 Please be seated. On behalf of the Board of Trustees of Roger Williams University and its faculty, staff, and administration, it is my pleasure and honor to provide a formal greeting and welcome to the graduates students assembled here this evening and to their families and friends. Ceremonies of this type are important in the lives of universities because they represent milestones in the academic achievements of the students. They're equally important to the students themselves and for the same reason. Each of you, speaking to the graduates, has followed your individual path to this day. And I cannot hope to capture the totality of your collective experiences, but I can and will commend you for being faithful to your hopes and dreams and seeing your academic program through to its end. I know as well that many of you were able to make that commitment only because of the love and support of your partners or your parents and that your success is built in part on their encouragement and assistance. Now it is time for the next step in your journey. Your hood and diploma represent the tangible rewards of your study, but the real value is the learning itself and the habits of mind you develop as part of your graduate education. How you employ your newfound skills and abilities will vary among you, but I say with confidence that the partnership you formed with Roger Williams University will stand you in good stead as you continue on your life's journey. Congratulations and please accept my very best wishes for an engaged and rewarding future. It is now my pleasure to introduce the university's Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs, Dr. Andrew Workman, for the academic address. And Dr. Workman will also serve as today's master of ceremonies, Dr. Workman. Thank you, President Parish. It's my pleasure to join the president in welcoming the graduating students, along with their friends, families, and faculty to tonight's hooding ceremony. All of you being hooded this evening have worked hard to earn your degrees, and I know for the great majority of you a large part of the reason that you sacrificed sleep, timed with your loved ones, and the tuition dollars was in the hope of improving the prospects of your employment, of gaining a professional job. That is certainly one of the primary reasons to attend graduate school, but personal advancement is only part of the value of a graduate education. Also important, perhaps even more important, is that the knowledge and skills represented by these degrees help to make society as a whole better. Even more than that, they're one of the fundamental underpinnings of a free society. The reason for this is that highly educated people can think for themselves, and they have the skills to implement the ideas and plans that they come up with. They are the opposite of cogs in a machine designed by another, but they're the leaders of organizations, of businesses, of schools, of churches, of charities, and also of informal groups that make society work. Component people who are committed to improving the world, not just keeping it as they find it, are the force that moves society forward. Proof of this can be found in the behavior of the world's dictators. By taking power, they first attack universities in an attempt to limit higher education to the most basic, limited technical learning. That's because universities produce a powerful counterweight to their dreams of control and dominance. I'm pleased to say that RWU's core statement of purpose, which is to serve society through engaged teaching and learning, recognize this important, but often unrecognized fact. Tonight, I would like to show how, working together, our students and faculty embody this purpose by telling the stories of a few of the individuals and groups graduating tonight. Preparing this talk, I reached out to the deans and department heads and asked them to send me stories of students who exemplify the university's core purpose. What I got was an embarrassment of riches. I can unfortunately only share a few stories, but there were so many stories, so many powerful and moving stories from this graduating class that I would like to be able to share them all. The first story I will share is about a student named Danielle Rumchik. She decided, Danielle! She decided to attend Roger Williams' Master's program in Forensic Psychology to pursue research, and that was a shift from her undergraduate experiences in clinical psychology. She was afforded the unique opportunity to work on an archival analysis of the Innocence Project, which research is improperly convicted prisoners, and the causes for wrongful convictions. This institutional project was directed by Dr. Garrett Berman, and also by one of the most noted cognitive psychologists in the field of psychology and law. They both agree that her work was an exceptional quality. In the hopes of continuing her education, Danielle applied and was accepted into no fewer than four PhD programs. She'll be attending the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in the fall of 2018 for their Forensic Psychology PhD program. She'll be working under Dr. Berman's mentor when he was at the graduate school, and will continue in this important social justice work. Second student is Kelsey Harrington. Kelsey, go for Kelsey. Kelsey graduated from the undergraduate university in 2016 with a bachelor's degree in psychology. She didn't want it to flourish in the master's in criminal justice program, earning a perfect 4.0 GPA so far. We're waiting a couple of days to see how it comes out, but Kelsey has worked as a graduate research assistant for Dr. Melissa Rossano's legal psychology laboratory for over a year. In that role, she contributed to a federally funded research project assessing the effectiveness of science-based interrogation techniques, and so she's played a part in the national conversation currently taking place about whether these interrogation techniques are effective, humane, or legal. In addition, Kelsey opted to complete a master's thesis, which we defended just two days ago. Her thesis was an exploratory study examining how Rhode Island police departments handle issues of elder abuse. From this, Kelsey has developed a series of recommendations for reform that she plans to share with the Rhode Island Department of Elder Affairs and also local police departments. Her goal is to improve police officer's ability to serve in the elder community. Our third student I want to recognize is Michael O'Brien. After serving the United States Air Force, he returned to Rhode Island, Michael, to work as a first responder, and he quickly rose to the rank of Deputy Fire Chief of Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Despite his success, he wanted to enhance his managerial and analytical skills, and so he enrolled in the Roger Williams MPA program, a master's in public administration program. Mr. O'Brien supported his fellow students throughout the program, both in and outside of the classroom. He's also supported them by attending all of the capstone presentations of the MPAs during his time in the program. He took an active role in the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society for Public Administration. He put all of that together, his MPA, his ASPA membership, and the knowledge he'd gained from working with his fellow students to rise to position of Deputy Fire Marshal for the state of Rhode Island, where he will serve the people in state for many years to come. Our fourth student, yeah, applause. Notice the theme here, people working on their education, but also contributing to society. And our fourth student who's done that is Edith Ospina, who's graduating tonight with the Masters of Arts in Literary Education. She began her career through involvement in the educational initiative in a collaboration with the Colombian government. That collaboration supported bringing high quality English language instruction to the schools in Colombia. She's continued this work in Rhode Island by bringing quality literacy instruction to urban children in our state. Her expertise in using multicultural literature to design a literacy curriculum that honors diverse learners and cultures assures equity of education for all students in Rhode Island schools. Now, so far I've just mentioned individuals, but graduate programs at Roger Williams also work in groups to serve society as we do at the undergraduate level. One of the most notable projects of this kind was a new Bedford neighborhood revitalization effort sponsored by the 1772 Foundation in working with students in our historic preservation and architecture program. They've worked in a teaching practice, working with the community, working with faculty members, and working with nonprofits groups to reimagine the way that historic preservation can preserve and enhance communities. All of these students are what we call civic scholars. Those civic scholars are people who give of themselves to the community, the state, the nation as an integral part of their education. This we think characterizes the experience of all students at Roger Williams. Since the beginning, there are only a small sample of the many amazing students here tonight who are the embodiment of the purpose of serving society through engaged teaching and learning. We're proud of all of our graduates. You can applaud for that. We're also proud of our faculty whose tireless work makes all of this possible. I now ask the faculty present to please rise to acknowledge the thanks of the students and their families, please rise faculty. Now my pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker tonight Enes Okyonky, Okyonky, who had been practicing all day and mispronounced. Since 1996, he's led the Okyonky architecture firm, which has grown into an international practice with offices in Ankara, Istanbul, Moscow, Standa, Kazakhstan, New York, and Dubai. Born in Ankara in 1968, he graduated with a degree in architecture from the Middle East Technical University in Ankara in 1989. Since that time, he has made a name for himself internationally, designing mixed-use retail, office, residential tourism, and hospitality projects. He's received no fewer than 25 national and international awards. And most importantly, his son, Khan, is going to be graduating tonight. So without further ado, I will, where's our speaker? There you go. Please come forward. Thank you for the introduction, dear President Farish, Provost Workman, Dean White, distinguished guests, and parents, and the graduates of class of 2018. Hi, my name is Enes Okyonky, the right pronunciation is Okyonky. I'm so glad to have a chance to address you tonight. Let me briefly introduce a bit more. I'm a second generation architect and the third generation is on the way. He will be graduating this Saturday. And we have several offices and we have experience in big-scale urban projects. And I'm standing in front of you to share not only my experience, but also the feelings of a proud parent as we have so many proud parents among us tonight. So I'd like to give an applause for the parents first. Thank you. When I look at you, my dear fresh graduates, I see more confidence, more power, and more skills than we have. 30 years ago when I get graduated, my registration number in architectural chamber, it's 15,000. Now Khan might be in Turkey 61. So the number of architects is 400% more in Turkey right now. When the population is increased as double in 30 years. So it is obvious that we have a more competitive and global world is waiting for you outside. And this comparison is more or less the same everywhere in the world. Tomorrow is the first day of the next chapter of your lives. Your comfort zone is over. Officially you have completed the basic education of your profession, which may define the most of your future with your potentials. You are not aware, but your future husband or wife or your partners are in the same room with you now. Like my wife now staying beside Khan and she was my classmate and my other partner is my classmate also. So look at around you and maybe you will remember this day after 10 or 20 years. I see college experience is very important as it defines the main core of your future network. This bound follows you till the end of your lives. It is not limited by your period of your education but it also collaborates to your life in many various ways, especially in your profession. Now I'm making projects with my professors. As we keep in touch, we always keep in touch through our university. The big trust coming from the same foundation will always give a big courage and support in all your lives. Roger Williams University is not consist of nice buildings or good education around you. It will make you immune to the future problems of your life after the time you spend, your relations that you built and the challenges that you faced in year. We talk about challenges. Do you know what is called these times? Zeit ungeist. There is no soul in this time. There's too many changes and you're a generation that you're going to face more problems than we face now. You are the ones who is going to face directly with global warming, maybe economical cold wars, global breakups like Brexit and so. So nothing is certain or guaranteed but your education is. So the first lesson to keep you in mind from my experience is ability to adapt. The second is timing. Do the right thing on the right time. The third and also very important thing for today is the first place that you will start your professional life. So choose wisely where you want to start your profession. Each project, in my case, possesses new challenges and new achievements like in a game. Life is a cruel merchant. You always need to trade things. In my case, I trade minimum 120 days abroad to coordinate all the projects internationally. So I trade the time I'm going to spend with my son or with my family or with my friends. But in return, I have international recognition that makes me to address you tonight. So think about it. Each year, we were receiving new opportunities in new countries by making projects international. So you may be very fresh today but your education is not enough. Your education in a good college in the United States is not enough. You have to know more languages, more technological skills to be more successful in your lives. And sometimes you have to be more old school like in architecture. You have to have more hand skills than technological skills to find your niche in the professional world. Learn Chinese or French. Spoiler alert, Africa will be the next booming market. So if you're going to work in Africa, you have to speak French. If you don't speak French, you cannot work in Africa. Like I am. True times, I had to learn Russian to work in Russia because if you don't speak Russian, you cannot able to make projects in Russia in a proper way. You might all know the concept of 10,000 hours. The next chapter of my speech is taken from an article about it. In the book of Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell says that it takes roughly 10,000 hours of practice to achieve a mastery in every field. How does Gladwell arrive this conclusion is through studies that they did for so many years. He gave an example, when violin players in Berlin, in 1990s, in early 1990s, in Berlin, German studied violin students, especially they studied their practice habits in childhood, adolescence and adulthood. All the subjects were asked this question. Over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced? All of the violins had begun playing roughly five years of age with similar practice times. However, at the age of eight, practice times begin to diverge. By the age 20, elite performance averaged more than 10,000 hours of practice while the less able performance had only 4,000 hours of practice. The elite had more than double practice hours of less capable performance. Natural talent, not important. One fascinating point of this study, no naturally gifted performance emerged. If naturally talent played a role, we would expect some natural talents to float up to the elite level with fewer practice hours. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists find a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement, no shortcuts, no natural talents. The key is falling in love with your practice. The elite doesn't work harder than everybody else. At some point, the elites fall in love, what they do. So the practice turned into something that they love. Elite Software Developer is a programmer who spends all day pounding a code at work. After leaving work, she writes open source software on her own free time. Elite Football Player is the guy who spends all day in the practice field with his teammates after the practice. He goes home, opens the TV, but he watch strategical videos of the games that he played. Elite Architect Always Things and Alanize the Cities is visiting to find the inspiration and the clue of his next project. What's next? Now we have reviewed all these trends and business stuff, especially now. Yet even the midst of challenging economy, there are individuals and companies that prosper beyond expectations. Practice plays a major role. Tomorrow is the day that you begin to earn your living from your profession. So apply for the companies or positions in any field which employees spend their $10,000 at least. Choose your field and scale of the companies. Try to find a field in your practice which makes you more productive and happy. You are lucky. Your profession has various paths and positions. Now each profession is diverged. The hardest thing in life is being honest to yourself. Leasing your heart more than your brain to find out the niche to embrace your education and skills, then it is easy to fall in love with your profession. Do not forget, architect's creation is always compared to God's. It is interesting to see even the most powerful man like President Obama, declares once he wanted to be an architect. So no matter how powerful you are or what you achieved, there is always something that you wish to do more and more and it makes you more interesting at the end. So I end up, I want to end up my speech with one of my first and great memories that I had during my school years. It was structure 101 lesson and my professor came into the lecture hall with a big luggage. We were surprised, what is it inside? And he pulled out his reading glasses and he said, this helps me to read. Then the next thing is sunglasses and he said, it helps me to dry when it's sunny. The next thing is more interesting because he began to wear swimming goggles and we were in that class and we were just couldn't able to understand what's going on. Then the next thing is diving goggles. The next thing is welding goggles and he said at the end when we were so much scared that he might be crazy and so he said, guys, do you understand these goggles are very important in your lives to see things that you couldn't be able to see with your bare eyes. With my lecture, structure 101, you begin to see the buildings, its structural behaviors with your bare eyes, how they behave. So we never missed a lecture from that on. So you have your diploma as a graduate of your profession. It is your goggle now. Use it wisely to see clear, to observe and analyze clear and to respond wisely. Wisely, find your superpowers, train them and go save the world. The world always needs well-trained, hard-working, talented professionals. You make us proud today and don't forget to make plans for the next coming 10 years because after 10 years, when you see that you achieved your goals, you're going to be proud of yourselves too. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're going to move now to the hooding ceremony. I will announce each academic program and ask the academic dean and program director to come forward to present the hoods of the respective graduate candidates. As I identify each graduate degree, candidates please stand and remain standing until you come to the platform. It's now my pleasure to ask President Farrish to come forward for the hooding and conferring of graduate degree candidates. Will the candidates for the degree of Master of Architecture please stand and make your way to the stage? Will Dean Steven White and Associate Dean Greg Laramie please come forward? Matthew Paul Aleo, Master of Architecture. Emerson Thomas Ball, Master of Architecture. Master of Architecture. Master of Architecture. Christina Marie Cadigan, Master of Architecture. Christian Scott Caldwell, Master of Architecture. Master of Architecture. Richard Dayer, Master of Architecture. Alexander M. Delala, Master of Architecture. Marissa Demi Duvoss, Master of Architecture. Lee, Master of Architecture. Ken Guastafasti, Master of Architecture. Kualasen, Master of Architecture. Master of Architecture. Peter Lombardi Jr., Master of Architecture. Master of Architecture. Melongan, Master of Architecture. Gabrielle Bacon, Master of Science in Historic Preservation Master of Science in Historic Preservation Historic Preservation Chelsea Webster Towers, Master of Science in Historic Preservation Professor Jason Oliver, I want to make a special welcome to this hooding ceremony. I want to extend one to the inaugural MBA class of the Gabelli School of Business. This is a small, exceptional group of students who earned their undergraduate degrees and are to complete their graduate degrees. We're very proud of what they've accomplished of their status as trailblazers for the many students to come who will benefit from the graduate business education at Gabelli and for their very special status as members of the Charter MBA class. The Master of Business Administration Master of Business Administration Master of Business Administration Master of Business Administration Business Administration TAIJAN DALS spicy Please stand and make your way to the stage. Will Professor Razlungen McCormick and Professor Susan Pascarelli please come forward? The Master of Arts in Literacy Jane Dalsantto Master of Arts in Literacy The candidates for the degree of Master of Science in Internal Justice please stand and make your way to the stage. Will Dean Eric Bronson and Professor Sean Brunno please come forward. please come forward. DeCristofora, Master of Science in Criminal Justice. Master of Science in Criminal Justice. Evans, Master of Science in Criminal Justice. Master of Science in Criminal Justice. Burkado, Master of Science in Criminal Justice. If Master of Science in Cybersecurity, please stand and make your way to the stage. Professor Douglas White, please join Dean Bronson. Joseph Diaz, Master of Science in Cybersecurity. For the degree of Master of Science in Leadership, please stand and make your way to the stage. Will Professor Katrina Norvell please join Dean Bronson. Master of Science in Leadership. Ramzlin Short, Master of Science in Leadership. Candidates for the degree of Master of Public Administration, please stand and make your way to the stage. Will Professor Michael Hall please join Dean Bronson. Master of Public Administration. Master of Public Administration. Public Administration. Jeanette Kuhn, Master of Public Administration. Gibson Lamogus, master of public administration. Patrick O'Brien, master of public administration. Pyrrhus, master of public administration. Richardson, master of public administration. For the degree of master of arts in clinical psychology, please stand and make your way to the stage. Will Dean Benjamin, master of arts in clinical psychology. Pteros, master of arts in clinical psychology. Master of arts in clinical psychology. Kiki, master of arts in clinical psychology. Arts and Clinical Psychology, Arts and Forensic Psychology, please stand and make your way to the stage. Master of Arts and Forensic Psychology, Master of Arts and Forensic Psychology, Master of Arts and Forensic Psychology, Master of Arts and Forensic Psychology, all of the graduates. We wish all of the graduates tonight fulfilling meaningful professional lives as they make their mark in the world, their newly earned graduate degrees. Allow me to take this opportunity to invite all who are here to join our graduates, faculty, and staff for refreshments downstairs in our field house, following the conclusion of the ceremony. On behalf of the university, thank you all for joining us here today and for celebrating this graduate hooding and commencement exercise. Please rise now and remain at your seats for the recessional.