Welcome to the Providence College podcast. My name is Joe Carr. Today, we are pleased to present some of the highlights from an unforgettable weekend, their first three days of October 2021. It began on Friday with the inauguration of Father Kenneth Sicard as the college's 13th president.

It continued through Saturday with the college's annual homecoming celebration for families and alumni and wrapped up on Sunday with an on campus commencement ceremony recognizing the class of 2020, the class that had its second semester senior year interrupted by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

We will begin today with foder saccades inaugural address, followed by the homily his predecessor, Father Brian Shanley, delivered at the class of 2020 commencement mass. And we will conclude with the Sunday commencement address delivered by astronaut, physician, scientist and innovator Dr. Mae Jemison.

Here his father, Sicard,

Bishop Evans, Father Lotrel, Father Shanley, Governor McKee, Lieutenant Governor Mattos, Merrill Lhasa, Dr Armstrong. College presidents and representatives. Mr. Riley, trustees, members of the Cabinet, Dominican brothers and sisters, alumni, faculty, staff, students, friends and my family. Thank you all for being here.

And on a personal level, I can't tell you how honored I am to be here in this role today. As many of you know, I was the first person in my extended family to even attend college came from pretty humble beginnings and Fall River.

My parents were never educated beyond high school, but they wanted so much more for my sisters and me. And I will always be grateful for how hard they worked to make a PC education possible for me. And I'm sure that they're in heaven beaming with pride.

When I was preparing the speech, I was reminded of a saying from Saint John Paul, the second which perfectly captures the theme of today's celebration. The late pope wrote, Remember the past with gratitude, live the present with enthusiasm, and look forward to the future with confidence.

Now, in remembering the past, it's not my intention to walk you through a history of Providence College or even to go through the high points, because that would take way too long. But I will point out that while a Dominican friar has established Providence College at the invitation of Bishop Hawkins, we were not his first choice.

Hawkins approached the Jesuits long before he came to us. But with Boston College to the north and Holy Cross to the west. The Jesuits nixed this idea, referring to the establishment of a Catholic college in Rhode Island as a, quote, needless and doubtful venture.

Well, more than 100 years later, I'm grateful for the persistence of Bishop Hawkins and his enthusiastic vision of establishing a Catholic college in Rhode Island, and especially glad that he invited us. Like a lot of our students, I fell in love with Providence College from the first moment that I stepped on campus.

I was determined to do well, and I was successful academically. And I was always grateful for the opportunities that PC provided me. Like generations of students who came before me and generations who came after me, I received an outstanding education from faculty, both Ley and Dominican, who were brilliant and who genuinely cared for us.

It was here that I discovered my love of accounting from committed teachers like Gus Côté and Ray Bagley and Peter Bongiorni here that I developed friendships that I will always cherish and most importantly here that I discovered my Dominican vocation.

Ironically, it was tragedy in my senior year that cemented my vocation. I refer here, of course, to the acclimatize fire that took 10 of our female students shortly before Christmas in 1977. The outpouring of love and support that we received from the faculty and from the Dominican community were as strong as the shock and grief we felt

. Those of us who were here during that time will never forget the compassion of luminous people like Father Jack Reed, our chaplain, and Father Reg Peterson, our president, and so many others. It is with the deepest gratitude that I remember these experiences joyful and sad and honor the Giants from the past, both Lay and Dominicans, many of

whom were still around when I returned to P.S. as a Dominican in 1997. And some are still here today. They and the generations who came before them laid the foundation for the present. A present that we should and do, in fact, live with enthusiasm.

There is so much that continues to distinguish us. Our Catholic and Dominican mission and identity, define who we are and how we approach the sacred work we do here. That work of helping our students to flourish and to live meaningful, personal, professional and spiritual lives, thanks in large part to the wisdom and vision of my predecessor, Father

Brian Shanley. Providence College has become even more nationally recognized. To put it colloquially, we are a hot school. The rankings aren't everything. I can't deny how thrilled I am that we have once again been ranked number one in our category with a perfect score of 100 by U.S. News and World Report.

While many other schools of our size are struggling to attract quality students, we continue to enroll some of the best and brightest, largely because of our ever improving academic reputation. This we owe to our dedicated and brilliant faculty, outstanding researchers and scholars, the finest in their fields, men and women who are generous in their service to the

college and our students, and passionately committed to teaching and scholarship. I've always admired the commitment of our faculty, and my admiration for you grew even stronger as we battled and continue to battle the COVID 19 pandemic. Your willingness to pivot to new remote methods of teaching allowed us to remain open last year, to keep our campus safe

and to continue to provide a quality education to our students whose lives were upended. I know how excited you and our students are to be back together in person from the bottom of my heart. I thank you. And as president, I pledge to do everything in my power to support the invaluable work that you do.

Your love for and commitment to this institution, along with that of our dedicated staff, administration, alumni, benefactors, trustees and the out standing qualities of our students allow us to live our present with enthusiasm. When future generations look back at the years leading up to and following our centennial in 2017, they will see them as the beginnings of

a new golden age of Providence College. Notice that I said the beginnings of a new golden age. While we should remember our past with gratitude and live our present with enthusiasm, we should never allow ourselves to become complacent or to settle for where we are institutionally.

We will constantly strive to improve. And as St. John Paul suggested, we will look to the future with confidence. I'm often asked about my vision for Providence College because of my long, long affiliation with PC as a student, as a Dominican, as an administrator and now as president.

I have a lot of ideas. I treasure the traditions and the qualities that have defined us for more than 100 years. And these will continue to provide the framework by which we define ourselves in the future. First and foremost is our identity as a Catholic and Dominican college and even more robust ways we will define and present

ourselves as unapologetically Catholic. And our goal is not to be a fortress for the devout, but rather a place of joyful welcome for every one of our students, faculty and staff who, through their experiences of our community, will come to know truth and to know the tender love of God.

We are extraordinarily blessed by a robust presence of Dominican friars on our campus. Nearly 40 of us serve in academic or administrative roles, and more than a quarter of the Dominican community is under 40 years old. And this level of religious presence and engagement is so uncommon at contemporary Catholic colleges.

And because of record numbers of vocations to the province of St. Joseph, the Dominican presence here at PISI will continue to thrive. And I am so grateful to my Dominican brothers who engage wholeheartedly in this special ministry. I am equally grateful to the lay faculty and staff who participate so joyfully in our mission.

So many of whom were drawn to PC because we are Catholic and Dominican. And the cultural and religious diversity of our faculty in so many ways has enriched the experience of our students. We will continue to recruit diverse scholars and students who are drawn to and supportive of our mission, people who will thrive here at PC.

I remain firmly resolved and my commitment to our ongoing efforts toward becoming the beloved community that we aspire to be inspired by the communities in the early church and by the extraordinary vision of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., our shared goal of becoming a community informed by justice, charity and mutual love and respect.

And the efforts to achieve this goal are our response to a sacred call from God. I am inspired by the understanding and continually growing collaboration between the offices of mission and ministry and diversity, equity and inclusion and addressing and responding to our challenges.

And we do have challenges, but I've asked them to continue to work closely together and to engage a variety of campus constituencies, including me, and to draw from a multitude of resources, including the sacred scriptures, best practices at other colleges and universities, especially Catholic colleges, and the rich teachings of the Catholic Church that inspire and challenge us

to be the best that we can be as members of a Catholic and Dominican college. We should not rest until every member of our community feels the love, respect and dignity to which we are all entitled. As people created in the image and likeness of God, and as we're learning through an ongoing brand development project, most students

are drawn to P.C because of our stellar academic reputation. Which is why I've saved this portion of my inauguration speech until the end. Well, more and more institutions are questioning the value of a liberal arts education. Our commitment to the liberal arts will continue to define who we are institutionally.

As we recently announced, Phi Beta Kappa, the oldest and most prestigious academic honor society for the Liberal Arts and Sciences in the United States, has granted a charter to the college. And we will begin inducting students as members next spring.

PC is among an elite group of 290 institutions with this distinction. Less than 10 percent of American colleges. We will continue to emphasize and celebrate the deep connections between the liberal arts and our outstanding professional courses of study to ensure that our students flourish and are prepared to live lives of meaning and purpose now.

And when they leave, Providence College will continue to strengthen our core curriculum. At the heart of which will remain our signature, an ever improving development of Western civilization program. At the same time, as we continue to move into our second century, we are exploring new and innovative courses of study that will appeal to talented and diverse students

and faculty. One of our goals is to continue to gain even greater national recognition as a Premiere Catholic institution of higher learning. And the only way to do this is to build and expand on what we are offering currently and response to prospective students interests.

And so the changing needs of our society, I look forward to working with the faculty and exploring new academic programs that complement our existing offerings. Among the most exciting opportunities will be in health related fields. That leverages the recent investments we've made in improving our science facilities.

According to US News and World reports, 2021 best jobs, 15 of the top 25 are found in health care occupations. A number of faculty have expressed interest in and support for these new initiatives and admissions reports that we lose a number of students who would otherwise choose to matriculate here, except for the lack of such programs, especially

nursing. Most importantly, programs like this that focus on the care of others and a respect for the dignity of every person would flow naturally from and would support the Catholic and Dominican mission of Providence College of Service to God and neighbor.

As we know, attending the SEC is one of the corporal works of mercy. Like the rest of our students, those who choose a course of study in the health sciences would benefit from Pierce's strong core and the liberal arts, as well as a holistic approach of educating our students in mind, body and spirit.

Programs in the health sciences would enable us to leverage existing academic programs and faculty expertize would provide numerous new opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration, and would allow us to capitalize further on our outstanding science programs. While we're still in the earliest phases of exploration, I'm excited by the support of the Cabinet and many of the faculty and trustees

, and I'm energized by the possibilities. I also look forward to exploring mutually beneficial partnerships with other Catholic colleges, as well as exchange initiatives with Dominican scholars from around the world. One of the key initiatives in P.S. 200. And in addition to enhancing the academic offerings, I intend to continue to improve our existing facilities and begin new construction

. Continuing the work begun by Father Shanley. We owe this to the students of today and tomorrow. And our next major new project will involve construction of a residence hall near field. And in gratitude for his immense contributions to Providence College, this new facility will be named after Father Shanley.

Finally, we will continue to support and celebrate our athletic programs, which from our earliest days have been part of the fabric of Providence College and the city of Providence. We owe a debt of gratitude to our athletics staff, our coaches and our student athletes who bring and will continue to bring such honor to our school.

It's my firm belief that the introduction of new programs, the construction of new facilities and the modest increase in students will not change who we are as an institution. We will continue our traditions of treasuring and supporting the humanities and will remain deeply committed to reclaiming, retaining the close relationships between faculty and students that have always defined

us as they enter into my second year as president. My love for PC continues to grow and my vision continues to unfold and develop. I want this vision to be imaginative and cutting edge. In a homily I shared with the Dominican community on my first day as president last July, I prayed for the grace to lead the

college with wisdom, strength and humility. This will continue to be my prayer. And as we move on with this celebration today, we do, in fact, remember the past with gratitude. We live the present with enthusiasm, and we look forward to the future with confidence.

God bless you and God bless Providence College. Thank you.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, a beautiful New England fall morning and members of the class of 2020 gathered for mass and a homily by Father Shanley, PPCs president during their entire time as PC students. Father Shanley, himself a Providence College graduate and the institution's longest serving president, is now the president of St. John's University in New York

. Here is his homily.

I can't tell you how happy I am to see you all and to be back here after this 15. Sixteen months since you should have graduated. And when Fusa, God and I were talking about this mass, we kind of flip the coin about who is going to preside and who is going to preach.

And I volunteered for the preaching. And I got inaugurated last week at St. John's. I had to give a ton of speeches. I didn't look at the readings until Monday. And I called Father Sicard and I said, can we switch?

He said, no, I'm the president now. You have to do what I tell you. So I've preached on these readings before. The divorce and remarriage issue is a hot button issue in the church, but I'm punting on that today.

And I'm going to the Patriots game tonight. Speaking of punting, I'm having a great weekend. I'm not going to let it get bogged down by divorce and remarriage right now. So the lifeline for me is the last part of the gospel.

Jesus talks about divorce and remarriage. And then thank God there's this passage about little children. And Jesus says, unless we accept the kingdom of God like a child, we cannot enter it. What is it that children have to teach us about entering into the kingdom of God?

And one of the things that's really obvious and this was going to be my whole homily, this is a two parter. I'll get back to the second part. Was there absolute dependance on their parents? I'm watching my grand nieces and nephews grow up, and I've got them from six months to about seven or eight years old.

And it's just really, for me, such a delight to see the way that they develop. They know their utter dependance on their parents, especially when they're infants. They can't do anything for themselves. They are completely and utterly dependent on their mother and their father.

And as they start to get a little bit older, I've got a four year old nephew that is starting to do things he shouldn't be doing. But what I noticed when he does, he's he does things he knows he's not supposed to, but he's always looking over his shoulder to make sure mom and dad are behind him

. He's starting to get a little bit independent. But he knows he still depends upon them. And as you reach adolescence, when you came to Providence College, one of our task was to help you, to become autonomous, to move away from your parents, to make decisions for yourselves, to start to live as adults and make good choices.

And I think we did a really good job on that. But in the spiritual life, you are never autonomous, you always remain completely dependent. And the ironic thing about becoming independent from a psychological, developmental point of view is that from a spiritual point of view, it's just the opposite.

The older I have gotten, the more I realize my complete dependance on God. And if the pandemic has taught us anything, it's that we do not control our lives. We are vulnerable. We are fragile. And we depend upon God.

And if there's a big spiritual lesson to learn from the pandemic, it's that we have to live our lives in complete dependance on God. And I've learned that lesson multiple, multiple times about the complete lack of control. And my complete dependance on God.

And the older you get and the wiser you get, you regress spiritually to becoming a child in dependance upon God. And that's a blessing. That was going to be my whole homily. I would have gone on a little bit longer until I drove up from New York on Friday and put on my favorite podcast, which is Doctor

Laurie Santos, who is the graduation speaker last year here, and she has this podcast called The Happiness Lab. And it was it just kind of blew me away somewhere east of New Haven. Ironically, she teaches at Yale. I think I was in Bridgeport when I started listening to this.

And she talks about how hard it is to have fun when you get older and about the need to find fun and joy and delight in our lives. And she talked a lot about little kids. Little kids easily find fun.

They find joy, they find delight. And she says, I'm so stressed out in my life that I don't know how to have fun. So most of the podcast is her talking with a fun expert, if you can believe it.

There are experts on having fun. And if you think about your own life and how stressful it gets once you're an adult. Finding fun is not as easy as it is when you're a little kid. When you're a little kid, it just happens spontaneously all the time.

And that's one of the other delightful things about little children, is they find joyful delight in the littlest things from an ant crawling out of an ant hole to, you know, all the little things in life. Kids just go, wow.

Isn't that cool? They smile. They laugh. They know how to have fun. Now, the science of fun says fun involves three things. First, it involves playfulness. You have to be playful and have a spirit of playfulness to know how to have fun.

And some of us are just way too serious. The second thing you have to be able to do is connect with other people. Because our deepest fun and joy and delight is what we experience with other people. It's not so low.

Our greatest sense of satisfaction is when we're doing something with other people and connecting in life. And the third piece in the science of fun is float. You know, you're having fun when time isn't. Doesn't matter. You're in the moment.

You don't even know how long it lasted because you were present to what was happening. You were connected to people around you. You were being playful. And you don't know whether it took 20 minutes or a half an hour.

And if you can get to that in life, you are much happier. And so she asks the woman that she's talking to. What are the baby steps to get there? Because I'm I don't think I can get to that all that stuff at once.

And she ends up talking with a poet who wrote a book of delights and talks about the road to beginning to have fun is being able to find a delight a day looking at your life, being in the flow and finding something every day in your life that gives you delight.

And originally, the poet says to her, Then you write it down. It's like you keep a catalog of delights. And if you look and if you begin to live in the present of the moments of your day, it's not hard to find one.

You actually find a lot. And so she says that's too stressful for me, and the poet says to her, I want you to do. You don't need to write it down. What I've learned to do is when I see something that delights me, I go delite, put my finger in the air, the light.

And she said, I started to practice this and she said, I found way more deLites than I ever thought I would find in my life. And I go like this delight. And at the end of it and this is my main point in this second part, if you noticed the delight in your life, you become grateful.

You say thanks. And if you dig down deep in delight and gratitude, you find God. You want to know where God is in your life in this pandemic. It's where you put your finger in the air and go to light.

And if we stop and we notice, like a little kid, we find that God is in our lives more than we realize, and that everything that delights us is God's gift and having the capacity for delight, for thanks, for wow, isn't this amazing is a quality that we all need in our lives.

Little kids have a lot to teach us about our life with God, knowing that we depend upon God. And just as importantly, being able to give thanks and say, wow, I've already had my wow moment right here. Thanks.

The weekend concluded with commencement, a joyous celebration of the class of 2020. Despite the passage of nearly a year and a half since their last in-person PC classes, the graduates turned out in large numbers, with nearly three quarters of the class returning for the on campus ceremony.

We are pleased to present the commencement address from Dr. Mae Jemison so much.

I am so appreciative and so excited to be here today with you. I am excited because this very special time is one in which you've heard your transitioning. You're going into the world. People are expecting you to change everything.

You know that, right? But what's the first thing I'm going to do is just let me just get this over with. Let me just tell you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Class of twenty twenty of Providence College. I want to start with a question, though.

When was the last time you looked up, looked up? Was it last night? Maybe you went outside and looked up at the stars. Are you looking down at the fire festival? What was the last time you looked up?

I ask you that because that perspective is one that's been very important to me as I've gone through life. And I'm going to get back to that. But I want you to think about looking up. Thank you so much for this honor.

And I'm sure. I can express the same thing for all the others who've gotten the honorary degree. It's very special. It's special because it's an acknowledgment of the work that you've done. And it's something that warms our heart.

But as we talk about this graduation, it is a privilege to be here with you because you've gone through so much over these past years. I'm really, really proud of the graduates. I'm proud of you. And I know that the Providence College faculty administration and especially your family are proud of you as well, because this is more

than a regular dress up. Celebrate graduation. Proud, right? You had to maintain your enthusiasm, stick to your study plans and complete your assignments and show up online in person wherever you needed to be in order to make this happen as you pulled your way through.

And then you came back more than a year later to be with. Your colleagues and your classmates and I know that we've already acknowledged the faculty and the family, too. They went with this through this with you as well.

You might not know that many times the faculty had to scramble to create online lectures, exams and socially distance labs and hold office hours still and family members. You know, you had some students return unexpectedly. And I know you had already turned their room into a closet.

But but you you were there. Everyone made it. It's been a lot. But that's just the surface. The sobering reality is that we are people we know lost friends, relatives and value members of our community to a disease that no one knew existed 18 years ago.

I mean, 18 months ago, worldwide, millions of people were two. Thirty five million people were lost with more than with more than two hundred and thirty five million. I'm sorry, confirmed infections here in the United States, more than 700000 deaths this week.

And many people have been left with lingering effects, but in this isn't over yet. And it wasn't just the pandemic alone that this past 18 months has been so remarkable for the past year and a half, was bombarded us with challenges that tested our fortitude and our faith while we were determined to move on the events and

challenges the crisis we face. In response to this, as individuals, as organizations nationally and globally, they're remarkable about what they revealed about our world. What they unveiled this past year, we saw social justice movement. Yes, a pandemic. But we saw the social justice movement.

We saw it assault on our nation's capital by our fellow citizens. We saw in our face evidence of climate change, a widening wealth gap, and shifting in money and ownership to resources and resources to smaller and smaller people.

Yes, we saw billionaires going into space and sort of almost transitioning to, in some people's minds, the gatekeepers of space exploration. These are some of the wicked truths that have been revealed, and I have to talk about them because this is the world that you're graduating into and that you're expected to make contributions to.

In February, just six months ago, in February, have the United States simultaneously experienced one of the worst winter storms recorded? I live in Houston, Texas, and I had snow in icicles on my balcony in Palm Tree. No electricity and unsafe water or no water.

And again, this was in Texas, which proclaims itself the energy capital of the world. Now, other states had cold temperatures just out just as out of the norm, but not the breakdown of essential services. Texas, this problem hinged on a failure to require weather, hardening of electricity generation utilities and chose not to share electricity grids with other

states. The intensity and number of hurricanes and tornadoes increased, as did the length of their season. The populations were threatened by murder hornets. Just this past week we heard that 23 species were declared extinct. Wildfires burning millions of acres in Australia, in California amid record temperatures.

And when Europe went on lockdown to slow the surging Covid virus infections in 2020, the air cleared. Air pollution fell. The water cleared. Dolphins were seen in the canals of Venice. It's human activities decrease. This rejuvenation effect we're seeing all over the world, confirmed not only by observations on the ground, but by satellite imagery.

The evidence is stark and it continues to grow. Climate change is real and humans behavior and our economic policies can have a detrimental or a positive effect on the environment in our communities and families. People around the world are concerned with social justice and reconciling past wrongs to build an equitable future for all.

And during this time, in the face of increasing authoritarianism, people are concerned. I grew up on the south side of Chicago in the 1960s, and I remember the civil rights movements, the marches, the stereotyped representation, ah, the lack of representation of people of color and women in the media.

But more voices are being heard. This month. This past month is Hispanic History Month. More voices are being heard. The Black Lives Matter movement grew into a push to build more representative, equitable, inclusive societies that resonated around the world.

People care and rectifying the longstanding, unfair, dangerous practices. They help all of us. COVID 19 literally shut down large swaths of human activities globally economic, governmental, education, health, social, familial and cultural. The pandemic interrupted fundamental practices of our lives.

Dealing with Covid also brought to the forefront harmful inequities in the United States, not only in relationship to health care and access, but also major gaps in education, jobs, transportation and a seriously porous, inconsistent safety net for hardworking, gainfully employed individuals.

We were forced to reexamine what jobs are actually essential. Agricultural workers, health care workers, grocery store cashiers and staff, first responders, school teachers, and even evidently the people who make toilet paper. We had to rethink this when it was first identified.

People listen so intently to learn as much as they could about health. People I know who previously professed they didn't like math talked about the difference between hospitalization graphs and explain to me how we had to flatten that curve.

Right. And we all got on a first name basis with Corona. And Corona prompted so many people to confess. Not only am I not smarter than a fifth grader, but kindergarten's are kind of tough. And they really need to be taught by experts, you know, with this change the way we saw things, because all of a sudden

we had to have a different perspective. It also revealed something that I find very encouraging. Our profound capabilities and wherewithal as humans, as a society, as a nation are profound wherewithal when we truly set our minds and hearts to a goal.

So we saw this significant set of tools that we have our disposal from the Internet and instruments to DNA sequencing and automated bioreactors. The goodwill, the courage, the commitment and caring of so many people. It resulted in changes in our world.

We had effective, effective vaccines developed to prevent COVID 19 infection in less than a year. But it was based on years of deep research and clinical knowledge. And this capacity to manufacture these vaccines in large quantities was defined and ramped up rapidly procedures to distribute and vaccinate up to a million people a day.

Information was shared around the world in terms of gene, gene sequences, epidemiology, therapeutics, successes in. And the failures. We learned we made more mask, we even bedazzle some of them. We had all of this ability. These were things that we.

Needed to know, and we need to understand and recognize those, you know, earlier this year in May, we were so excited because Covid infections were decreasing significantly in the United States, though we weren't on stable ground. And even though that we knew that there was a Delta variant and we knew the world was still in a pandemic

, we were still very excited. Covid raised in India, Brazil, the Philippines. But when we looked around, we saw that wealthy countries of the world had contracted for the vaccines and supporting the production on the affordability of those to less fortunate wasn't made.

That was something that we need to think about as we think about the world. A lot has happened to get us to where we are today with all the things we discussed. There's the Internet that facilitates widespread communications almost instantaneously around the globe.

That's how we kept abreast of the pandemic, global weather and social movements. The Internet has been a repository of knowledge and caring. And unfortunately, too frequently disinformation, foolish foolishness and antipathy. But, you know, that all depends on the people are using it and what we decide we want to put into it.

This dichotomy is not the fault of the Internet, nor the bias is built into it. You know, when we look at what we think about what's going on with science now and people say, follow the science. We forget that sometimes the success of science itself may have led us into a level of complacency.

We forget that our health today derives to a great extent from effective nutrition, hygiene, sanitation, vaccination campaigns, antibiotics and public health practices. Just embarked on 50 to 60 years ago. But yet we're so comfortable with it. We have this false sense that viral infections aren't that bad, for example, are that we deny the irreplaceable role of regulation

, government and governance to ensure food and drug safety, to clean water, air quality. I bring all of these things up because, again, this is the world we're in. And you hear people talk about science all the time. But there is something really important about science.

STEM, that is science, technology, engineering, mathematics, while critical to the future. They're by themselves not sufficient to get us through any of the challenges that we're facing today. There's more at play than just the tools that we create.

It's the people who are using them, the people who make the policies of people, who make the decisions, how much we care, who's involved, what we value. And I want you to know that a strong education that exposes you to the breadth of knowledge needed to participate and contribute to society.

Those are the things that are important. Education that fosters critical thinking, awareness that builds a love of learning and understanding. It's inextricable to what we do in the world in the years to come. Education that empowers its graduates to act not only in their immediate best interest, but to consider and work for the well-being of future generations

. And I think that's what you got from Providence College. I think that's the reason why you're here in the numbers you are today, because you got that kind of education. You know, as we're graduating today, you know, people are talking about getting back to normal.

Right. And that when, as I say, we want to get back to normal just as soon as possible, but with a period of time as impactful as the past month. Do we really want to get back to the normal we had before?

That's the question I ask. I think we have to rethink normal. We need to evolve and transition to a better state of being. Perhaps we evolve our health care system so that it's more robust, that we have sufficient personnel and hospitals are operated with a bed capacity than a cat that can absorb 20 percent extra without breaking

. We learn something that we should have always known. Those who work in food production are important. Perhaps we should value them as such. We need to hold companies that provide essential services to standards when we can foresee that they're going to be problems.

Maybe we ought to have the airlines maintain more space for passengers. Maybe we need to understand and strengthen relationships and accountability between communities and police. Make excellent education available for all children need to make that a national commitment.

Maybe we need to fund cutting edge basic science to develop the lifesaving vaccines for tomorrow. We need to act on proof that our world is interconnected and no level of wishful thinking, that if we're different, we're going to change these flight these facts.

Maybe we need to rethink what normal is before we just jump back to what was previously the norm. Maybe we need to move further, you know, as you're graduating today. Well, you know, I know you already had two degrees, but at this ceremony, there's a lot of work waiting for you out there for real, for real.

There's a lot of work waiting for you out there. But it's not just yours. It's the responsibility of all of us. Don't let older generations shove it off on you. And I can tell you, even while I've been here, I've heard people say, well, you know, the young folks are going to solve this for us.

Don't let us off the hook. Right, because we're setting up the policies and the rules and the regulations right now. But then also, don't feel like you have to wait for us to take action. You know, you have your own power.

The actions in the past have created our world today. And the beauty is that the actions we take today will create our world tomorrow. And our actions are anchored in our knowledge, our fears, our love, our hopes, our faith, our experiences, our resources, our skills, our capabilities, and what makes us happy.

And I want you to do something and be honest with yourself. Live your life in the round 360 degrees, connecting to the world with yourself. You know, all of this is really important, that 360 degrees is about living your life very deeply touching and being connected with your life.

And so I want you to live deeply and look up. Remember I told you I was going to get back to the world where look up first. Let's talk about live deeply. We have to appreciate all of our lives, all of our world.

We have to connect to the intellectual, the physical and the emotional. We're not complete. We're not our best selves. If we disregard or dishonor any of them to live deeply, we have to use all our senses and sensibilities.

Touch. Sight, sound, smell, insight, knowledge gained from academic calls, a saleslady in the mall, the squirrel jumping from branch to branch in the freezing cold. We have to do those things. We have to be empathic. I just want to tell you, it's OK to care about people.

It's OK to be kind. And I know that that's something you learned here, but I bet in the greater world sometimes you question that because people always talk about you only do you know, what are you doing for yourselves or that's where we're pushed to do.

Sometimes things are going to be sad. We have to live deeply. You have to feel the sadness and the exhilaration while we meet the challenges. And the challenges that we have today are ones that we have the capacity to meet if we're committed.

What do you need? You need a little bit of sense of humor. Don't get the sense of humor. You have to have that chasm. You're going to do some funny things. They may not be feel funny at the time, but when you look back on them two or three years later, they're going to be funny.

Integrity, openness to possibilities. You don't know everything yet and be willing to seek things out. Discipline, a sense of responsibility, you know. Books may say you can't be responsible for everything. Just take care of yourself. That's true. But our responsibility does bleed over to others.

So with the whole look up piece, let me share something with my spaceflight. It was this incredible platform from which to see the earth. Myself and my connection to the universe. I vividly recall looking out a window of the shuttle and I saw this planet with this thin, iridescent layer of blue light.

That's our atmosphere. We flew through that through the southern lights, and there was a shimmering dance of a curtain of green light and looking from a slightly different angle. I could see the sun rising above the earth while I was on orbit.

And at that moment, I recognized the connection with a star system 10000 light years away, that I was made of the same stuff as stars. And it felt right. And that's where looking up came from, that it is just as profound to look up at the stars as it is to look from orbit down at the earth

. It's really about our connection to the universe. I always have thought as a child, were people seeing the other sky, the same moon, the things I was seeing. And what did that mean? So I do know that we see the same moon.

I do know that we see the same sky. And what I want to share with you today as I leave you is to say. No, that this connection with the greater Yunus versus important. And be willing to pull on to it.

When you look up, it's not just looking up at the sky, it's looking up from your tablet, from your phone, from your desk. It's looking up and filling yourself with a greater amount of of inspiration, which you can do.

I hope that no matter where you end up or whatever work you do, that you never forget to look up to keep this bigger picture in mind. I want you to never forget where you came from or what it's all for.

So when deadlines bloom or someone is sick, our kids are crying or the bills need to get paid. It's easy to get caught up to get overwhelmed by the day to day. It's so easy to forget who you are, why you're here, and what is most important to you.

If you ask most people what they want, they will probably say something about being happy. Yet we expend so much energy and invest so much time being unhappy with the food we are eating. Ah, the way someone is talking to us, how we look or how hard things are at work, we forget that happy is not something

that is given to us by others. It's a choice that we get to make every day. So look up, look up at the sky, the clouds beyond to the sun, the moon, the stars. When you need to recharge your spirit, let the gravity of earth give you a warm hug when you're feeling low.

Look up and remember that. What inspires you, what you're doing this for and why you cared in the first place? Because if you can keep that sparkle in your eye, that dancing energy of aliveness and possibility, if you can keep that long passed, a day long past graduation, you'll be on your way to a magical life, a

life full of love, service, connection in meaning. And all you have to do really is to live deeply and look up. Congratulations. Class of 2020.

Thank you. Thank you for joining us for the Providence College podcast. Episodes are available at all the usual places and there on the college's YouTube channel. I'm Joe Carter for producer Christchurch. Until next time.