Master’s students earn degrees at 152nd Commencement
At McDaniel’s 2022 Graduate Commencement ceremony, 209 students celebrated the achievement of earning their master’s degrees, conferred from 19 programs. Keynote speaker and honorary Doctor of Journalism recipient Dan Rodricks, a long-time columnist for the Baltimore Sun, encouraged them to move forward with courageous values.
At McDaniel’s 2022 Graduate Commencement ceremony, 209 students celebrated the achievement of earning their master’s degrees, conferred from 19 programs. After a return to combined undergraduate and graduate ceremonies last year for the Class of 2020 and Class of 2021, this year’s Graduate Commencement is the first time since 2019 that master’s candidates were celebrated at their own ceremony.
The graduating students hail from 12 states and the District of Columbia, and four countries, including the U.S., Liberia, Nigeria, and the Philippines. A multigenerational class that ranges in age from 23 to 66 years old, most of the graduates earned their degrees in Curriculum and Instruction, Counseling, School Librarianship, Educational Leadership, and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).
(l-r) Allison E-Tseng Chaang, Tze Ning Wong, and Sher Mayne Lee had the distinction of being the first to graduate from McDaniel’s newest hybrid master’s program in Data Analytics.
Three students — Allison E-Tseng Chaang, Sher Mayne Lee, and Tze Ning Wong — had the distinction of being the first to graduate from McDaniel’s newest hybrid master’s program in Data Analytics, which launched in the fall of 2020. Like many of McDaniel’s master’s candidates, both Chaang and Wong were able to work full-time while attending the hybrid program. Wong shared, “I highly recommend the program to students wanting to either get initial exposure to the data space or wanting to dive deeper into data analytics as it covers a wide range of topics.”
President Julia Jasken congratulated the newest class of master’s students on their accomplishments on the Hill, and concluded, “I am excited to see where your creativity, resilience, and hopes take you in life, and I can’t wait to hear your stories when you return home to the Hill. McDaniel is changed because of you, and I have no doubt you will make the same impact as you follow your hopes into the future.”
President Jasken then welcomed the 2022 Graduate Commencement speaker Dan Rodricks to the podium. In addition to serving as the keynote speaker, Rodricks was conferred an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree for his dedication to the pursuits of journalism.
A longtime columnist for The Baltimore Sun and former radio and television host, Rodricks has earned multiple awards over his five decades in journalism and broadcasting. His column is one of the longest running in the nation and earned him the National Headliner Award for commentary and the Heywood Broun Award from the Newspaper Guild. His “Dear Drug Dealers” series, a public call for an end to criminal violence in Baltimore, won the 2006 Excellence in Urban Journalism Award from the Freedom Forum and the Enterprise Foundation.
Dan Rodricks delivered the keynote address. Rodricks was also conferred an honorary Doctor of Journalism degree for his dedication to the pursuits of journalism.
In his remarks to the graduates, Rodricks began by sharing his perspective on choosing a career to love, as someone who has worked in journalism for 50 years. Beyond his advice to “follow your bliss,” he also stressed the importance of having courageous values. He described writing obituaries as an up-and-coming young journalist and being struck by how, in the memories of loved ones, a person’s character always outshone their professional credentials.
He went on to add that the way others see us matters and although being a role model is a lot of responsibility, “to build a better country, a better civilization, we all need to be role models — however incomplete or inadequate we feel, if not officially, at least in the way we walk through this life.”
Rodricks concluded by telling the graduates that they can achieve many things by acting with intention: “being a volunteer, being generous with your time, lending a hand to someone in need, doing things, large or small, that others will remember when they write your epitaph.”
One graduate award was announced during the ceremony:
For her demonstrated academic excellence and service to individuals who are Deaf or disabled, Rosa Yoder Vader Wyse of Philadelphia, who has earned a master’s degree in Deaf Education, is the 2022 recipient of The B. Jill Brooks Hodge Professional Development Award.
Vader Wyse earned her bachelor’s degree in Sign Language Interpreting from Goshen College in 2014. She later discovered her passion for working with Deaf children while studying abroad in Peru, where she stayed with Deaf host families in Lima and Cuzco and volunteered as a paraeducator in a Deaf classroom. She has held various roles at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf (PSD) and, in 2018, was named the school’s art teacher. That same year, she began to pursue her graduate degree in Deaf Education at McDaniel, during which she has continued to demonstrate her passion for teaching Deaf visual art (De’Via) at PSD through innovative bilingual methods.
“I am excited to see where your creativity, resilience, and hopes take you in life, and I can’t wait to hear your stories when you return home to the Hill." -President Julia Jasken
As the conclusion of the Graduate Commencement ceremony, the new graduates were welcomed into the College’s Alumni Association by Alumni President Lindsey Browning ’10.
