14 Aug Alumni President’s 2015 Graduation Address
Graduates, it gives me great pleasure to address the Class of 2015 as the inaugural NIU Alumni President. On behalf of your new Alumni Association let me first offer congratulations to each of you. Let me extend congratulations to your families, friends, and others who I’m sure helped many of you along the way. I’m sure these supporters are equally proud of what you have accomplished, as I am, and as you should be.
NIU and its predecessor schools offer a unique experience. We attract and train the nation’s future intelligence leaders. NIU prepares its students to think critically and apply an unmatched analytic rigor to our nation’s toughest challenges. We have an opportunity to complete classified studies and understand problems from a perspective afforded to very few.
Whether you go on to lead in the intelligence community, private industry, non-profit organizations or wherever you seek to write your next chapters, tomorrow you join a community of well-accomplished men and women. You should be proud of your school.
We have leaders in nearly every field and in many different places around the world. Our distinguished alumni include: former Directors of Intelligence Agencies, CEOs, General Officers and Civilian Career Senior Executives. These leaders who will be your fellow alumni want to remain connected. We want to help you continue to achieve success in your personal and professional endeavors.
Since we are in our first year of formation it will be critical that each of you help us to better be able to serve you and future graduates. I encourage you to leave of us with your contact information, participate in our upcoming events, get involved with our different committees, let us know what you expect and need from us, and learn more about our strategy for furthering the alumni association.
Let me brief, because I recognize many of you have worked very hard to be able to walk across the stage tomorrow and need not to be lectured anymore, rather be left to celebrate and listened to because you have so much to share given the academic journey you just endured. So I leave you with one thing if you remember nothing else about your alumni association–we are here to serve you. You should reach out to any of your Alumni Board members directly if there is anything we can do for you.
Finally, I encourage all of you to have pride in NIU and share your experiences with others. Congratulations again and I look forward to seeing what more the class of 2015 will do for the school, the intelligence community, and the world.