Granholm and Coleman Challenge Class of 2003

Granholm and Coleman at April 26 Commencement in Michigan Stadium.

In her first commencement address as governor of Michigan, Jennifer Granholm said on April 26 in Michigan Stadium that her wish for University graduates “is that when that diploma is handed to you—like a relay runner passes the baton—that you feel the force, feel the charge of leadership…and a calling to use that revered diploma to do a great thing.”

Similarly, U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, who marked her first Spring Commencement as the University’s president since taking office in July 2002, urged the graduates to make good use of the “endless information” cascading around them.

Granholm, inaugurated this year as Michigan’s 47th governor and the state’s first female governor, challenged the graduates “to embody excellence, complexity and service, and then to become, as Gandhi would say, become the change you want to see in the world.”
“Make sure,” she added, “that your commitment to excellence and success never becomes so narrow that it excludes a commitment to moral excellence.”

In her speech, Coleman, who is U-M’s first female president, concentrated on the challenges of the information revolution. “I don’t want to make you nervous,” she said but according to her research, “220,000 gigabytes of information will be created during this ceremony, [and] that means you are all falling behind in the information revolution while we sit here. But how much of this endless information do you really need to know? How much of this new ‘information’ is true, or valuable, and how much is useless? And how do you tell the difference?

“You are all savvy enough to know that a great deal of information that is available on the Web is not true. This information revolution provides you with access to galaxies of material—and what we have done at the University of Michigan is to provide you with the critical tools that will allow you to find true gold among all the fool’s gold of the Internet.”

New grads going off with a bang.

Coleman concluded by calling on the Class of 2003 to recognize “your deep responsibility to yourselves and to society to use your well-developed critical skills to allow this information to provide you with intellectual freedom, rather than a world of deceit.”

The audience of 40,000 included the undergraduate class of 6,400 and their parents, family, friends and faculty. A day earlier, U-M granted 175 doctorates and 1,143 master’s degrees at ceremonies in Crisler Arena.

Honorary doctoral degrees were conferred on Granholm, who received a doctor of laws; Oleg Grabar, professor emeritus at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies, doctor of humane letters; Judith Jamison, director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, doctor of fine arts; Hillel I. Shuval, Lunenfeld-Kunen Professor of Environmental Sciences at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, doctor of science; former State Sen. John J. H. Schwarz of Battle Creek, doctor of laws; and Billy Taylor, jazz pianist and educator, doctor of music.

Schwartz was the main speaker at the University Graduate Exercises, and Taylor received his honorary degree and served as the main speaker at commencement ceremonies for the University of Michigan-Flint on May 4.

The commencement speeches of Granholm and Coleman are available at on the Web at http://www.umich.edu/news/.