May 2023, Part 02

Use these navigation links to move between the Year 2023 pages. Specific pages can be accessed at the bottom of this page

May 2023 (Part 02)

Andy's Graduation from the Pennsylvania State University

Andy graduated on Friday, May 5th. With twelve different colleges holding ceremonies for 14,000 graduates, including 11,375 undergraduates, the commencement events were spread over three days with ceremonies at the Bryce Jordan Center (the basketball arena) and one other large auditorium. Grandma Pat and Cathy both joined us for the event. We got to State College in time to have a quick dinner and then head over to the ceremony.

Here are the "official" photos.

Steve found Andy on the floor before the event. All of the Biomedical Engineering graduates were sitting together. Andy was sitting with Noah Brodecki; they had several classes together and were on the same team for their senior design project.

Time for the ceremony to begin

The graduation speaker was Charles L. Dages II, chairperson, emeritus, National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. We universally agreed that he was not a strong speaker and spent most of his time talking about a career in Hollywood, mostly in the academy and producing award shows. He simply never really mentioned any engineering activities and didn't spend any time in the speech discussing any motivation or lessons for the students. He also read the speech, stopping a couple times to correct himself. Clearly a distinguished graduate and one involved in the college, but not a strong or memorable speaker.

They finally had the graduates in each degree program stand to honor their department heads on the podium, which helped locate Andy, who had moved from where Steve saw him earlier (and thus had taken crowd images of the Nuclear Engineering group, not Biomedical Engineering). Lots of people to look through and identify him by the back of his head.

They had the "student ambassadors" stand up for each degree program as they represented the top graduate. Andy commented that he had never seen or had a class with the biomedical student selected.

Finally time for their group to walk.

Think he sensed Steve was watching him.

Kind of anti-climatic, as they essentially didn't even get a handshake as they walked. Despite that, the process was fascinating. We couldn't figure out how they managed this for a while, as the students weren't crossing in any apparent order other than they were in the degree being called. With the telephoto lens, we could see that each student had a white card which they handed to someone as they approached the podium, who then scanned the card. Andy later confirmed the card had a bar code on it that was used to trigger the announcement and display of their name. We believe the name was read by a computer, as it was the same mostly somewhat monotone voice for all the names. Andy said they could go earlier and provide a phonetic pronunciation to ensure it was read correctly.

Afterward they lined up against the wall for more pictures. Loved the joyful expression in the first image as we tried to find him in the line.

Some well earned smiles.

A number of the students actually left instead of returning to their seats. Got a bit concerning with the number of empty seats. But, the vast majority were back by the end. Andy even sent us a text asking if he could leave. Did not get the response he was hoping for at the time, as there were about 800 more names to go once he was done.