PULLMAN WSU graduates heard words of inspiration and challenge May 3 from a distinguished faculty member, a leader in the effort to fight world hunger and disease and the head of a nonprofit institute seeking innovative solutions to global problems at the university’s 112th annual spring commencement ceremonies.
More than 2,400 students took part in the three ceremonies held Saturday at the Beasley Performing Arts Center on the Pullman campus.
“If we on the faculty and your classmates have done their part during your years here at WSU, your stay should have suggested new possibilities, ideas, vantage points all of which we hope makes you more ready for what’s coming,” said LeRoy Ashby, Regents Professor and Claudius O. and Mary Johnson Distinguished Professor of History.
“The liberal arts are especially suited to this thing called learning,” Ashby told liberal arts graduates at a midday ceremony. “They explore and enhance our awareness of different cultures and languages. They can take us to and increase our appreciation of other times and places. They help to show us that by trying to understand others, we can better understand ourselves.”
“It is imperative that we never stop trying to learn, to seek information, to question, question, question,” said Ashby, who is retiring after 42 years of teaching, 36 at WSU.
“A liberal arts education is not just about mastering facts; it is also about developing patterns of thought, intellectual awareness, and the kinds of questioning predispositions that are essential to citizens in a democracy. It prepares us to act, but with an awareness of ambiguities, complexities, ironies and contexts.”
At the morning ceremony, Dr. Rajiv J. Shah, director of agricultural development for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, told students in the agricultural, human, and natural resource sciences; engineering and architecture; pharmacy; sciences; and veterinary medicine that they are going out into a world that greatly needs their expertise.
“You are graduating at a time of incredible challenges with skills that put you in the center of the storm. You are graduating with degrees across the sciences, at a moment when we need to address serious global problems,” Dr. Shah said.
Dr. Shah earned his medical degree from the University of Michigan, but found his calling in working for the Gates Foundation, helping reduce hunger and disease in the developing world. It is a path different from the one that he originally planned to pursue.
“In retrospect, for me, there was something scarier than failing and that was succeeding at something that doesn’t inspire me the way this work does. Finding something I could be passionate about made a tremendous difference for me.” Dr. Shah said. “Even though you may think the problems you read about in the news are too big, too complex, and too distant from your life for you to do anything about them, they aren’t.”
In the afternoon ceremony, for business, education and nursing graduates, Tom Vander Ark, president of the X Prize Foundation, urged graduates to find a place in the world where they can make a difference.
“Don’t just drift. Don’t just try to get yours. Find a cause, a place to serve, a place where you can help other people. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a place where you can nudge the trajectory of history in a slightly more equitable direction,” Vander Ark said.
The X Prize Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute with the mission to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. Vander Ark told graduates of his journey through different professions in finding the right place for him.
“I spent the first dozen years of my career implementing what I learned and thinking about my next promotion, my next car, my next house. But there were always people around me who reminded me about making a difference for other people,” Vander Ark said. “There is simply nothing more rewarding than teaching, healing, contributing and community building.”
“Like me, many of you will bounce around for a while before finding a clear sense of purpose. One way or another, you’ll find your passion, what gets you out of bed in the morningthe tasks you enjoy and the purpose you find fulfilling.”
WSU President Elson S. Floyd presided at the three commencement ceremonies, his first spring commencement since assuming the presidency of WSU in May 2007.
