Today is commencement day at Wellesley. It is indeed a day of celebrations. As I was walking from the location, where we all have been asked to park, to my office, I could see the proud parents and relatives of graduates walking towards the tent to get the best possible seats. This year, because of the weather, the ceremonies will be held under a tent. That didn’t seem to damper the enthusiasm of the visitors.

For those who are graduating, about 569 this year, Congratulations on your achievements at the College! I hope you all received the best education in not just the academics, but also about life. I sure hope that we, from Library and Technology Services supported you through this journey well. Initial indications from the senior survey appears that we did well.

I want to thank all the LTS student employees (I believe 39 of them) who are graduating  today for their hard work and excellent contributions over the past years that they worked for us. We cannot do our work well without our student employees!

We hope our students enjoyed working for LTS. We have a fairly large contingent of students who work for us in several areas ranging from the service desk in the libraries, the helpdesk and Interlibrary loan. They put in several hours a week and take their work seriously. I hope that the work experience at LTS has prepared them for whatever it is that they will be doing after graduation.

We provide training and opportunities for advancement. Increasingly, we are also employing students to assist us in supporting some of the advanced areas such as makerspace. It is really exciting. We also have been fortunate to have gifts from generous alumnae that allows us to offer 1 or 2 year employment to a couple of recent graduates. This program has helped several alumnae to go on to pursue exciting related opportunities afterwards.

Our staff take enormous pride in their students and become an advocate for them in many different ways, be it paying them fairly or accommodating their schedules based on the fact that the students’ primary focus at the College is to succeed academically.

There are many opportunities in LTS for the students to incorporate several .technologies in teaching, learning and research. Blended Learning Initiative or High Performance Computing support are two areas that fall in this category. I hope that in the near future we can develop internship programs in some of these areas that qualify for the internship credit program that was recently introduced at the College.

Best wishes to all of our graduating seniors. Despite the fact that there is a lot going on in the real world, I am sure that you will all do well! Congratulations again and enjoy your great accomplishments.