Burlington Standard

The University of Vermont issued the following announcement.

In the final ceremony of UVM’s 221st Commencement weekend, families, friends, faculty members and alumni packed the bleachers of Patrick Gymnasium on Sunday to celebrate the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) graduates.

After two years of pandemic life and learning, commencement speaker Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick, an infectious disease specialist at the Larner College of Medicine and head of UVM’s Vaccine Testing Center, centered her remarks on resiliency. But, instead of focusing on lessons learned from COVID-19, she offered words of advice from a beloved stack of Post-it notes curated through her 20 year career at UVM, and more from her fellow CALS department chairs.

Among her Post-it notes of wisdom, she urged graduates to “be willing to play in traffic”, the notion that risk-taking is necessary to make important change, and discouraged graduates from trying to experience deep personal growth in the midst of a serious crisis.

“Keep your head up, ask for help when you need it, but give yourself a break in the rough times. There will be plenty of time later for big decisions and growth, after you have gotten back on your feet and are back in motion,” said Kirkpatrick, professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.

Dr. Beth Kirkpatrick delivers commencement remarks.

Lastly, she said, when life starts to feel like a grind, it’s probably an indication that you need more Vermont maple syrup. “Vermont maple syrup is always the right answer,” said Kirkpatrick. “It reminds us to sweeten up, and to take this as seriously as everything else. Purposely engineer in your fun and sweetness. Get outdoors as much as you can, try to laugh a lot, and work on finding those high-value moments.”

Following her remarks, degrees were awarded to more than 300 Bachelor of Science candidates in CALS. An additional 53 Master’s degrees and 5 doctoral degrees were presented to CALS graduate students during the Graduate College ceremony on Saturday.

A posthumous degree was presented to the family of Matthew Kenji Calvin Foster, an ecological agriculture major who passed away unexpectedly the summer before his senior year at UVM. Foster was remembered for his curiosity, joy and giving spirit, which lives on at UVM through the Matthew Kenji Calvin Foster Scholarship, along with endowments from the Foster family for the UVM CARE Program to support students in crisis as well as Rally Cat’s Cupboard, UVM’s on-campus food pantry.

Matthew Foster's family is presented with his diploma.

The Class of 2022 has excelled both in and out of the classroom. Nearly 50 students received awards from their academic departments and programs in recognition of their scholarship and academic achievements, 25 were members of the UVM Honors College and 22 students completed Distinguished Undergraduate Research. See the Commencement Program (PDF) for a complete list of honors and awards.

The ceremony also included the recognition of several retiring faculty members. This year’s Emeriti faculty include Daniel Baker (Community Development and Applied Economics), Linda Berlin (Extension), Jeffery Carter (Extension), Patricia Erickson (Animal and Veterinary Sciences), Jean Harvey (Nutrition and Food Sciences), Jeffrey Hughes (Plant Biology), Amy Nickerson (Nutrition and Food Sciences) and Mary Peabody (Extension).

A complete recording of the CALS ceremony, as well as the main commencement ceremony are available at https://www.uvmcommencement.com.

Original source can be found here.