(Music Playing) Good morning.

Welcome.

Today we celebrate and congratulate the graduates from the College of Arts and Letters.

Please stand and join in singing while stanza of America the Beautiful.

Lead by Amira Coleman, a music performance doctoral students in the College of Music, who will be accompanied by the MSU Symphony Band under the direction of Michael Parker.. O beautiful for spacious skies For amber waves of grain For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain America America God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea.

Please be seated.

On behalf of the facult and staff of the College of Arts and Letters, welcome al graduates, families and friends to the Michigan State University College of Arts and Letters class of 2025 commencement ceremony.

As we begin our ceremony today, I would like to acknowledge the land Michigan State's main campus occupies.

We collectively acknowledge the Michigan State University occupies the ancestral, traditional, and contemporary land of the Anishinaabeg Three Fire Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples.

In particula the university resides on land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Signal.

We recognize, support, and advocate for the sovereignty of Michigan's 12 federally recognized Native American nations for historical indigenous communities in Michigan, for indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcefully removed from their homelands.

Thank you.

Now, today, we honor our outstanding graduates.

Before we shift to celebrating their accomplishments, let us reflect on the relationships and people who helped bring the to this day of commencement.Let us, let's pause for a moment of silence to consider ho we can live our lives in a way that honors the spirit of those who are no longer with us.

Thank you.

The ceremony we celebrate today is called commencement because it marks the beginning.

You are heading down a new path.

As you walk across this stage, leave the campus.

You have call home and continue to chart a meaningful course course of your lives.

As it's such moment of beginning.

It's fitting to reflect upon the past that have brought you to this commencement.

What we celebrate here today, not just the classes you have passed, the co-curricular work that you have pursued, the internships that you have completed, but the collected educational experiences that empower you to creat a more just and beautiful world.

At the heart of a liberal arts education is the cultivation of intellectual, creative and ethical habits that will enable you to leave fulfilling and meaningful life.

Now, it's my pleasur to introduce the Honorable Kelly Tebay., chairs of the Michigan State University Board of Trustees, to welcome you to this commencement ceremony.

Good morning.

I am profoundly honored to stand before you today.

Representing the Michigan State Board of Trustees is a significant momen as we gather here to celebrate the graduation of our Spartan Scholars, a milestone that marks both a beginning or end and the beginning in their lives.

First and foremost, allow me to extend a warm welcome to our graduates, as well as their family and friend who have joined us here today.

Your presence exemplifies the shared joy and unwavering support that our foundational to our Spartan family at MSU, the Board of Trustees is deeply committed to upholding the foundational principles entrusted to us by the Michigan Constitution.

Our duties, which includ the pivotal role of conferring degrees, are carried ou with great pride and diligence.

Today's ceremony is much more than a formal acknowledgment is a celebratio of the dedication, perseverance, and creative contributions each of you has made.

The degree you are about to receive, the knowledge you have gained, the challenges you have overcome, and the growth you have experienced is a testament not only to your hard work, but also to the sacrifices made by you and those who supported you throughout this journey.

As you embark o the next chapter of your lives, we encourage you to lead with conviction.

Use the knowledge and insights you have gained here to uplift communities.

Advance the well-being of society, and inspire hope among your peers.

Know that our faculty's administrators and fellow trustees celebrate your achievements with immense pride.

We also would like to take a moment to acknowledge the 12 College in Arts and Letters scholars who have distinguished themselves by graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA.

I certainly never did that and received the Board of Trustees Award.

We are proud to recogniz your hard work and dedication.

Your achievements reflect the high standards of value our institution and bring honor not only to yourselves, but to the entire Spartan community.

I invite these distinguished graduates who have received the Board of Trustees Award to stand so we may recognize this significant academic achievement.

I ask that you please remai standing, as we call your names, and let us hold our applause until every name has been announced so we can properly honor each of these remarkable individuals.

Lisa Chai, BA experiment Experience Architecture and Honors College.

Renee Kinsler, BSc, Mechanical Engineering, BFA, Stage Management and Honors College.

Natalie Lin Seck, BA, English and Honors College.

Sidney Logsdon, BA, English, B.S., Environmental Studies and Honors College Christina Lopez, BFA, Graphic Design.

Madeline B North, BA, English and Honors College.

Mohammed Osman, B.A., studio Art.

Rachel Pang, BA, Honors English and Honors College.

Annelle Robinson, BA, Political Science, BA, African American Studies and Honors College.

Olivia Tua, BA, English and Honors College.

Sidney Urban, BA, Philosophy and Honors College.

Secara Wilcox, BA, Philosophy and Honors College.

On behalf of your peers, our distinguished faculty and university leadership, I extend my heartfelt congratulation and best wishes to each of you.

Thank you and congratulations once again to all of our graduates.

Your future is bright and we look forward to seeing the incredible impact you will make in this world.

Thank you.

Thank you, trustee TeBay.

And now I would like to present the Louis B Sattler Prize Award winners.

This award recognizes graduating seniors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the area of performing and creative arts, including the fine arts, music, creative writing, theater and electronic photographi arts, and who also show promise of future achievement in these fields.

I would like to recognize the class of 2025 Louis B Sattler Price Award Winners Catherine Boon, BFA Theater Design and BS Psychology Rebecca Costla a BFA Studio Arts.

Would you each please stand?

Thank you, Cathrine and Rebecca.

congratulations.

At this time, I would like to recognize our citizens scholars who are graduating with us today.

Established in 2016, the Citizen Scholars Program is designed to prepare students to succeed academically while gaining experience with high impact learning opportunities such as education abroad, undergrad research, and internships.

This program establishes rigorous standards for high achieving students who seek intellectual challenges over the years.

these student have put their arts and humanity values, knowledge, skills, and practices into action in ways that create a more just and open society.

we have three students today graduating from the Citizen Scholar program.

They are Antonia, Leah, a interdisciplinary Humanities honors college.

Pilar, linguist, a Spanish MBA, Arabic, many and many.

My city of BFA, acting honors College.

Would you each please stand?

Thank you.

Antonio, Tyler and Amanda.

Congratulations.

We turn now to recognize the winner of our top student award within the College of Arts and Letters.

That's the outstanding senior achievement award.

This award is given annually to a student who embodies four hallmark characteristics of an outstanding graduate service and leadership.

Personal and professional development, interdisciplinary scholarship and practice, and a commitment to cross cultural diversity.

Please join me in congratulating this year's winner of the College of Arts and Letters Outstanding Achievement Award winner, Pilar Lindquist.

Pilar, please stand once more and be recognized.

Congratulation, Pilar.

In honoring these students and award winners, we celebrate the core value at the heart of the liberal arts education that each of you has pursued.

Your College of Arts letters degrees draws upon the power of various viewpoints and of diverse backgrounds.

Many of you have achieved or enrich our, Many of you have reinterpreted your education through internship and study abroad programs in countries all around the world.

These experiences have provided you with the capacity to think critically, imagine creatively, and respond ethically to the most pressing social and cultural challenges we face.

your education in the US, of course, in the College of Arts and Leisure, has empowered you to be conscientious and engaged citizens leaders who can work collaboratively with local, national and global organizations.

Your degrees have been enhanced by the study and practice of written and artistic expression from diverse tradition and interdisciplinary courses.

This foundation equips you, to live in multiple worlds.

imagine how to enrich lives and relationships in a wide variety of different contexts.

For generations, alumni from the College of Arts and Letters at Michigan State University have transformed lives through engaged leadership, and I know you will do the same, but you must put the values that have shaped your education into practice only through intentional practic where your passion, leadership, and talent mobilize the power of the MSU Liberal Arts degree to bring more to us and beauty into a world that yearning for place.

On behalf of the facult and staff of the College of Arts and Letters.

I wish you joy and fulfillment as you pursue the personal goals you each hav for your lives, your families, and your communities as you embark upon this new journey, our hope is that you will remember how your experience here on the banks of the Red Cedar has shaped the person you have become, and we hope that you will return, offered to mentor and suppor the next generation of students in the same spiri in which those who came before you provided the support and encouragement you needed for arriving at this exciting moment of commencement.

Thank you and congratulations.

Now, I ask Julie Koehler, Progra Coordinators of the Humanities, Pre-Law and Interdisciplinary Humanities Programs, who will introduce our student speaker.

Congratulations, graduates.

It is my great honor to introduce our student commencement speaker, Lexi Lake.

Lexi is one of our incredible, multi-talented students in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program.

Lexi is graduatin with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Interdisciplinary Humanities with concentrations in Graphic design, Experience architecture, and Professional and Public Writing.

I have had the joy of getting to know Lexi a bit over the last couple of years as the coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program.

She often attends our student programing, bringing her creativity and humor to events, from pumpkin carving to the hot cocoa bar.

I was thrilled to learn that she will be speaking as your student commencement speaker today.

Beyond the classroom, Lexi served as an intern for the College o Arts and Letters Excel Network.

Throughout her time at MSU, beginning with her first year in college, she also participate in the Micro Internship Program, Arts and Letters project for which she designed graphics for a podcast and did an in-depth analysis of social media practices in the United States.

Lexi was a member of the ski and snowboard team, for which she served as social chair, and during her first two years at MSU, she competed at the MSU polo team.

I invite all of you to join me in welcoming to the podium the MSU College of Arts and Letters 2025 undergrad commencement Speaker Lexi Lake.

Thank you for that lovely introduction, doctor Koehler.

Spartans.

Congratulations to each and every one of you.

I'm not sur if anyone's told you this yet, but you look very dapper in your cap and gowns.

It is truly an honor to be gathered here in the Bresli for such a momentous occasion.

Normally, my time is spent here watching our basketball team dominate the court while Coach Izzo yell so loud you can hear him from the student section.

But today's event is much more important than any game today.

I have the distinct privileg of addressing you class of 2025.

Before you walk across the stag and go from student to alumni.

This is a special moment for many reasons.

You may be a first generation student and you're the first in your family to attend college.

Maybe you faced adversity during your time here, yet you kept pushing forward.

I speak fo many of us when I say that Covid 19 disrupte our final years of high school.

The moments we look forward to, like prom and graduation, were replaced by zoom calls and endless uncertainty.

By the time my senior year of high school ended, I was ready to leave my hometown behind.

Michigan State wa the only college I applied to.

I don't hai from a big family of MSU alumni.

In fact, most of my family supports that little school down the road.

However, I knew where I wanted to be when the summer before my freshman year rolled around, though, I was an anxious mess.

The independence I had longed for during quarantine suddenly felt overwhelming.

Even shopping for dorm supplies made me break out in hives.

Does anyone here remember their first day of college?

Because I know I do.

For me, it all came to a crescendo on freshman moving day.

Snyder Phillips Hall was pure chaos.

The August he felt unbearable, and it was only made worse by a 75 year old building with insufficient AC.

After I finally unloaded my many belongings, my parents walked me outside to say goodbye.

Suddenly, I turned to my dad and with a desperate, almost crazed plea, begged him, please don't leave me here.

My dad, ever the sensible man, gently released my claw grip and said, you have no idea how much fun you're about to have.

And with that, my parents drove away.

Looking back, he was right, of course.

By contrast, sophomore year moving day was a race against time to unload as soon as possibl so I could meet up with friends.

By then, I thought I had it all figured out, that I knew exactly what it meant to be a Spartan.

But life isn't always sunshine and rainbows.

I speak for the audience when I say February 13th is a day we all remember where we were, who we called, and the whispered prayer that we made for our loved ones.

Safety.

I remember that fateful evening vividly, but I also remember early the next morning the union was still blocked off.

Helicopters still circled overhead and I was trudging to retrieve my car.

When I passed the Spartan statue on my route.

A man, a complete stranger, carefully laid a bouquet of flowers at his feet.

He turned to me and without speaking, we embraced.

That single bouquet blossomed into a sea of flowers stretching from Sparty to the rock.

The fragrance filled the air like an early spring bloom.

Days later, thousands lined the sidewalks of the red cedar in numbers greater than any tailgate.

When I collapsed at the sight of the rock beautifully adorned in memorials for Brian Alexandria and Oriel, a stranger's mother lifted me to my fee and hugged me like I was her own Spartans.

We have been through so much together.

Tragedy and heartbreak, yes, but also resilience.

Joy in the everyday victories.

Through it all.

We've stood together.

I'm not standing here today because of anything I did alone.

I couldn't have made it through the pandemic.

Through my first day on campus or February 13th.

Without the people who surrounded me with love and strength, for the people who offered me a shoulder to cry on or shared a laugh with me when I needed it the most.

You made all the difference.

And as w face the unknowns of the future, one thing is certain we won't face them alone.

Grads, look to your left.

Now look to your right.

The people beside you are more than classmates.

They are your fellow Spartan alumni, your lifelong network, your family.

Wherever life takes you, you will carry this bond with you.

Whether that's hearing a g green shouted in a public place, seeing a Spartan flag in the unexpected spot, or simpl knowing that someone out there shares your story.

A wise person once said, the days are long, but the years are short.

I've cried so many tears during my time at MSU.

Happy tears.

Angry tears.

Overwhelmed.

Exhausted.

Overjoyed.

Tears.

I can't exactly remember why I was crying back that, but I know exactly why I'm crying now.

Because I know what it means to go green.

Congratulations, class of 2025.

We did it!

Thank you.

Thank you.

Lexi.

At this time, chairperson and directors from the college will introduce the candidates for baccalaureate degrees in the College of Arts and Letters.

As the graduates come forward, they will be in alphabetical orde by departmental degree program graduates.

Please return to your seats.

Up to your name is read and the token diploma presented and photos taken.

And Jody Knol and Linda Kernohan will read the names of graduate as they receive their diplomas.

Associate Dean of Undergraduate Studies for the College of Arts and Letters, Sonja Fritzsche will introduc the chairpersons who will then introduce their degree candidates.

Thank you.

Interim Dean Lynn.

Please welcome Professor Ruth Nicole Brown, chair, Department of African American African Studies.

Will the candidates for African American and African Studies please come forward?

May the faculty join me on the lower platform to greet our students.

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) So.

Will, please welcome Professor Robert McCann, interim chair, Department of Art, art History and Design.

Will the indomitable candidates for art, art history and design please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) (Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome.

Professor Justice Nealon.

Chair, Department of English.

Will the candidates for English and Film Studies please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Pleas welcome professor Casey McArdle, director of the Experience Architecture Program.

With the awesome, the amazing, the brilliant future change.

Agents of the world.

The candidates for the degree in Experience architecture.

Come on down.

Let's do this.

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) (Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome Professor Salah Hassan, director of the Global Studies in the Arts and Humanities program.

Will the visionary candidates for global studies in the Arts and Humanities please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome.

Professor Julie Koehler progra coordinator of the Humanities, pre-law and interdisciplinary Humanities program.

Will the incredibly innovative candidates for humanities, pre-law, and interdisciplinar humanities please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome.

Professo Charlene Polio, interim chair, Department of linguistics, Languages and Cultures.

What will the candidates for linguistics, languages and cultures please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome.

Professor Matthew McKeon.

Chair, Department of Philosophy.

Will the candidates for philosophy please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome.

Tony.

Professor Tony Grubbs, chair of the Department of Romance and Classical Studies.

Where does the US Montreal.

Would the multilingual and worldly candidates from the Department of Romance and Classical Studies please approach the podium?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome professor Stephen Di Benedetto, chair, Department of theater.

Will the histrionic candidates for the Department of Theater please step forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) (Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Pleas welcome Professor Aminda Smith from the cente for gender in a Global Context.

International studies and program.

Will the revolutionaries and women's and gender studies please come forward?

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Please welcome Professor Danielle Nicole Devoss, Chair of Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Culture.

Will the awesome and, inspiring prolific communicators and writers who have earned the degree of professional and public writing, please come forward.

(Conferral of Degrees, Reading Graduate Names) Will the candidates?

Please stand.

Will the candidates, please stand.

Congratulations again.

Okay.

Ready?

On behalf of the Michigan State University and President Kevin Guskiewicz, who has been dedicated the authority of the state of Michiga vested in the board of Trustees, I confer upon all of you the degrees for which you have been recommended, with all the rights and distinctions to which they entitle you, according to custom.

You may now move your tassels from the right side to your of your cap to the right.

Congratulations, MSU Spartan Alumni.

This act represents a great achievement and marks the beginning of a lifetime of dedicated service to the world.

This morning, we celebrate and recognize all of you who have completed an academic program in the College of Arts and Letters.

Please be seated.

I now would like to than the College of Arts and Letters Commencement Committee and all the staff, including those here at the present center, who helped plan and coordinate this event.

Their work is much appreciated.

Michigan State University has a world class faculty in the College of Arts and Letters.

We are especially proud of the international reputation to our faculty and have a reputation of our faculty, artists, scholars, and their dedication as educators in the future.

Almost every one of you graduate in here will pause for a moment in what will surel be a busy and productive life.

And now to reflec on those instructors and mentors who took a special interest in you, who made you think a little differently, or introduced to you an idea that shifted your, your view of things and altered the course of your life?

I ask that representatives of the faculty rise so that we may express our gratitude for the exceptional contribution they and their colleagues have made to the college and the individual in this graduating class.

We also gratefully pay tribute.

We also gratefully pay tribute to other individuals who have contributed to their love, their understanding.

Your support and their resources.

To hel make this celebration possible, I refer to the good friends and the family members of the graduates, the parents, the grandparents, partners, spouse, children's siblings and cousins.

Good friends.

Will they please rise and give us an opportunity to express our thanks and appreciation?

Thank you.

Thank you.

And I would like to introduce our alumni speaker, Chad Munger.

Chet received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Michigan Stat University and is the founder, owner, and CEO of US Distillers, a Northern Michigan based craft distillery with six tasting rooms throughout the state.

But members this isn't chess first successful business venture.

Soon after graduating from MSU, he moved to Chicago and began a career in nonprofit health care as a researc working at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons as a research assistant, and later promoted to director of research and scientific Affairs.

In that role, he saw a need which prompted him to start his own company, Data Harbor, a software consulting firm that pioneered web base accreditation management tools.

He later sold.

The company, move to Northern Michigan and founded The Medicines at This Lady in 2013 with his wife Tracy.

Out of their desire to make a positive impact in their community.

Now Chad and Trac and the members of this leading team are looking to make an even bigger impact on the state of Michigan in partnershi with Michigan State University.

They are leading the research and rebirth of and ride.

This journey, which started with an old whiskey advertisement, has led the team to the US Department of Agriculture's Seed Bank in Idaho, to an abandoned farm on Multiple Island and to a sunken ship at the bottom of Lake Huron.

Chad and Tracy Tracy are both proud Spartan alumni and come from Spartan familie and have given very generously to MSU to support the research being done here.

Chet sighs his English degree and the support he has received from MSU has been his greatest asset throughout his career.

Let's give a warm, spartan welcome back to campus to check Monger.

Thank you.

Dean, I think I get to officially be the first person to say good morning fellow Spartan alumni.

Congratulations.

So look at all of you in those green robes gathered together a little bit giddy today, it seems.

Hopefully a little bit sentimental, but ready to cross a threshold that only you can define for yourselves.

Is it overwhelming?

Probably a little terrifying, most likely.

But it's a great day, right?

Beautiful.

It should be all of those things.

Because what you're stepping into isn't a script.

It's an open ocean.

Your time here at Michigan State hasn't given you a map.

It's given you a ship, and it's taught you how to navigate life.

I know this because I spent the past 37 years trying to keep my own ship off the rocks, out in the real world.

Back in 1988, when I graduated from Michigan State, I had no grand plan, no master strategy.

In fact I was really had no clue at all about what I was supposed to do next, or certainly wha I was supposed to end up doing.

I certainly didn't imagine standing on this stage today.

If you you'd ask that 22 yea old sitting where you are now.

What do you what he had become, he would have said, I have no idea.

He'd also had no idea how well his degree had prepared him for what was to come.

Since then, my ship, this education that we all share, this way of thinking and living, has carried me acros a really strange, occasionally shipwrecked, but really mostly beautiful life.

Along the way, I've been a janitor, one of the best jobs I ever had.

I went to graduate school for one day, a miserable failure.

I was the director of research at a national medical association.

I started a company that built software to manage data at some of the larges medical schools in this country before the internet.

If you can imagine, I helpe write and produce a short film that was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

I started two distilleries.

One of them actually survived.

I operate a farm on an island inside a national park here in northern Michigan.

I helped perform surgery on my own dog at the vet clinic here at Michigan State, and I've even helped pulled agricultural treasure out of a shipwreck at the bottom of Lake Huron.

None of this, I promise you was part of any plan whatsoever.

All of these life experiences, these second chances, these milestones, were made possible by three things.

The first was the mindset I developed as a student in the College of Arts and Letters.

This is an amazing place.

Second, my willingness to tak the ship out in uncertain water and third, the shoulder strength of untold numbers of other people.

The value of my degre from College of Arts and Letters didn't show up in a job title.

It became apparent every time the world threw something unexpected at me, and I was able to say to myself, well, I can figure that out and tell other people and show other people that I can get that done.

Its value manifested itsel in conversations with strangers that resulted in collaborations, adventures entire new chapters of my life.

It's about its value le to opportunities to take risks, knowing some would end badly, and understanding that bad endings don't always mean failure.

In fact, bad endings are really just how you stay alive to possibility in your life.

What you've learned this past four years is not certainty.

Its capacity almost nearly endless capacity.

So tell me.

Let me tell you quickly about one shipwreck in my life and what grew from it.

As I mentioned I've started two distilleries, something I could have not done without more education and assistance from MSU.

Distilling was an unexpected path that led to new interest on my part in agriculture and in history which led to an unexpected story that was found in an advertisement in an old magazine in the stacks at MSU library that featured a once famous grain called Rose and Rye.

That 100, that grain 100 years ago made Michigan the Rye Capital of America.

That rye vanished from the landscape, became nearly extinct, and lived only in a seed bank in Idaho.

But those Rosen rye seeds we discovered were seeds of opportunity, a chance to connect our business with history.

So we made a few phon calls, got a handful of seeds.

We put an insane amount of work from my colleagues at the distillery and from people at Michigan State, and we revived that grain.

We cleared a poison iv choked field on a remote island by hand.

We tilled and plante and harvested rye with equipment that was only small enough to fit on a boat.

We had no tents or we had no place to sleep but tents with no running water and no power.

And we've done it for weeks at a time.

Over the last five years, our collaborative effort here has created a farm capable of supplying, genetically pure ros and rye seed to farms all across Michigan's mainland right now.

So we built something novel and real in just one.

We seem to we had t establish ourselves completely.

We were evicted.

We were kicked off that island.

It stung, no question about it.

But because we tried because we had taken the risks, something else extraordinary happened.

We met a scuba diver, a guy who owned a shipwreck.

And if you sense a theory, a theme here, that shipwreck was filled with another lost grain and a whole new future that no one could have predicted.

Landed our labs a chance to be extinct.

An ancient grain, the wooly mammoth of rye.

And in doing so, set the stage for new hybrid varieties that might someday help feed the world and maybe even make a great whiskey.

So that's what you ar setting out into a life of risk, occasional heartbrea and astonishing second chances.

A life that rewards showing up with open hands, not closed fists.

A life that rewards being the perso who's willing to get stuff done, no matter how big or how small that stuff might be.

And here's something even mor important no matter what you do, you won't do it alone.

One of the most powerful things Michigan State has given me is connection.

Not just in my time in East Lansing, but every year since I graduated.

Not just connection to ideas, but connection to people.

Real, messy, brilliant people.

People who changed my life by taking chances on me, who opened themselves up both personally and professionally and gave me opportunities to give back people I never would have met anywhere else.

So some of the best things that have ever happened to me came because someone, somewhere answered my call, my texts, my go green with a go whit and a hand reaching backwards.

You're joining the adult table now at a family dinner.

You're a network, part of a network of more than 500,000 Spartan alums.

Use it, nurture it, and give back to it.

Stay connected.

Because connection is not just the secret to professional success, it's the secret to a full and rich life.

And if I can leave you wit just one last piece of advice, it's the thing that I keep framed over my desk at home, courtesy of my dear friend Ellen.

It's.

Something's up like this.

Live dangerously in a kind un stupid way.

Take the risks.

Make the calls.

Plant seeds and wild places.

Rescue dogs.

And remember that real success is a destination.

It's the willingness to keep sailing even.

Mayb especially after the shipwrecks.

Congratulations, class of 2025.

Go green.

Thank you.

Chad.

Very inspiring.

We should conclude this ceremony by standing to sing the first stanza of the, alma mater, MSU Shadows.

Amira again led by Amira and then the MSU Symphony Band.

MSU we love thy shadows When twilight silence falls Flushing deep and softly paling Oer ivy covered halls Beneath the pines well gather To give our faith so true Sing our love for Alma Mater And thy praises MSU.

Thank you.

and MSU Symphony band One last time.

Congratulations, graduates.

Now, alumni.

We ask our guests to remain in place until the platform part and the faculty have recessed.

Thank you.

It's a beautiful day out there, so enjoy the sunshine.

Enjoy your day.

(MSU Fight Song)