The Fort Lewis College Whalen Gymnasium was abuzz with excitement for FLC’s two Spring 2025 Commencement Ceremonies, which were held one after another Saturday morning.
Thirteen hundred or more people filled the bleachers in a show of support for the 375-plus graduating students. The usual outdoor ceremony was changed to two indoor ceremonies because of a forecast of possible inclement weather.
The first ceremony began around 9:30 a.m. and featured around 200 School of Arts & Sciences and School of Education graduates. It was followed by a ceremony for more School of Arts & Sciences graduates and Katz School of Business graduates.
Incoming FLC President Heather Shotton said the graduating class is determined to solve the world’s most pressing and complex problems and to make the world a better place.
“We marveled at their ability to connect their passion to purpose,” she said.
Over the past year, graduates researched local transportation issues, water quality in the Animas and Florida watershed, and treaty rights and environmental health impacts in tribal communities.
Graduates applied Indigenous knowledge to food sovereignty on the FLC campus and shape the college’s “reconciliation work for generations.”
FLC Board of Trustees member Meredith Mapel said the commencement ceremony is a significant milestone for graduates because they’ve developed the skills that will help them succeed in their lives.
One unique skill graduates developed at FLC, she said, is grace – “poise, balance and the willingness to be fair and honest.”
“It’s a special skill that will serve you well in your future and puts you in a unique position of strength,” she said.
She said she challenges graduates to put that unique skill to work and “go forward in your life with grace,” reminding them one can be clear, firm and full of conviction and still conduct oneself with grace.
Keynote speaker Tommy Orange, a novelist and author who gained national acclaim for his debut novel “There There,” told graduates that for a long time, he thought of himself as “dumb.” He used to joke he peaked in fifth grade, and when he was 6 years old he wanted to be either a garbage man or a lawyer when he grew up – he had no defined sense of direction.
He said he took to writing to overcome that notion he was “dumb.”
He said degrees like those graduates earned on Saturday matter because everyone needs moments to stop, be recognized for their work, feel appreciation, say “thank you” and be appreciated.
“Greed and self-interest seem to rule the land,” he said, alluding to political upheaval in the U.S. and around the world and adding a nod to internet trolls, the “doom and gloom” of news and climate change.
But, he said, what one devotes his or her time to is what one belongs to.
“All the time you spent worrying and writing and thinking about how you were going to get through the next day … that time is you, your one and only life. So please allow the honoring of this ceremony to mean what it should mean when you made it,” he said. “You created this moment by working through all the times you didn’t think you could.”
cburney@durangoherald.com
