The Class of 2026 graduates with hope, pride, and a call to act on empathy

This morning in Gentile Arena, hundreds of newly anointed graduates of the School of Education and School of Environmental Sustainability crossed the stage to shake hands with Loyola University Chicago President Mark C. Reed and walk on to the next chapter of their lives.

The fully packed ceremony marked an auspicious start to the University’s 156th annual Commencement Week from Tuesday, May 5, through Saturday, May 9, which includes 12 ceremonies, along with receptions and academic events honoring student achievements. This year’s graduating class represents 49 states and 89 countries, with more than half of graduates hailing from Illinois. They will join nearly 200,000 Loyola alumni around the globe, including nearly 100,000 alumni in Illinois.

After a stirring opening processional accompanied by music of the Loyola Wind Ensemble, Lee Hubbell, director of Loyola University Chicago Opportunities in Catholic Education, gave a hopeful invocation: “We ask that we use this education and our experience at Loyola to help create a world where all are welcome, where resources are shared, where all are treated with respect and dignity, where war is no more, poverty vanishes, and we walk together as a global family,” Hubbell said.

Shortly after, student speakers Emily Hee Soo Choi (BS ‘26), an elementary education major who graduated Magna Cum Laude, and Ian Nicholas Sloey (BA ‘26), an environmental policy major and member of the Alpha Sigma Nu honor society for Jesuit universities, took the stage to share words of inspiration for their peers.

“I see before me a generation of leaders and caregivers bound for the betterment of the world,” Sloey said. “As educators and environmentalists, we have the skills to plant the seeds for a better future, both in the nature that supports us and for those who come next.”

This set the stage for keynote speaker, Emily Graslie, an artist, science communicator, museum professional, and multimedia producer best known for her role as host of the PBS series’ Prehistoric Road Trip and In Our Nature. After opening up about her fears to graduate from the University of Montana, where the “impending departure from college hit me like a ton of bricks,”  she offered an inspiring story of a visit to the university’s natural history museum. “My life changed forever that day, but to what extent I had no idea,” she said. “I found solace in that museum, filling my brain with learning every aspect of running a research collection.”

Years later, Graslie started a Tumblr blog, which caught the attention of YouTube influencer whose encouragement convinced her to launch an educational YouTube channel called The Brain Scoop. The success of the channel eventually landed her a position as the Field Museum’s Chief Curiosity Correspondent. “Your dream job may not and probably doesn’t even exist yet,” she told the expectant graduates. “So liberate yourself from the expectation you can have only one career path in your life…Curiosity is one of the most powerful tools available to every single person here,” she said.

To conclude the ceremony, Reed shared a remark he overheard during the final lecture of History 102, “Western Ideas & Institutions from the 17th Century,” taught by esteemed longtime Loyola faculty member Professor Bob Bucholz.

“The most important thing we do here (at Loyola) is not to make you  more marketable (although we hope we did that), but to make you more human, more knowledgeable, more thoughtful, more compassionate, so that you go forth from this University into the big, wide world and continue to educate yourselves, be good citizens—of your community, your country, your world—treat others with civility, and recognize and embrace that a most essential attribute of a good person, a successful human being, is empathy—and the courage to act upon it.”

Following a rendition of Loyola’s alma mater, bagpipes sounded and graduates spilled from Gentile Arena to the West Quad lawn. Family, friends, and loved ones hugged, laughed, cried, and snapped pictures of graduates to commemorate the time-honored rite of passage.

Noel DeLaMar (EdD ‘26), an assistant principal at East Aurora High School, held his 3-year-old child in his arms, the boy’s Adidas sneakers dangling at his chest. DeLaMar is hopeful the journey to earn a doctorate will lead to career advancement and a position as a superintendent. “My wife was kind of the backbone of everything…being able to let me do it and put everything else on pause,” he said.

Audrey Jean Rajski (BSEd ‘26), an elementary education major who graduated Magna Cum Laude, spoke fondly of the friends she made during her time as a student. Her stole was decorated with robots, rainbows, and other drawings from students at Stephen K. Hayt Elementary School, where she student-taught this year. “It’s bittersweet, but I’m just so proud of all my friends in the cohort that I made along the way,” Rajski said.

For Michael Gams (BS ‘26) an environmental economics and sustainability management major who met his girlfriend, Daphne Kraushaar (BSEd ‘26), as a first-year student in Francis Hall, stepping outside onto the West Quad as a graduate brought with it a feeling of elation. Next fall, he plans to continue his education at the University of Rhode Island, where he will pursue a master’s degree in environmental economics and potentially a PhD.

“I feel confident. I feel like Loyola provided me an excellent education and as Dr. Reed said, made us better humans. I feel more confident to tackle environmental-related issues and social justice issues, and I’m really fired up for the future.”

View our favorite photos from each school’s commencement ceremonies below.