“Many of the people you’ve met here will be part of your life forever,” Frandsen said. “I hope you will look back on these years fondly, but as (Provost Brian Yontz) often says, if these are the best years of your life, we really haven’t done our job as educators.”
Wittenberg’s graduates will head into the next years of their lives on numerous different paths. The university conferred 22 master’s degrees Saturday in education, sport administration and analytics. Wittenberg awarded 301 bachelor’s degrees across three dozen different subjects. The five most common were education (29), biology (28), nursing (25), management (19), and exercise science (18).
Senior class co-president Grace Hehman, graduating with a bachelor’s of science in nursing, said Saturday brought her full circle, as commencement created some of the same uneasiness about the future that her first day on campus did.
“This is a time of uncertainty, but I want you all to remember how much we got through these past four years,” Hehman said. “If we can pass that critical care final exam, if we can pass intermediate accounting ... we can handle anything the world hands us.”
The other co-president, Victoria Pipinich, graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry. She joked that as she looked out at her classmates, she saw future doctors, lawyers, scientists, coaches, teachers, nurses ... and baristas.
“And some of us have figured out how to avoid the real world altogether — graduate school," she said. “Whatever your next step is in life, and wherever you all go after today, I challenge each of you to become the very best at whatever it is you choose.”
The 2024-25 school year was a challenging one at Wittenberg, as the board of directors approved faculty and staff cuts in the fall that meant some employees losing their jobs, and some academic and sports programs being terminated. University leadership believes the cuts will help eliminate financial operating losses by fiscal year 2027, an important step after Wittenberg was given a “financial distress” designation by the Higher Learning Commission in February.
Just as Wittenberg as a whole is trying to plan for the future, Board of Directors President Bill Edwards took a similarly forward-looking approach. He quoted the poet Mary Oliver when he asked the new graduates, “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Credit: Springfield News Sun
Saturday’s commencement speaker, 1993 Wittenberg graduate Gina Schaefer, went on to open more than a dozen ACE Hardware stores.
She gave graduates five key ideas: being curious is one of the best things you can do, don’t always take the easy way out, be the CEO of your own life, embrace imperfection and fail without fear, and “don’t put yourself in the ‘just’ box” — don’t limit yourself by saying you’re “just” a student or “just” a small business owner.
In speaking to the graduates, she reached back to her own graduation day, when Marian Wright Edelman, founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, was her speaker.
“She issued us a challenge — if you don’t like the way the world works, fix it. In fact, you have an obligation to fix it," Schaefer said.
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