University students often come from differing backgrounds and take different routes to graduation, School of Architecture and Allied Arts Dean, Frances Bronet said during Saturday’s Summer Commencement ceremony.
For one graduate, Emiko Yamada, the path involved frequent trips across the Pacific Ocean. Yamada earned a master’s in linguistics 15 years after she first arrived at the University. Years that included a bachelor’s degree, a wedding back home in Japan, a master’s degree and just one host family.
Bronet offered the keynote address to Yamada and other graduates, their families and friends on the Memorial Quadrangle near the Knight Library. The ceremony began with a short welcome from University President Dave Frohnmayer and an address by Ron Farmer, the Alumni Association’s President-elect.
Bronet’s address called for students from varying backgrounds and majors to come together to be creative thinkers in the years to come. To illustrate her point, Bronet said she helped design a “baby in a bag” technology with psychologists and other doctors that is intended to emulate the baby’s time in its mother’s womb and is used to help with birth in third world countries. This project, she said, could not have been made possible without people from different backgrounds and strengths coming together.
“I ask you to use a number of modes of inquiry,” she said. “You’ll need every ounce of creativity in this ever-changing world.”
Yamada, a graduate from Moriya, Japan, lived with Eugenean Sarah Perotka and her family when she achieved her bachelor’s degree at the University, and again when she returned for her master’s. In between she went back to Japan and got married.
“We have known her for 15 years,” Perotka said. “In that time she’s gone from a young person who’d never traveled abroad to a mature married woman.”
Perotka said that she is very excited for Yamada, and that she worked very hard and had to make sacrifices to achieve one of
her life’s dreams.
“I’m so excited for Emiko, she left behind her husband and family to achieve her dream, that showed a lot of courage and determination.”
Nebye Kahssai, a political science major, was the first name called after President Frohnmayer decreed the graduates could move their tassel from the right to the left.
“I’m still trying to figure out my plans for the future,” Kahssai said. “Tonight I’m heading home to Portland to celebrate a little bit.”
Sociology major Anne Blumenthal, also received her bachelor’s on Saturday. She said that she was tired and that it hadn’t hit her yet that she was actually finished with school.
“I think I’ll be more excited when my diploma comes in the mail,” Blumenthal said.
Bronet, who’s served as A&AA dean since 2005, said that she came to Eugene because it was a city of progressive thinkers, and she encouraged students to continue being proactive. She told them to give back to the world what their families, friends and education has given them. As she neared the conclusion of her speech, the message remained the same: Work together to go beyond your own limitations.
“I hope you can work together to cross preconceived boundaries,” Bronet said.