Convocation Ceremony
Congratulations Graduating Class of 2024!
Convocation is a special time to celebrate and share the accomplishments of our exceptional Lakehead University graduates along with distinguished honourees. This spring, we will host our 59th Convocation Ceremonies and we look forward to seeing you there!
Message from Lakehead University’s President & Vice-Chancellor
Congratulations to you, our graduating class of 2024!
I hope you take this moment to really appreciate the magnitude of what you have done to get here while looking forward to what you will achieve tomorrow.
As someone who has done research in improvisation, I see the power of improvisation in your achievements over the past few years. Improvisation requires skill, practice, curiosity and a sense of adventure. It also relies on people working collectively. No matter what degree you are receiving today, you have developed your ability to improvise, to work hard, both as an individual and with others, to listen and to create new knowledge. These are skills you will carry with you for the rest of your lives.
Together with family and friends, we celebrate this milestone of your lives as you enjoy the result of your perseverance and achievement, and your ability to improvise in the face of the unknown.
I join our faculty and staff when I say we couldn’t be prouder of what you have accomplished, and we very much look forward to seeing what will inspire you and where your passions will take you.
Dr. Gillian Siddall, President and Vice-Chancellor
Lakehead University
Message from Lakehead University’s Chancellor
Bountiful Greetings Class of 2024,
Congratulations, and deep moral support, on the occasion of your convocation. As Chancellor, I am in awe of the families (chosen or birth), friendship groups, and members of the Lakehead family, it has taken to surround you marching to this day. Greetings to them.
I am in awe of YOU. None of that support is of any use unless each of you has the long attention span that it takes to complete what you started. Congratulations. Now pause and bask in the moment. Take the time to breathe in and thank those who need to be thanked. And thank yourselves.
On the day I am writing these words, I was a guest in two Lakehead Education classes who gave me tremendous hope and cause me to issue a caution. The students presented fabulous, informative, empowering lesson plans for Black History Month.
The caution: You are stepping into a world where there are wars and rumours of wars. I can see from the classes that you have been learning the techniques of peace making and cross-cultural communication. You are stepping into a world that, during your Lakehead years, began to think that equity, diversity, and inclusion were values the world needed to embrace. I warned the students: now there are whispers that perhaps diversity is the cause of troubles.
You are stepping into a world that, during your Lakehead years, began to see the value and the possibility of Truth and Reconciliation with Indigenous nations. Now that value and possibility are being questioned.
But you have a long attention span class of 2024. You are playing the long game. You have allies, and you know the value of peace, equity, inclusion, and reconciliation. You are ready. Pause, thank those who need thanking, and go forth, with bountiful congratulations and moral support from me.
Rita Shelton Deverell, CM, EdD
Chancellor