This post was written by culture editor Karolina Ramos.
Degrees in hand, doctoral candidates of the Class of 2013 exited the stage with vibrantly-colored robes and a call to pay it forward.
Over 250 students earned doctoral degrees in dozens of fields, ranging from public policy and special education to mechanical and aerospace engineering, Thursday at the Smith Center.
The hooding ceremony adorns graduates with brightly colored robes and hoods that signify their respective degrees. The practice was adopted to distinguish the most academically arduous curriculum from lesser degrees.
Delivering the charge to graduates, Provost Lerman called upon the graduates to become educators for later generations and to commit to public service initiatives.
Welcoming the graduates to a “community of scholars,” Lerman noted that only three percent of the population holds a doctoral degree.
“You carry the responsibility to teach the next generation of scholars. I urge you to find as many ways as possible to give back to formal education. That could be mentoring a colleague, going into teaching, tutoring, or bringing along people who may not have had the same opportunities and educating them,” Lerman said.
Lerman also encouraged the doctoral candidates to continually broaden their studies beyond their intensely narrow-focused dissertation work.
“You’ve now become some of the world’s leading experts in something. I charge you to bring that same intellectual curiosity to address larger world problems,” Lerman said. “The doctoral degree brings a responsibility to continue to renew yourself by exploring new areas outside of your dissertation work.”
The completion of rigorous and research-intensive coursework elicited relief and pride from graduates and family members. One audience member punctuated the ceremony with a yodel-like call for over thirty seconds as one graduate took to the stage, prompting audience-wide laughter and applause.
“I don’t know if I can even put into words what it means to me to finally be done,” Barbara Braffett, who received her doctoral degree in epidemiology, said. “It’s such an emotional day.”
