Student From Redding Earns Degree From Drew University

From Merit: Chatham Studer of Redding earned a degree from Drew University at its 2019 Commencement.

Speakers at the ceremony encouraged graduates to celebrate who they've become, actively engage in the world and enjoy the fruits of it without sweating the details.

Paraphrasing a Jane Kenyon poem, University President MaryAnn Baenninger said, "See the pears in your life. Contemplate them. Savor them. All the other stuff is simply just not as important in the moment."

Looking back on years "filled with opportunities to grow, to find ourselves, make mistakes and learn," student speaker Alina Qasim said, "I want all of you to remember who you were when you entered Drew and who you are now. The person you are now is capable of so much more and school is the reason for that."

Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman went further, saying that the liberal arts education that the students received gave them the skills they need to help solve vexing problems such as global climate change, gun violence, income inequality, prejudice and intolerance.
"You learned how to collect facts. You also learned how to learn effectively and how to think critically," said Whitman, who also led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under President George W. Bush. "Those two things-learning effectively and thinking critically-are absolutely central to your ability to succeed in how to make a difference in the world. As the author Joyce Carol Oates put it once, 'At a time when politics deals in distortions and half-truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts.'"

This year's honorary degree recipients were Dean Criares C'85, a longtime trustee who's stepping down as chair after a productive seven years, and Karen Oliveto C'80, G'91,'02, the first openly gay person elected bishop of the United Methodist Church.

Oliveto fondly recalled her days in The Forest and credited Drew with teaching her the value of engaging in a community.

"This community, with its rich diversity of nationalities, races, political persuasions, cultures, sexual orientation, gender identities and abilities, helped me find my voice, taught me how to be an activist and helped me grow into the person and leader I am today," she said. "Drew taught me how to live my life out loud, bringing all of who I am into the places where I am called to be. And that has made all the difference."

A second student speaker, Erica Ramirez, said she'd honor the opportunities she was afforded at the Theological School by not taking the world for granted or simply phoning it in. "I plan instead to show up, to invest myself, to bring a full set of my skills and passion to the forms of life, really broadly construed, that I wish to remain since without my care they may not," said Ramirez, who earned a doctor of philosophy.

Drew University, a Phi Beta Kappa liberal arts university, includes the College of Liberal Arts, the Drew Theological School and the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies. Drew is located on a beautiful, wooded, 186-acre campus in Madison, New Jersey, a thriving small town close to New York City. It has total enrollment of more than 2,000 students and 148 full-time faculty members, 99% of whom hold the terminal degree in their field. The Theological and Caspersen schools offer MA and PhD degrees and the College of Liberal Arts confers BA degrees in more than 30 disciplines.

Drew is dedicated to exceptional faculty mentorship, a commitment to connecting the campus with the community and a focus on experiential learning, as exemplified by Launch, a new, leading-edge path to undergraduate education that syncs career development with rigorous academics and powerful community. Particularly noteworthy opportunities for undergraduates include the Charles A. Dana Research Institute for Scientists Emeriti (RISE), home of 2015 Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine and Drew Fellow William Campbell, the Drew Summer Science Institute (DSSI), the Center for Civic Engagement, New York City Semesters focusing on Wall Street, the United Nations, Contemporary Art, Theatre, Social Entrepreneurship and Communications and Media and several international semester programs. Drew also houses the Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict, the Center for Holocaust/Genocide Study and The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, an independent professional theater, as well as the United Methodist Archives and History Center and one of the country's leading concentrations of materials on Willa Cather.