The “Unmarked Path” Ahead—Bowdoin Celebrates 221st Commencement

The "Unmarked Path" Ahead-Bowdoin Celebrates 221st Commencement

Amid dry and beautifully cool conditions, the 221st Commencement was held on the steps of the Walker Art Building on the morning of Saturday, May 23, 2026.

Of the 499 graduates, fifty-two are from Maine. Forty-two states, as well as the District of Columbia, are represented, including Massachusetts with seventy students, California with fifty-five, New York with forty-eight, and New Jersey with twenty-five. Thirty-three graduating seniors hail from outside the US; forty-two countries and territories have citizens graduating from Bowdoin.

College Marshal Jean Yarbrough, who is Bowdoin's Gary M. Pendy Sr. Professor of Social Sciences, officially opened the Commencement Exercises ceremony.

Reverend Julia Barnes '04, incoming director of the Rachel Lord Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, then offered the invocation, in which she paid tribute to the graduating students as they prepare for the next phase of their lives. "Rites of passage, like this Commencement ceremony, are an essential part of being human," said Barnes. "There is a simple power that comes with marking changes in our lives, with intention and care, in the presence of community-sometimes with big pomp and circumstance and sometimes with simple, singular action…. What bigger gift could our wounded world receive," she added, "than these 499 graduates entering it with intention and care, as the realized and resourced humans that they are, with hope, questions, and a palpable care for the common good?" Read the invocation.

After the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner," Chair of the Board of Trustees Scott Perper '78 took to the lectern to salute the graduating seniors. "People often describe graduation as turning the page to a new chapter; I am not sure that is the most fitting phrase," he told the students. "Chapters belong to the same book. Your time at Bowdoin has been its own story-distinct, formative, and complete in itself. What comes next is not simply a continuation. It is something altogether new. As you leave here, you will begin writing that next story." Read Perper's remarks.

Following his remarks, Perper introduced psychology major Abby Matusovich '26 to deliver Greetings for the State.

Matusovich, who grew up in Maine, began her address with a surprising admission: "To be fully transparent, when I started my college search, the only thing I knew was that I did not want to go to school in Maine. But," she added, "as I visited schools in other places, none of them quite felt like home. Then I came to Bowdoin, and I immediately knew it was different. Something about it just felt right, and I suddenly forgot about my first requirement." Read Matusovich's remarks.

In her Commencement welcome address, President Safa Zaki drew on her field of academic expertise as a cognitive scientist to help bring a sense of perspective to the graduating Polar Bears at this momentous time in their lives.

"I have spent my career studying how the human mind forms categories-how we take the messy, continuous experience and divide it into kinds of things, kinds of situations, and kinds of problems," she said. Graduation, she explained, is a distinct marker, dividing "one part of the messy and continuous experience of life from another. Graduation is itself a category-making act," drawing a line between what came before and what comes afterward. However, added Zaki, her research has also taught her that "categories are not the rigid boxes we sometimes imagine them to be. They have soft edges. They are organized around inexact examples, not precise definitions."

Members of the Class of 2026 should consider this, she explained, if they find themselves worrying too much about what lies ahead. "I want to suggest, as someone who has spent a lot of time studying how minds work, that this worry is not a bug, buta feature." The "unmarked path" that lies ahead, she stressed, is not a problem, "It is the project that your mind was built to walk." Furthermore, Zaki added, it is the project that that their Bowdoin education has prepared them for.

"This community believes in you, and your ability to navigate these next steps with a sense of purpose and a sense of possibility," she said. "That belief is not a leap of faith; it is grounded in what we've seen you do" over the last four years.

Furthermore, Zaki stressed, the graduating seniors do not have to walk the path ahead alone. "As you leave, I know that you will continue to walk your path with the friends you have made here. You will walk it with family, with people from the past who are no longer with you, and with friends you don't yet know."

Commencement Speakers
As has been the tradition since Bowdoin's first graduation ceremony in 1806, Commencement addresses were delivered by graduating seniors. This year's speakers, chosen through competition, were Jickinson Louis '26 and Kaya Patel '26.

Class of 1868 Prize Winner Kaya Patel '26
Patel's address, "A Story Described by Many Titles," describes how her practice of giving a title to each day of her time at Bowdoin has allowed her to reflect on key moments of the last four years. The neuroscience major explained how this helped her evolve from passively experiencing Bowdoin to actively shaping both her own experience and the community around her.

"In the early days, everything was so new and exciting," said Patel, and the titles she wrote reflected this-"The Crazy Life of a First-Year During Orientation," for example. But they also reflected the anxiety she felt as she adjusted to college life-"Navigating My New Normal" is one such title. Over time, however, the titles came to reflect Patel's growing confidence in who she was.

"During sophomore year, I wrote, 'Making this place feel like home,' as I unloaded my things in MacMillan House. By April, I added, 'Today is going to be a good day because I say it is.' And by senior year, I even asserted 'This is how to live,'" said Patel. She had also become more appreciative of her classmates and friends, all of whom have developed their own distinct lives and "weaved in and out of each other's-maybe without even noticing it…

"And while you may not have titled your days," she added, "you too have had all of these moments that have made up mine. You have become the author of your own unique story." Read Patel's remarks.

Goodwin Commencement Prize Jickinson Louis '26
A proud son of Haitian immigrants, Louis delivered an address titled "What We Carry Forward." In it, he recalled that Bowdoin's first Black graduate, John Brown Russwurm, delivered his Commencement address two hundred years ago and spoke about the Haitian Revolution.

In 1826, remarked Louis, Haiti was a "nation born out of revolution and a testament to the world that it can be changed by those who were never 'meant' to inherit it." That testament is one he knows personally, explained the economics and government double major. "My grandmother never learned how to read or write, but she enrolled my father into school anyway. That was her revolution. That was her Haiti. Generations later, I arrived here as a son of Haitian immigrants, carrying that same belief that possibility isn't something we wait for, it's something we build with our very hands."

Louis went on to describe how his community of classmates responded to the tragedy of losing their friend and classmate Omar Osman '26, who died during their first semester. "[G]rief has a way of disrupting everything: your routines, your plans, and even your sense of time. It unveils a curtain that shows you what's real: the people who stay, the purpose that guides, and the reason you keep showing up," he told the crowd. Louis concluded by congratulating his classmates on their achievements: "Class of 2026, we were never just students here. We were proof. Proof that this place can evolve and expand because we were here." Read Louis's speech.

Honorary Degree Recipients
Following the student speeches, Bowdoin awarded honorary degrees to three recipients:

Longtime Maine island health care provider and registered nurse Sharon Daley

Author and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich '14

Economic policy thought leader Cecilia Elena Rouse

Senior Class President Timothy Ignacio '26 also spoke. In his remarks, the biochemistry and gender, sexuality, and women's studies major said Bowdoin has changed the way he understands success and taught him that life is not just about achievement. "It's also about community, balance, creativity, and joy. For me, that lesson came when I found dance," said Ignacio, who joined the Bowdoin Cowboys hip hop dance team in his sophomore year and eventually became captain, "[I] found a passion I never expected would become such a huge part of my life," he added. Read Ignacio's remarks.

Baccalaureate degrees were then awarded to members of the graduating class. This was followed by a performance of "Raise Songs to Bowdoin," led by vocalists from the Class of 2026.

The Commencement Exercises were officially concluded by Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek and College Marshal Barbara Weiden Boyd.

The ceremony was bookended with music from Chandler's Band and their renditions of the "Commencement March" and the "Recessional March."

Read about Bowdoin's Baccalaureate ceremony held Friday, May 22, 2026, in the Watson Arena.