Graduates Urged to Build Community and Tackle Global Challenges at Summer Commencement
A celebratory mood, as bright and warm as the August sun, enveloped the Wentworth Institute of Technology campus on Thursday as the community gathered to honor the Class of 2025.
Across two distinct ceremonies, approximately 560 graduates marked the culmination of their journeys as Leopards. The day was filled with poignant reflections, powerful advice, and a call to build more community in divisive times.
President Mark A. Thompson urged graduates to be present.
“Today is the day, and this is the moment. I encourage you to take it all in,” he said. “Take a look around you, at everyone who is here in celebration. Take a moment to look back at how far you’ve come... And finally, take the time to look beyond—at the opportunities you’ve seized, the challenges you’ve overcome, and the goals you’ve surpassed.”
Thompson reminded graduates that their Wentworth education has prepared them for a world in need of their skills, noting that “challenges, as you’ve discovered through Wentworth’s hands-on approach, are simply problems waiting for solutions.”
The morning ceremony for the School of Engineering featured student speaker Vincent Rudolph, Electrical Engineering, who delivered a passionate address on the critical need for community. Quoting Helen Keller, he reminded his peers, “‘Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much.’”
He challenged them to actively create connections in their post-college lives. “We must develop the places and people around us so that our surroundings may prosper just the same as our creations,” Rudolph urged. “Let us be the engineers of inclusion, of empathy, of connection.”
Keynote speaker and Wentworth Trustee Michael Carragher, president and CEO of VHB, built on that theme, sharing tangible examples from his career shaping Boston’s infrastructure. Reflecting on his work on the Big Dig, he spoke of the profound satisfaction in seeing the positive impact on the city.
“When we see people walking along the Rose Kennedy Greenway, families enjoying clean waterfront parks, we think to ourselves: I helped make that happen,” Carragher said. He charged the new engineers to apply their skills to today’s urgent challenges, including “making our communities resilient to climate change and rising sea levels, creating more affordable housing, and solving for expansion of clean energy generation.”
The afternoon ceremony celebrated graduates from Wentworth’s remaining four schools—Architecture and Design; Computing and Data Science; Management; and Sciences and Humanities.
Student speaker Emma Conant, Industrial Design, spoke with honesty about embracing the unknown.
“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that maybe you never really do have it all figured out, and that’s okay,” she said.
Her core message was one of resilience. “Fail courageously, fail boldly, fail miserably. But always fail forward,” Conant advised, adding that failure is an invitation for innovation. She concluded with a powerful call to action, reminding her classmates that their work extends beyond their disciplines. "We are entering a world that needs design not just in products, but in policy, in systems, in justice,” she said “And as creatives, as changemakers, that’s our work too."
Afternoon keynote speaker Maya Rogers, president and CEO of Tetris, offered a unique perspective on navigating life’s complexities using a metaphor from the iconic game. “The pieces come at you, one after another. The shapes are unpredictable. The pressure builds,” she explained. “And yet, if you stay with it, if you adapt, you start to find rhythm. It’s not about perfection. It’s about flow.”
In a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence, she reminded graduates of their uniquely human value.
“While AI can generate information,” Rogers noted, “it’s people who bring insight. It’s people who ask the right questions, who lead with values, who build trust. That’s your role. And that’s your power.”
View the Commencement program online and find official graduate portraits at GradOnline. And stay tuned for more photos from the event!