To the Degree Recipients,
Congratulations on completing your degree program. Commencement is a time to celebrate an end as well as a beginning. In your case, this is the beginning, the commencing, of the next phase of your life. We expect you to take what you have learned and use it to make this world a better place.
You’ll be surprised at what you’ll take along with you. Some things you think you’ll always remember, you may soon forget. What will stay in your memory longest may be a particular professor. Years from now, you may still recall a lecture that person gave or a comment that person wrote on one of your papers.
I can predict these memories with confidence, not just because I was once a new college graduate, but because I read alumni magazines. I see the letters and reminiscences that graduates contribute. Sometimes, they refer in detail to lectures that were given 50 or 60 years ago. Imagine!
Though you may have absorbed the contents of myriad textbooks or performed any number of laboratory experiments, it is the human interaction you’ll likely carry with you—perhaps as long as you live. While faculty members have been teaching you their subjects, they’ve also been teaching you how to look at the world. Henry Adams wrote, “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
Congratulations on your achievement.
Michael A. Driscoll
President
About the President
President Michael Driscoll’s leadership of IUP has been guided by principles that include empowering students to become the world’s transformative leaders through high-quality academic programs, strong support structures, and interconnected, hands-on learning experiences outside the classroom.
Under his leadership, the university continues to develop new academic degree programs and revamp existing ones, leveraging IUP’s strengths to meet the needs of Pennsylvania’s residents while attracting students from across the nation and around the world. IUP’s international student population is the largest within Pennsylvania’s State System of Higher Education.
Many students enroll at IUP for noteworthy programs such as safety sciences, music, and criminology. An American Psychological Association publication has cited IUP’s doctoral program in clinical psychology as among the nation’s top five, while the Modern Language Association has praised IUP’s doctoral programs in English as among the most successful in advancing careers.
Under President Driscoll’s leadership, IUP established a dedicated National Achievement Scholarship Office in 2019 to raise awareness about scholarship opportunities and to guide qualified students through the application process. IUP students have had decades of success in securing prestigious national and international scholarships: as of this fall, IUP had 21 Gilman International Scholarship recipients, 20 Fulbright award winners, 10 recipients of Freeman Awards for Study in Asia, three Boren study abroad scholarship winners, 12 Goldwater Scholarship recipients, and one recipient each of the Critical Language Scholarship and the Fund for Education Abroad scholarship.
During his tenure, President Driscoll has focused on creating a student-centered educational environment. Since 2012, IUP has formed, among other initiatives, the President’s Commission on Diversity and Inclusion, the Multicultural Center, the Military and Veterans Resource Center, the University College, and the Student Success Infrastructure, an organizational model that will drive IUP closer to its goal of student centeredness by augmenting existing resources while standardizing and streamlining tools and processes.