Kotlikoff to December grads: ‘Meet the future with confidence’

When visitors flock to the Ithaca campus on the shortest, darkest day of the year - especially as snow falls and winds whip - there is usually a good reason.

This year, on Dec. 21, there were "more than 500 terrific reasons," said President Michael I. Kotlikoff, addressing December graduatesand more than 2,000 friends and family members gathered for the 23rd December Recognition Ceremonyin Barton Hall. "I'm so pleased to be here with all of you, celebrating your achievements and marking this milestone in your lives: your transition from Cornell students to Cornell alumni."

A hard-won milestone, Kotlikoff continued, but one that will continue to serve graduates.

"There are no shortcuts to a capable intellect," Kotlikoff said. "A Cornell education is rigorous, and it is demanding, for exactly that reason. Because it is designed to prepare you, not only for your careers, but for your lives."

The graduates, who described the day as surreal, liberating and bittersweet, said it was their Cornell communities that helped them thrive through the demands.

"Being somewhere that's hard and sort of away from everywhere else, the people make the biggest difference," said Priya Abiram '25 of Edison, New Jersey, a mechanical and aerospace engineering major in Cornell Engineering who said she and her best friend and fellow graduate Sarah Grace Brown '25, of Cincinnati, helped each other get through.

"I'm very lucky that I've met some of the most incredible people," said Abiram, who will pursue a master's at Cornell in 2026. "Just the most accomplished, hard-working folks from all different spaces. That has been really inspiring."

Brown, also a mechanical and aerospace engineering major now pursuing a master's, agreed. "We all push each other to be better," she said.

Earning his master's in engineering management and donning a dashiki to honor his Nigerian and Haitian roots, Adigun Olusola '25, M.Eng. '25, of New York City, said his community lifted him up when he had to take a year's leave of absence due to illness. "I've had ups and downs, hills and valleys," said Olusola of his time at Cornell. "But because of the community that was here, I felt welcomed back, and that made me push through."

Both Provost Kavita Bala and Kotlikoff gave remarks before the deans of each college presented their candidates for the conferral of degrees. The event concluded with a standing ovation for graduates and the singing of the Cornell Alma Mater.

In their remarks, both Bala and Kotlikoff evoked the rapidly changing world awaiting graduates.

"In 10 years, you may find yourselves in completely different fields, perhaps ones that do not yet exist, as the world evolves," Bala said. "You are the generation that will give shape and breath to what happens next."

Kotlikoff said graduates' resilience, adaptability and creativity - along with the depth and rigor of their Cornell educations - would enable them to respond to change and experience "the satisfaction of being right and doing right," as Ezra Cornell wrote in 1848.

The president conjured Cornell in its early days - when cows grazed on what is now the Arts Quad and unpaved roads led up the hill. "Yet the students came, from near and far - drawn to an institution where what mattered wasn't where you came from, but what you did when you got here," he said.

In that '…any person… any study' ethos, the university hasn't changed, Kotlikoff said, and neither has its graduates' ability to navigate a constantly changing world.

"Every generation of Cornell students, from our founding, has graduated into a world different, in real and fundamental ways, from the world it was a generation before. And each generation's challenges have been, in their own ways, unprecedented," he said. "Know that your Cornell education has equipped you with the tools and the capacity, the habits of life and the habits of mind, to meet the future with confidence."

Graduates embraced that optimism.

"I've been looking forward to this day, it feels bittersweet but so rewarding," said Olusola, who will join a D.C.-based construction company as a project manager next summer. "I've grown so much, and I'm just going to continue to grow."

"I feel like the world is my oyster," said Louis Zavala '25 of Waukegan, Illinois, an environment and sustainability major in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who decorated his cap with a 3D woodland scene to express his passion for the environment. "I feel like my wings have been lifted, and I'm ready to soar."

Zavala felt especially hopeful when - just as Kotlikoff was finishing the conferring of degrees - stormy conditions from the morning abated, and sunlight streamed through the high windows of Barton Hall. The change in light was so pronounced, it was met with cheers.

"It felt like a fairy tale," Zavala said. "I felt like everyone had their moment, right there."