Antioch University held seven commencements between May and September to celebrate the over 1,200 students who graduated and became alumni over the last year. Commencements were held on all five of Antioch’s campuses—Los Angeles, New England, Santa Barbara, Seattle, and Yellow Springs—and two further commencements were held on the campus of Otterbein University, which is Antioch’s partner institution in the Coalition for the Common Good.
New England, which graduated 450 students this year, held commencement on May 11. New England’s ceremony featured student commencement speakers. Seattle had 299 graduates and held commencement on June 9. Santa Barbara graduated 127 students and held their ceremony on September 12. The Los Angeles campus, with 358 graduates in the last year, held commencement on June 23. The LA ceremony was split by the program into three events throughout the day due to space constraints and COVID precautions. At the first event in the morning, Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and University Provost Chester Haskell presented longtime faculty member Al Erdynast with an honorary doctorate. (Read our recent Antioch Alumni Magazine profile of Erdynast.)
Commencement festivities took place in Ohio over three July weekends in a row. The Doctor of Education program held commencement at Riley Auditorium in the Battelle Fine Arts Center on Otterbein University’s Westerville campus on July 13. The School of Distance and Extended Education, from which 103 students graduated, held commencement on July 20 on Antioch University’s campus in Yellow Springs. And then, on July 27, the Graduate School of Leadership and Change (GSLC), with 28 graduates, held its commencement again on the campus of Otterbein University. Chancellor Groves gave welcoming remarks at two of the three ceremonies. New AU Board member Kenny Alexander, 2019 GSLC Alum and Mayor of Norfolk, Virginia, addressed the 2024 GSLC graduates on behalf of the Board of Governors.
For the Doctor of Education program’s commencement ceremony, the event held on the Otterbein University campus captured the emerging partnership behind the Coalition for the Common Good. “It was a wonderful gathering that brought together Antioch and Otterbein,” says Lesley Jackson, the Chair of the Doctor of Education program. (Read our recent Common Thread profile of Jackson.) She explains that students, faculty, and staff were “warmly welcomed to Otterbein’s campus by John Comerford, President of Otterbein, on our opening day of residency.” She says that this “warmth was carried forward through a moving commencement message presented by Coalition for the Common Good’s Director of Education, Sue Constable, who stood in when our scheduled speaker couldn’t attend.”
Otterbein hosting Antioch University commencements has proved that the founding idea of the Coalition—that it works toward “promoting the common good, including preserving and improving our pluralistic democracy and advancing social, racial, economic, and environmental justice”—is taking shape with the union of the two universities. As Jackson puts it, “This partnership has represented a synergy of purpose, celebration, and great things to come.”
