College of Community and Public Affairs Commencement 2019

Binghamton University’s College of Community and Public Affairs held its Commencement ceremony at noon Sunday, May 19, at the Events Center on campus, as nearly 300 students received their master’s or bachelor’s degrees.

Grand Marshal Barry Jones, chair of the Department of Economics and of the Faculty Senate Executive Committee opened the ceremony; University President Harvey Stenger and Provost and Executive Vice President Donald Nieman provided welcoming remarks, as did Dean Laura Bronstein.

Bronstein told students three things: brag about the program you are graduating from, take your knowledge and spirit to build caring and prosperous communities in the Southern Tier and around the globe, and dare greatly.

“Your faculty have educated you to not only make money but to make a difference,” she said. “The most important people to focus on today are you. Every day in your internships, you have taken knowledge from your classrooms, and spirit from your soul. You have comforted children without homes or without parents, held a young woman’s hand while she confronted a too-early death, helped students break barriers so they are the first in their families to graduate high school or college, and built communities and organizations that are caring and prosperous.”

Quoting President Theodore Roosevelt, Bronstein advised graduates that, “The credit belongs to the person who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; ….who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if they fail, at least fails while daring greatly.”

“Dare greatly,” she said. “Fail on your way to success. Do the work that needs to be done. I can’t think of a better group than you to lead the charge.”

Svetlana Iyer ’01, MSED ’03, was awarded the University Medal during the ceremony — the highest honor the University can bestow and given at the discretion of the University president to recognize path-breaking achievements and true excellence in one’s career accomplishments; a distinguished commitment to Binghamton University, higher education and the pursuit of knowledge; and/or a demonstrated commitment to the betterment of society through exceptional leadership and mentorship of the next generation.

The daughter of parents who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine in the 1990s so she could have a chance to live and study in the U.S., Iyer said the University Medal “belongs to everyone who helped me in my journey.”

Now the founder and director of Stepping Stones Center in Bangalore, India, a center for children with autism and other developmental disabilities, Iyer told graduates that they are prepared for a very uncertain future, where the knowledge of things will be less important than the knowledge of what to do about those things.

“We will be faced with many problems to be solved,” she said. “As human service professionals, it’s going to be up to you to seek and maintain connections with empathy, and to solve problems cooperatively and creatively. You, the CCPA graduates, are the real changemakers, the ‘human becomings’ willing to lead with values of fairness and friendship, unafraid to question, to challenged and to learn, adapt and innovate, but also to teach the next generations the value of positive relationships in families, in classrooms and in communities.”

Two speakers represented the graduating Class of 2019 at the podium: Sarah Rebecca Cohen ’17, spoke for master’s students, and Max Musashi Fischman spoke on behalf of human development graduates.

Cohen told her fellow graduates to make an impact by using what they have. “If you have made it here today, you are smart, you are knowledgeable and you are talented,” she said. “It’s our turn to make an impact,” she said.

To do that, she added, you must be humble, “show people that you care … and tell them that you love them.”

Fischman, who referred to himself as a developer, spoke of the future.

“As we venture off to different jobs, and to pursue different goals and drams, never forget how one person — you — can positively transform the world around you. Be fierce in the fight to cause positive change in society, and help those around you to develop.

“Ask yourself, why not? Why not me? Because, in this unforgiving world, if you can be even just a little bit more relentless than all of the noise, you might just change the world. Why not us?”