Good evening, everyone. Heller faculty, staff, friends, family, and my fellow graduates. My name is Calah McQuarters. I am a dual Social Impact MBA and Master of Public Policy graduate and I am deeply honored to be addressing you all on behalf of my world-changing MPP cohort.
I want to start this speech off by first directly addressing my MPP cohort and asking if one of my fellow MPP grads or any previous MPP grads who were fortunate to take a course with Professor Michael Doonan would please stand and tell me the 4 components of Skocpol’s polity-centered approach. I will also take the answer to the elements of liberalism? I’m kidding! But doesn’t it feel like both yesterday and a million years ago that we were sitting in our first class, learning these concepts? And look at us now. Survivors of Applied Regression and Capstone, masters of mixed-methods research and the policy analysis process, and armed with large post-it papers, ready to organize and lead the Question Formulation Technique at the drop of a dime. In other words, we did it!
I thought long and hard about what inspirational, life-shifting words I could share with you all today that you haven’t heard before. When you’re going through a master’s program, you find that motivational speeches are a must just to get through course readings on a random Tuesday some weeks. But what I settled on sharing, I sincerely wish for each of you to walk with, especially in the coming years. Don’t tell yourself no on behalf of others. I found myself sharing this advice with an admitted Heller MPP student earlier this semester. When I shared that statement with them, I didn’t think much of it. But for some reason, that statement stuck with me. I realized it’s because I needed it myself.
In the uncertain, unprecedented, and downright disturbing times we are in right now, where programs elevating social policy and social good are under daily threat, it feels difficult to hold hope. To hold a yes for ourselves and the daring goals we wrote in our Statements of Purpose 3 years ago. But the world needs our yes more than ever right now. We need you. I need each of you. To dare. Dare to try. Dare to ask. Dare to dream outside of the constraints and limitations the world will place on you because of your identity or your sheer gall to want more for yourself, your community, and your world. There’s a quote from a famous poem that says, “And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” So to you I say, be present. Be bright. Be “Knowledge advancing social justice.” And know as you do, each of you inspires me to do the same. And revives my belief in our individual and collective power to make the world a little better tomorrow and all the tomorrows after it.
So here’s to us! The next defenders of equitable education in preschools, community schools, and special education. The future policy makers in child care, disability services, plastic waste, and automation. The much needed advocates of criminal justice reform and immigration. And the climate change champions expanding geothermal networks and exploring reparations through green spaces.
Congratulations to you, the future world changers. Work starts on Monday!