 Please stand for our national anthem, our virtual music this morning. Welcome to everybody, please be seated. So welcome to all of our families and friends, the faculty and staff and members of the class of 2021. We're here today to celebrate your success and truly having accepted the greater challenge. The work that you've put in over the past two years is part of our online program while excelling in your busy lives at home in the midst of the pandemic is extraordinary. So congratulations on your accomplishments. And although this year's ceremony is different than most years, including last year's virtual ceremony, let me tell you how very excited we are to have everyone here gathered in person to celebrate all of you. It's awesome to see everyone here gathered today for this special day. This is not normally where we hold commencement and the online recognition ceremony. It's usually on the Watts lawn or the auditorium. So but I wanted to in particular take a moment to recognize all of the members of our team here at NCSSM for going above and beyond to make today's in person ceremony possible for the class of 2021 and for all of you and their families. We know that this time is an important accomplishment in the lives of our students and we wanted to make sure that we could honor and celebrate you to the best of our ability and this would not have been possible without the dedication and hard work of so many on our team here at NCSSM who have really planned and re-planned this event over the past few months. And I want to give a special shout out to folks on our academic programs team, Katie O'Connor, Angela Teeche, Kathy Miller, our online resource coordinator, Sue Ann Lewis, JJ Watts and Matthew Turn and our facilities team and tech and video teams for all of their efforts to make it possible to be here today as well as be live streaming the event for all of the members of the class of 2021 who could not be here today due to conflicts. So all of our to all of our graduates we are here today with a feeling of great pride and I know that our faculty and staff are really proud to have had an opportunity to get to know and work with you over these past two years. It's been a great honor and pleasure for all of us. Families, I know that you're filled with great pride in your son or daughter, your brother or sister who's worked so hard and achieved so much during their school career. Graduated from high school, Mark's one of the major milestones in all of y'all's young lives. And I hope you have or will take a little bit of time to reflect back two short years ago when you decided to enroll in NCSSM's online program. This was a bold decision. Each of you was a new member of this class, more than 182 strong from 60 counties and 138 different high schools from across North Carolina. Most of you didn't know each other at that time and here we are two short years later. Think of all you have done, all you've accomplished and how you have grown and grown as a community. Last month, last spring, about a month into the pandemic, I shared a video with all of you. And at that time, we were just beginning the pandemic and facing many unknowns about what the months and the year ahead might bring. And in that video, I said that I hope we would all seek out and find joys and insights where we could and that when we looked back on this time, we could look back and say that it was not what we couldn't do that defined this time at us, but instead what we could do and did do. You've all leaned into this and today is a time to celebrate your achievements and accomplishments thus far. Whether these accomplishments were in the classroom, in research, in the arts, serving your community and helping others, you've all accomplished so much and done it in ways that have really to me been astonishing. You've adapted to doing most things virtual and you did not let this stop you from all that you could achieve. It takes an extremely motivated and self-directed and incredibly driven individual to be successful in our online program even in the best of circumstances. Most of you have taken the very rigorous courses we offer in the online program over and above your load of advanced courses at your home high school along with your many other extracurricular and volunteer activities. So I hope when you reflect on the past year, you will think of all the many things you have done and accomplished because you are truly amazing. And I hope you recognize that. What I remember so fondly about this class is how you have in so many ways risen above the challenges that you face this year, not only to succeed as individuals but to find ways to support one another and try to help others in the broader community. Make no mistake, what you have faced in the past two years in the global pandemic has been a challenge of historic proportion. The challenge has been immense. Many have lost much, including all of you. But true to who you are, while you've regretted what you've lost, you still did. You've helped one another as well as those in your communities and you've sought ways to help others in spite your own needs. And I greatly appreciate how selfless all of you have been. You've also been actively engaged as our country and state and so many of our communities have been reckoning with and responding to racism and justice and violence that has defined the past two years, almost as much as the pandemic. The engagement of young leaders like yourself and many others, young and old, calling for change has already led to some positive change. But there's still so much more we can and must do. What brings me so much hope and this time of historic challenges and uncertainty is all of you. You're great intellect and knowing how to apply your knowledge, your compassion, your understanding that you are part of a community larger than yourselves and your desire to make things better than they are. Your resilience and action is what it takes to address great challenges like the ones that you've faced over the past two years and those that you will undoubtedly face in the future. This is who you are, what you've done and what you can do. So thank you for your courage, your dedication, your resilience and your grace. And I want to thank you in advance for what I know you will do in the years to come because we are all counting on you. As you leave NCSSM, each of you here today also owes a great deal to others who are here to celebrate your accomplishment. And I'd like to take a moment to recognize those who've helped you along the way, to our teachers, staff and administrators who've contributed in so many different ways over the past two years to the success of each student here. I applaud and thank all of you for your great work and caring. To the parents, guardians, family members and friends who've nurtured and supported all of you, I want to thank you for sharing your children with us these past two years and for supporting them all along the way for much longer. As a parent of three school-aged children and a college freshman, I know just how difficult being a parent has been this past year. While we are hopefully coming out of the pandemic and your daughter or son is now embarking on the next chapter of their lives as adults, your work is not over. They will continue to need you as much or more than ever just in different ways. So Class of 2021, I hope that as you go forward in the years to come, you will remember those that have helped you along the way and also remember the opportunity given to you these past two years by this great state through the support of the many NCSSM alumni before you. Remember your responsibility as those before you have to ensure that future generations of North Carolinians have even greater opportunities than you've had. So once again, I want to thank everyone for being here with us today on this special occasion as we celebrate this amazing Class of 2021. At this time, I'd like to introduce Melanie Chavrage, an instructor of biology to introduce our student speaker. Congratulations again. Thank you. Good morning. Let's take that off. Good morning, students, faculty, staff, families and friends of NCSSM. Congratulations, Class of 2021. You've had a historically unique experience in high school these two years, and I'm thrilled to be one of many to express my best wishes to you all. Our student speaker at this recognition ceremony is selected from speeches submitted by members of this class. A committee of faculty and staff reviewed all the entries and determined which speech most uniquely captured the NCSSM online experience. I am pleased to introduce the student speaker for the Class of 2021. Our speaker this year is from Charlotte and attended Providence Day School while completing NCSSM online. This young scholar has served as an NCSSM student ambassador. She's competed in Taekwondo internationally and is published in the Journal of Immunological Sciences. When we talked about who made an impact on her during her tenure at NCSSM, she mentioned specifically Mr. Andrews, the director of admissions for all of the support he has provided in helping her to become more comfortable with public speaking especially during all of those statewide informational sessions. She also appreciates all of her many NCSSM teachers for their enthusiasm and love for their discipline. It has helped her to develop her own passion for science, specifically anatomy and health. She will be continuing her remarkable journey at Duke University this fall in the Class of 2025, seeking a degree in neuroscience with the intention of continuing on to medical school. Her parents are here in the audience today cheering her on and so please join me in giving a huge welcome to the Class of 2021 speaker, Mira Patel. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. For all of us gathered here today, that is exactly what we have done. All of us who made that choice to take classes at the North Carolina School of Science and Math did not choose the easy path. We chose the hard one, the difficult one. We carved our own way past countless obstacles and boundaries to get to where we are today. So first and foremost, I want to say congratulations to everyone gathered here. Know that what you have accomplished simply by being here is a reflection of the incredible dedication and commitment you have displayed over the past two years and will continue to display as you move forward into the next chapter of your lives. I am incredibly grateful and proud to be a member of this remarkable online class of 2021 at NCSSM. Besides accountless opportunities that NCSSM affords its students in the sciences and math and in research, I have found that the most impactful part of NCSSM for me was not in fact the academics like I had originally thought. I came into NCSSM expecting to learn about things I loved, neuroscience, genetics, diseases, and I did. I came into NCSSM expecting to look... Oh, sorry. I came in expecting the classes to be challenging and they were. But what I didn't expect was that my love for science and academic rigor would lead me to meet incredible people and make countless friends. We bonded over difficult projects, exam study guides, and perhaps most importantly, our online weekends. I remember driving up to NCSSM and sitting outside the classroom in a circle with my classmates who I was meeting for the first time. We got to create genetically modified bacteria for our weekend activity and all I could remember thinking was how cool it was to actually see what we were learning in class play out in the lab. Perhaps one of my favorite memories from NCSSM was actually at another online weekend a couple months ago. Now, the story actually starts a few weeks before our online weekend when I got a surprise package in the mail. I picked it up, shook it around a little bit, trying to figure out what was inside. So I grabbed a knife, opened up the cardboard box, and reached my hand to feel around inside. Squishy. I stared into the package and there it was. Right in front of me, inside the box, was a brain. Now, it would have been a lot better, I think, if our teacher had actually told us he was shipping us a brain to dissect, as I later found out, on none other than Halloween morning itself. Regardless of the whole start to the online weekend, being able to dissect an actual brain was incredible. And I realized how fortunate I was to be a part of NCSSM, to be able to genetically modify organisms, to be able to dissect a brain, to be able to pursue what I was passionate about and be given the resources I needed to succeed and not only do well, but do exceptionally well because that's what NCSSM is all about. The truth is, all of us gathered here today are exceptional. NCSSM gives us countless opportunities, but it's up to us to use them, to take advantage of them. Not many people can do that. NCSSM challenges us, and not many people can face those challenges. Most fail. But what sets us apart is that we are not afraid of failure. We thrive on success, yes, but we also learn from our mistakes. Those opportunities and those challenges define NCSSM, but they also define us. My time at NCSSM has taught me how to take advantage of opportunities and pursue my passions. It has also taught me how to fail and how to get back up and try again. These are lessons that I've learned side by side with the incredible faculty and staff and students that make up this school and lessons that will follow me to college and beyond as I prepare for the next steps in my life. NCSSM alumni accomplish incredible things. They are the musicians, the scientists, the teachers, the doctors, the engineers, the mathematicians, the advocates, and even the astronauts that are constantly working to make our world a better place. And with the graduation of this class, the online class of 2021, I know that we will not only add to that legacy but forge our own. Thank you. Good morning. I'd like to invite the computational faculty to join me. Dr. Love, Dr. King, Mr. Payne, Mr. Davis. On behalf of the NCSSM online program, I am honored to introduce this year's recipient of the Dr. Robert M. Panoff Excellence in Computational Science Award. This award comes with a certificate of excellence and a scholarship of $250. Dr. Robert M. Panoff is the founder and executive director of the Shodore Education Foundation, a Durham-based computational science education nonprofit organization where three current NCSSM faculty members, Dr. Schmalbach, Dr. Love, and myself, learn the art of teaching computational science. At NCSSM, we have the largest computational science program in the country with 11 courses, and these courses are offered both in the online and in the residential programs. Dr. Panoff received his MA and PhD in theoretical physics from Washington University in St. Louis, undertaking pre- and post-doctoral work at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. As the principal investigator on several National Science Foundation grants that seek to explore the interaction of high-performance computing technologies in education, he worked to develop a series of interactive simulations which combine supercomputing resources and desktop computers. Dr. Panoff continues an active research program in computational condensed matter physics while defining and implementing educational initiatives at the Schoder Foundation. A Schoder hammer is a specialized type of hammer that is used to attach a very precious resource, that being gold, to metal objects. This hammer is designed in such a way that the gold sticks to the metal being plated and not to the hammer. The analogy here is that we are taking a very valuable resource education in the computational sciences and working to make sure that it sticks to the objects being plated. That would be you, the students. So, for those of you who have made it through one or several computational courses, consider yourself to have been Schodered and I bet many of you feel like you've absolutely been hit with the hammer. We are confident that the education you receive in the computational sciences will make you like gold, a precious resource to the scientific community. The Panoff Award is presented to the computational science student who best met the expectations of excellence in that field of study. As always this year, there were several students who met these expectations, but as always the selection was a difficult one. This year's award recipient is Akreti Lakshmanen from Levine Middle College High School in Mecklerburg County, and I invite Akreti to join us on the stage right now. Akreti excelled in five computational courses, computational chemistry, scientific programming, computational biology and bioinformatics, medicinal chemistry, and nanotechnology and research for her bioinformatics final project. She chose to create a lab activity that students in last summer's computing COVID-19 participated in. We had 80 students in that program, and her lab was used as the foundation for an activity on the structure and function of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. For her computational chemistry project, she developed a beginner's guide to computational chemistry that will be used for subsequent students new to that field. In her application for this award she wrote, I took the concepts I learned from my coursework and I applied them in a research environment. When I joined a research lab at the University of California San Francisco last summer, I was able to apply the knowledge I had acquired from my bioinformatics course to read papers and analyze behavioral and genetic data collected in the lab. Using my data, I built a machine learning model for detecting the social behaviors of voles with an exceptional accuracy of 98%. Akreti will be attending Stanford University in the fall as a biomedical computation major, and on behalf of the NCSSM online program, congratulations to this year's winner. I forgot my last chore. It is now my distinct privilege and honor to introduce our esteemed Dean of Humanities, Ms. Elizabeth Moose, who is going to introduce the Golden Catalyst Awards. Ms. Moose. Thank you, Mr. Gottwals, and welcome everyone. The Golden Catalyst is a prestigious award recognizing excellence among NCSSM online students. Golden Catalyst recipients embody the best that NCSSM has to offer by demonstrating exceptional academic growth and academic achievement, making exceptional contributions to the NCSSM community, creating meaningful connections from NCSSM to their communities, and using the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they've gained in this online program to provide leadership to their local, state, or national communities. We select recipients each spring. All seniors in the NCSSM online program are eligible for the award, and we'll now announce the winners. Our first recipient's instructor, who nominated her, describes her as a very fun student to work with. The instructor said, she always hangs around class after class to chat about her day-to-day life, but she also has a huge passion for learning academics. I've even had a chance to get to know her mother and her dog through our conversations. She's so enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm is contagious. This student will leave Panther Creek High School to attend North Carolina State University. Please join me in congratulating Lucy Koger. Thank you. Congratulations. Let's give Lucy another hand. It's meant to be a surprise. We love surprises. Our second recipient is the class president of her senior class at Clinton High School. She's Secretary of the North Carolina Native American Youth Organization, and she helped to present to this organization on behalf of NCSSM with another online student. She's served as an NCSSM online student ambassador and has assisted with a variety of programs this year, while also being the speaker at both our admissions middle school open house and the NCSSM Native American Pow Well. She's a proud member of NCSSM's club for Native American students. She'll attend University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill next year as a Warhead Scholar. Please join me in congratulating Zoe Locklear. Zoe was unable to join us today because of another commitment, but we'll make sure that she receives her award. And now it's my pleasure to introduce our Dean of Science, Dr. Amy Scheck. Okay, the next awardee. This student is a member of the AQUICON Club for Native American students at NCSSM and an online student ambassador. She was instrumental in the planning and execution of the 2021 NCSSM Pow Well, which was the first virtual Pow Well in the school's history. She was an active member of the online ambassador group and helped present to the North Carolina Native American Youth Council on behalf of NCSSM to promote all of our programs. One of her instructors said that she was a community builder in the classroom. Class was better for everyone because she was in it. She will attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Please join me in congratulating Lydia Ruth Mansfield. Lydia Ruth was unable to join us today, but we will make sure she receives her award. The next student, according to her nominator, this student has gone above and beyond this year by taking on the new student government role of Director of Online Residential Communications. As a rising senior, she helped to increase communication among the online residential students and offered her time and energy this year to do just that. Within the role, she planned and facilitated monthly socials virtually, which helped foster stronger relationships among students and integrated more online students into the social community of NCSSM. She will depart West Henderson High School to attend the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Please join me in congratulating Caroline Maxson. Yes, I don't know if there's a photo. I guess not. Congratulations, Caroline. I will now introduce the Dean of Engineering and Computer Science, Dr. Joe Labulio. Thank you, Dr. Scheck. The faculty member who nominated this student said she was an outstanding student in environmental engineering. Specifically, the teacher mentioned, she consistently turned in high quality work and was very engaged in class. She was thoughtful and helpful to other students. Over the previous summer, she conducted research on air pollutants and used that experience to help explain important concepts to other students. She used her research poster to describe her research and applying these concepts to a real situation was a wonderful addition to the class discussion. She will leave her home high school, Northwood High School, and attend North Carolina State University. Please join me in congratulating Jillian McNaught. For the second student I have the privilege to announce, she was one of NCSSM's most active online student ambassadors this year. She was unfailingly enthusiastic and gave great insight to the online program for students and families exploring NCSSM. She joined the last online ambassador Q&A from Chicago while visiting family and was always available to assist with a presentation or program. She went above and beyond all year to help admissions with our recruitment processes. She will depart Providence State School to attend Duke University in the fall. Please join me in congratulating Mira Patel. I will now introduce the Dean of Mathematics, Mr. Taylor Gibson. Hello and good morning. This student's nominator taught her in cryptography as a junior and said that as her first programming course, she did incredibly well. She was a model student, always asking questions, completing work on time, and most importantly helping others when she could. She had always come to office hours with questions well prepared in advance. She also worked with Dr. Hubbard in a summer research related to the recycling AI program. She contributed a picture and a text that was used in the online newsletter and was a member of the Conrad Spirit of Innovation team that was a summit winner. She was appointed to attend the United States Naval Academy. Please join me in congratulating Noelle Poovie. Noelle was unable to join us today, but we'll make sure she receives her award. And our final Golden Catalyst winner. This student was an online ambassador and was one of the most active members of the group this year. She helped with every program in her home county and with many programs in the surrounding counties as well. She also assisted with several other admissions programs and presentations throughout the year. She was a leader in the mathematics department working as a TA, where she helps students weekly in virtual meetings. She has also been an effective recruiter for online ambassadors. One rising online ambassador applied to the online program because of her encouragement and credit to this student with inspiring her to want to serve as an ambassador. She will depart Eugene Ashley High School in New Hanover County to attend Stanford University this fall. Please join me in congratulating Tannis Priddle. Let's give one more round of applause for all of our Golden Catalyst winners. In the awarding of certificates and medallions, I would like to welcome back to the stage Dean Shek to the podium and to begin calling the class of 2021 student names. We're excited to have so many of the online class of 2021 and their families in attendance today. For seniors and their families who are joining us by live stream, I will read the name of all members of the class of 2021. Marcellus Abbott. Mauro Unfollowa Agbebi. Mahek Agarwal. Nana A.C. Ajay Jumfi. Angela Allen. Kiara Alston. Isabella Antonio. Rachel Asante. Ethan Baker. Neha Balakrishnan. Callen Baruch. Emma Bentley. Martin Blue. Alexander Blumenthal. Troy Boland. Sadvik Bumpeli. Alicia Boling. Thomas Bristol. Ashlyn Ann Brown. Isabella Brown. Zachary Brown. Erin Capiliton. Dev Chedda. Emily Quello. Rachel Kraus. Andy Da. Prenati Reddy Dandu. Todd Davis. Hannah DeBoard. Phoebe Demers. Kabir Dehwan. Ian Donnelly. Andrew Drantel. Alana Drumgold. Catherine Duclo. John Duncan. Jada Edmark. Michael Eisenberg. Michael Erickson. Dylan Eschum. Catherine Esponda. Monica Itowski. Alexandra Izel. Abigail Faircloth. Diego Fleury Mendeble. Elena Singer Freeman. Jillian Fries. Thomas Gatewood. Alexander Georgiev. Shreya Goyal. Jacob Goldstein. Erin Green. Jonathan Grig. Elaine Guo. Rishi Gupta. John Hessian. Jelissa Hobbs. Tobias Hulet. Charles Humphries. Pascal Hunter. Queen Asia Hyman. Joe Danica Inigo. Advaith Iyer. Divya Iyer. Carson Jones. Rhea Cabra. Rohan Kallakar. Alexandra Karyvanova. Ari Kofil. Venkata Shrikar Kavirayuni. Alexis Kaye. Victoria Kayes. Mia Kazell. Thomas Kirby. Anna Kisley. Emma Kitchen. Dallas Knight. Lucy Koger. Olani Kolawole. Gannon Kools. Divya Koratejere. Joshua Kupras. Akreti Lakshmanan. Anna Lamis. Madison Lawson. Suhyun Lee. Zoe Mae Locklear. Anna Lopez. Joa Makasko. Caleb Maher. David Major. Lydia Ruth Mansfield. Lily Markland. Brian Marks. Caroline Maxson. Taylor McCarthy. Jillian McNaught. Chelsea Mendoza. Ian Meredith. Elijah Metcalf. Tyjay Monique Monroe. Dinesha Moore. Madeline Morfus. Davina Morris. Joanna Morris. Chuckwood Yuto Mosey. Steven Muglia. Shane Naja. Nikita Nanduri. Ej Narang. Asher Nijelscheb. Irma Magdalena Nelson. Sean Nguyen. Katie Notzel. Markwelland Norris. Jackson Nowecek. Madeline Nussbaum. Eli Obermiller. Alana Pascal. Kushboo Patel. Mira Patel. Aperba Podell. Karsten Noah Payne. Aiden Pittman. Claire Place. Nathaniel Jacob Poovie. Noelle Judith Poovie. Amber Pospistel. William Powell. Tannis Priddle. Penisara Purcell. Avanti S. Puvala. Samuel Ramdial. Luke Ramsdell. Avari Rector. Jennifer Rector. Emma Rogers. Kikoa Romero. Rafael Salas Garzón. Christopher Samohedny. Ashley Schaefer. Sarah Schmidt. Harper Schwab. Aditya Shankar. Arnav Singh. Carter Slawoski. George Sliman. Landon Smith. Patrick Seuss. Aubrey Spicola. Kyle N. Stanley. Sabreen Syed. Manisa Tandri. Nahar Tucker. James Thelen. Katie Thompson. Kobe Thompson. Noah Trexler. Victoria Tuggle. Megan Vehe. Layla Valentine. Kyle Van Horne. Shrikant Vasudevan. Maggie Vaughn. Sarvesh Venkitu. Navin Riteshalam. Maitri Vanam. Maya Weatherly. Ava Galant Wellner. Jessica Louise Wells. Spencer Westerbeek. Lena Westwood. Hannah White. Alexander Williams. Aria Williams. Jake Wilson. Jose Yu. Justin Zhang. Lisa Zua. Again, congratulations to the class of 2021. I also want to thank all of our families again for being here on this beautiful but warm morning, so I appreciate you guys being here to celebrate your graduates. And this has certainly been a crazy two years, and I'm so proud of how you've met these challenges with courage, hope, and grace. When people ask me what's special about NCSSM, one of the things I always mention is the community. It's a place that each of you help create. It's a place where you feel you belong. It's a place where you help others make sure they feel they belong. And a place where you all make each other better than you might have been on your own. So when I reflect back on this class, it's about how you truly live this and really redefine in many ways what community means. Our students in the online program always do an amazing job of creating a community that spans both the virtual and in-person experiences. In this past year, you've had to do this mostly virtual since you did not have most of the in-person opportunities that you normally would together on campus. And I know how tough this part has been for all of you and absolutely understand that it was not the same as you had hoped it might be, but you should be so proud of what you were able to do and what you did. You've all demonstrated so well that community is not about just a place, but it's about the people and what they make of it. And the Class of 2021 has lived this, and for that I am eternally grateful. I encourage you to take this spirit of community with you and share with others because there is an awful lot of what you all have that's needed in the places that you will go. And I want to leave you this morning with words from a favorite poet of mine, Maya Angelou. This poem was delivered at the Presidential Inauguration in 1993, and it was a poem that in its full text spoke to hope, courage, and grace, much as did the poet Amanda Gorman earlier this year. So this is the final stanza of the poem On the Pulse of Morning. And it reads, Here on the pulse of this new day, you may have the grace to look up and out and into your sister's eyes, into your brother's face, to your country, and say simply, very simply, with hope, good morning. So congratulations again. You have all exemplified courage, grace, and hope over the past two years, and I wish you all continued hope, courage, and grace in the years to come. So let us all please stand to honor the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics online class of 2021 as they recess. Once the graduates and platform party have left the field, families and guests can exit the field through either gate to join the social event. As a reminder, there are two activities for the social event. There's a box lunch out on the Watts lawn, which is that way. And then there's also a self-guided photo op tour around campus. Each welcome bag contains a map of the various campus landmarks on the tour, and at each landmark there'll be NCSSM faculty and staff that'll be there to chat with you while you take your photos and help you find your next stop. So you may head straight to the Watts lawn for your lunch if you want to, or you can start the photo op first. Just be sure to make sure you've picked up your lunch by 12.15. I look forward to seeing you all around campus, and I hope you have a great time. And please travel safely when you head home. I hope you all have a wonderful summer. Take care and be safe. Thank you.