Dear School of Arts & Sciences community,

Commencement is upon us, and I am delighted to celebrate the Class of 2024!

The students in this class endured extraordinary circumstances to arrive at graduation. Most of them did not have traditional high school graduation ceremonies because of the onset of the pandemic. Then, they started their college careers amid public health restrictions, wearing masks and keeping their physical distance from each other.

Those memories make commencement extra special for our graduates and their families and friends. Please join me in honoring them this week and taking time to reflect on the long and winding path our graduates traveled to get to where they are today.

Among the many joys of the festivities is hearing the message of the commencement speaker. This year’s speaker, Laura Carstensen, a Stanford University research psychologist and internationally renowned expert on aging, has a distinctive bond with the University of Rochester. She received her bachelor’s degree in social sciences here in 1978, and her father, the late Edwin Carstensen, was a revered member of the faculty at what is now the Hajim School. I look forward to her address.

If you haven’t visited the University’s “Commencement Weekend” webpage, I encourage you to do so. It is a one-stop shop for everything you need to know about the festivities, including information about the distinguished people in our community who will be recognized with honors and awards, and inspiring stories about students of the Class of 2024.

I am especially impressed with the stories of the students from the School of Arts & Sciences. Students like:

• Souleymane Diallo, an international relations major from Guinea who was named a Schwarzman Scholar and will begin a fully funded master’s program in global affairs at Tsinghua University in Beijing this summer.

• Andrés Arocho González, a political science major from Puerto Rico who is the first Rochester student to earn a Truman Scholarship—the premier scholarship for public service leaders in the United States—since 2004.

• Madeline O’Connell, a neuroscience major and three-time national champion in women’s track and field, whose leadership, enthusiasm, and service to the University earned her the Merle Spurrier Award.

• Rachel Whitmoyer, an emergency medical technician who double majored in physics and philosophy and explored biomedical ethical issues in her senior thesis. “High quality patient care cannot exist without realizing that a patient is a person, and not a problem to be solved,” she says.

Students like them are models of resilience and purpose who make us proud and remind us of the duty each of us has to this institution and each other. Meliora!

Your Dean,

Nicole Sampson