Good morning.
Good morning.
To our distinguished guests, to parents, friends and faculty, and most especially, to the members of the graduating class, I offer special greetings and convey my heartfelt congratulations to you all.
This morning s ceremony is rich in the kind of pageantry, color and ritual we associate with momentous occasions, as well it should be. The robes and hoods, the processional music, formal invocations, and high seriousness of it all are meant to reinforce the significance of this event. I hope you are enjoying them. You have certainly earned them.
But now comes the harder part. Additional challenges lie ahead. No doubt, some of them will require every skill you have so far mastered -- and many you have not yet begun to possess -- to overcome obstacles impossible to foresee now.
And while I cannot predict which of you will blaze far beyond the boundaries of achievement as they are now drawn, and which will go about your business with little fanfare but no less success, I can say, with confidence, that all of you are capable and well prepared for a life of learning, as you must be to match the rapid changes of the contemporary world.
In this past year I have had the privilege and the great good fortune to act as interim president of The Johns Hopkins University. I have found it to be a tremendously energizing and satisfying experience.
How else would I have come across, as I have this year, a straight-A student in physics who is going on to a three-year scholarship to study and play the double bass at a school like the Shepard School of Music at Rice University? Or the candidate in the Masters of Public Health program who will have to hurry home after commencement because he has just been named Commissioner of Health for the State of West Virginia. Or the young woman who is delaying her graduate studies at Yale to establish and run an oral rehydration project for infants and children in the slums of Dhaka in Bangladesh. Or the police chief who is completing an innovative new masters program in police executive leadership and has announced his intention of placing ethics and quality service at the heart of his department. Or the medical student who, with her husband, also managed to become Eastern Ballroom Dancing Champions while here. Or the graduating Peabody student who received a foundation grant to study with a world renowned drummer in Ghana.
And I could go on and on. Many of you no doubt have other stories that you could tell about the achievements of your classmates and those you are planning for the future. In all of those endeavors, I wish you well.
Beginning in September, Johns Hopkins will have a new president -- its 13th since the University was founded in 1876. William R. Brody is a physician, an electrical engineer, a musician, an entrepreneur, and a former professor of radiology in the School of Medicine. He also has the kind of pioneering spirit and optimistic vision perfectly suited to this institution as it approaches the new millennium. Bill and Wendy Brody are with us today. I hope you will join me in wishing them well. Bill and Wendy, please stand.
Today is a wonderful, memorable day for us all. Let me again offer my congratulations to those of you who receive degrees today, and my good wishes to you and your families who have stood beside you and supported you throughout your studies.
May all of you fare well on the journey ahead.
Thank you.