boston College Graduate School of Social Work in the fall. Jennifer Thunstrom won the Sally Goss Memorial Prize in the Anthropology Department for a returning female student. Jennifer returned to get her degree after being away from college for almost 20 years.
When I talk to colleagues who teach at some of the elite institutions in the country they occasionally lament how entitled their gifted and privileged students seem. Not here. Our students work hard and they couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to get a good education.
As someone who transferred from another university then dropped out twice before finally getting my undergraduate degree from UMB I’m grateful for the opportunities an education here offers. When you are looking for not a second chance but a third, you need a place like UMB.
So as a faculty member now and a proud graduate, I’m delighted to welcome the class of 2015 into the ranks of our alumni.