Purchase College Celebrates its 50th Annual Commencement

Purchase College, SUNY will hold its 50th annual commencement ceremony on Friday, May 20, 2022 at 3:30 p.m. on the Great Lawn on campus. This is the first time the ceremony has been held in person since 2019 due to the pandemic, and the first time it has been held on campus since 2010.

Degrees will be conferred upon 970 graduating scholars representing dozens of majors and several countries.

President Milagros “Milly” Peña said, “I look forward to honoring our students, who have achieved remarkable academic and artistic success during an unprecedented time of great challenges. I have no doubt that the intellectual curiosity, creativity, adaptability, flexibility, and resilience, that they have shown during their academic careers will serve them well upon graduation and throughout their lives.

We are also pleased to welcome our honorary degree and distinguished alumni award recipients, who are among the most dedicated and accomplished figures in their respective fields, for what I am sure will be an inspiring day for students and their families.”

This year, Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group, Amina J. Mohammed and poet Kevin Young, the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, will receive honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degrees from SUNY.

Recently retired Executive Director of the Cue Art Foundation, visual artist, writer, and editor Corina Larkin ‘06 will receive the President’s Award for Distinguished Alumni.

Chris Padro, a Theatre and Performance major, will offer remarks on behalf of the senior class. Juliet Papadopoulos, an Opera major who is heading to Yale University to continue her studies, will perform the National Anthem.

About the Honorees

Ms. Amina J. Mohammed is the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and Chair of the United Nations Sustainable Development Group.

Prior to her appointment, Ms. Mohammed served as Minister of Environment of the Federal Republic of Nigeria where she steered the country’s efforts on climate action and efforts to protect the natural environment.

Ms. Mohammed first joined the United Nations in 2012 as Special Adviser to former Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with the responsibility for post-2015 development planning. She led the process that resulted in global agreement around the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Ms. Mohammed began her career working on the design of schools and clinics in Nigeria. She served as an advocate focused on increasing access to education and other social services, before moving into the public sector, where she rose to the position of adviser to four successive Presidents on poverty, public sector reform, and sustainable development.

Ms. Mohammed has been conferred several honorary doctorates and has served as an adjunct professor, lecturing on international development. The recipient of various global awards, Ms. Mohammed has served on numerous international advisory boards and panels. She is the mother of six children and has two grandchildren.

Ms. Mohammed served as the keynote speaker at the Inauguration of Milagros Peña as the sixth president of Purchase College last fall.

Kevin Young is the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. He previously served as the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Young is the author of fifteen books of poetry and prose, including Stones, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize; Brown; Blue Laws: Selected & Uncollected Poems 1995-2015, longlisted for the National Book Award; Book of Hours, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Jelly Roll: a blues, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry; Bunk a New York Times Notable Book, longlisted for the National Book Award and named on many “best of” lists for 2017; and The Grey Album, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the PEN Open Book Award, a New York Times Notable Book, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism.

The poetry editor of the New Yorker, where he hosts the Poetry Podcast, Young is the editor of nine other volumes, most recently the acclaimed anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song.

He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Society of American Historians, and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020. Young was Purchase College’s Roy and Shirley Durst Distinguished Chair in Literature for 2018-19.

Corina Larkin was most recently the Executive Director of the Cue Foundation. Prior to that position, she worked at the Brooklyn Rail as a managing editor. She also worked as a management consultant for many years, focusing on new market entry strategies and organizational development in the communications and media industries.

In addition to Purchase College, she holds degrees from Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and SAIS/Johns Hopkins University. Prior to assuming the position of Executive Director, Larkin served on CUE’s board for eight years. Larkin previously served on the Board of Trustees for the Purchase College Foundation.

About Purchase College, SUNY

Purchase College, part of the State University of New York (SUNY) network of 64 universities and colleges, was founded in 1967 by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His aspiration for Purchase was to create a dynamic campus that combined conservatory training in the visual and performing arts with programs in the liberal arts and sciences, in order to inspire an appreciation for both intellectual and artistic talents in all students. Today, Purchase College, SUNY is a community of students, faculty, and friends where open-minded engagement with the creative process leads to a lifetime of intellectual growth and professional opportunity. For more information about the College, visit www.purchase.edu.