Santa Clara University President Paul Locatelli, S.J., who, after 20 years as president, will be stepping down during the 2008-09 academic year asked the graduating class of 2008 to make the world a better place for all.
In a speech that looked back over his 20 years as President, Locatelli drew parallels between his time at the University and that of the graduating students. "Santa Clara opened up a new world for me, and it prepared me for a higher calling than a career. I pray it will be the same for you as you begin a new phase of your lives," he said. "Your Jesuit education has prepared you well to succeed but I hope you will also want to change the world."
Locatelli said that watching young men and women cross the stage at commencement ceremonies each year to take their place in society was in many ways the high point of his job as President. "Knowing that you will be smart, ethical leaders and citizens of competence, conscience and compassion - it does not get better than that," he said.
Comparing the mood in the country today to when he graduated from Santa Clara in 1961, Locatelli urged the students to get involved in the political process and reminded them that they were citizens not only of the US but of the world.
More than 12,000 family and friends of SCU cheered nearly 1,000 undergraduates as they walked across an outdoor stage at Buck Shaw Stadium today, celebrating the 157th commencement of California's oldest institution of higher learning. The master of ceremonies was Provost Lucia Gilbert. Jack Treacy, S.J , director of campus ministry said the invocation. Honorary degrees were awarded to Michael J. Carey, Ronald J. Stoney, M.D. and Roselyne Chroman Swig.
Michael J. Carey, '71, is a business leader, entrepreneur and a leader in the National Football League. Dr. Stoney, '55, is a professor of vascular surgery at University of California, San Francisco. Roselyne "Cissie" Swig is founder and President of ComCon International and a leading philanthropist in the San Francisco Bay Area.
About Santa Clara University
Santa Clara University, a comprehensive Jesuit, Catholic university located 40 miles south of San Francisco in California's Silicon Valley, offers its 8,377 students rigorous undergraduate curricula in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, plus master's and law degrees and engineering Ph.D.s. Distinguished nationally by one of the highest graduation rates among all U.S. master's universities, California's oldest operating higher-education institution demonstrates faith-inspired values of ethics and social justice. For more information, see www.scu.edu