Joshua Bennett, C’10, award-winning poet, spoken word artist—and student speaker at his own commencement 13 years prior—addressed the Class of 2023 at the College of Arts & Sciences graduation ceremony on May 14 at Franklin Field. “Spend your time with people that help you tap into the most free, unguarded version of yourself,” he said. “This grand adventure is so much better with company. We belong with each other. We are each other. The great gift of your life is meant to be shared.”
The College of Arts & Sciences Graduation Ceremony for the Class of 2023 was held on May 14 at Franklin Field. The featured speaker, Joshua Bennett, C’10, is an award-winning poet, spoken word artist, and author of five books who this summer joins the faculty of MIT as a professor of literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities. The student speaker, Hoang Le, C’23, W’23, completed a double major in biology and economics through the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management (LSM). Le created the LSM Pipeline Program to work with West Philadelphia high school students, was a U.N. Millennium Fellow, and won Penn’s Y-Prize competition for an idea using novel steerable needle technology.
The Penn Arts & Sciences Graduate Division held its ceremony on May 12 at the Annenberg Center. The featured speaker was Herman Beavers, Julie Beren Platt and Marc E. Platt President’s Distinguished Professor of English and Africana Studies, a distinguished poet and a widely published scholar of 20th-century American and African American literature. Student speakers included Kimberly Cárdenas, GR’23 (Department of Political Science); Nakul Deshpande, GR’22 (Department of Earth and Environmental Science); and Sara Xia Yu, GR’22 (Department of History).
The College of Liberal and Professional Studies celebrated its graduating class, also on May 14, at the Annenberg Center. Brighid M. Dwyer, the inaugural Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for Penn Arts & Sciences, gave the address. Dwyer has 20 years of experience as a practitioner, scholar, and professor addressing issues of equity in higher education.
