After a tough year for Temple, Thursday’s commencement was a time to celebrate

The 70-something-degree, sunny weather on Thursday was perfect for commencement pictures, by the Owl statue, by the Bell Tower in campus center, in front of the stately Charles Library and dozens of other places dear to graduates who have called Temple University home.

Certainly, Temple and its students deserved it.

It’s been a tough year for the North Philadelphia-based university, which endured a 42-day graduate student worker strike, leadership tumult, and the death of an on-duty Temple police officer, which exacerbated off-campus safety concerns. And going back even further, these graduating seniors — at least the ones that started in fall 2019 — had their education upended when they were just freshmen and the pandemic hit.

» READ MORE: JoAnne Epps, named Temple’s acting president, says she can ‘calm waters’

But Temple’s 136th commencement was different. It was a time for smiles, celebration and appreciation for their university and their own educational journeys.

“I feel on top of the world,” gushed Nya Spencer, 22, a finance major from Hillside, N.J. “Just to be here in nice weather, a nice day, no masks. It’s just super relieving.”

And while safety has been a concern for the school community, she said she cherishes the education she got at the Fox School of Business.

» READ MORE: Temple should lead a collective effort to make North Philly safer, says long-awaited report

“They really prepared us for the real world and taught us crucial skills,” said Spencer, who already has a job lined up in Houston.

Other students agreed.

“I wouldn’t have traded it for the world,” said Nick Diminick 22, an engineering technology major from Danville.

Ben Kauffman, 30, an adult organizational development major from Bryn Mawr, said he struggled with some mental health issues in his early 20s and then Temple proved to be a place where he could take care of himself and thrive.

“Temple just provided a spot for me to really come into my own and to really find a program that matched with my desire to educate and help people,” he said.

He also is proud to have attended a university with employees who would strike for better pay and benefits so they can have better lives, he said, referring to the strike by the Temple University Graduate Students Association.

Despite the early disruption of the pandemic, Erika Narducci said her daughter, Amelia, a graphic design major, was able to attend classes at Temple’s Rome campus in 2021. And though Narducci said she heard about safety challenges on the Philadelphia campus, she believed her daughter was safe and well-protected.

“I felt very confident in the school in that they were doing the best they could,” said Narducci, an oncology social worker from Glen Mills. “We also think she received an excellent education.”

Spencer, Diminick, Narducci and Kauffman were among more than 9,500 students who collected degrees at Temple this spring, coming from 115 countries, as far away as Indonesia. One graduate was getting a fifth Temple degree. The oldest was 72.

And the youngest was Egypt Cann, 19. Her mortarboard noted the speed with which she got her degree: “Why do it in four when you can do it in two?”

She took dual enrollment classes in high school in Bermuda and graduated with her associate’s degree, then transferred to Temple.

Her family was in town to celebrate, wearing T-shirts with her name and face on it.

At Temple, she said she became comfortable meeting new people and living in a city.

“Just finding myself really,” she said. “I’m kind of sad to leave.”

But she’s excited to start work in the human resources department of a Bermuda law firm in June.

It was a big day, too, for JoAnne A. Epps, a longtime faculty member, law school dean and provost who presided over her first commencement as acting president. Looking out at the crowd of black gowns and hats inside the Liacouras Center, Epps — who took the helm at Temple after Jason Wingard resigned — said she thinks about what their futures hold.

“Some of them are going to be famous,” she said. “Some are going to help people. Others are going to establish policies that change the way we live and think about things that matter. Others are going to be caregivers. It’s monumental.”

She still recalls the deep feelings from her own graduation ceremony at Trinity College, where she was among the first class of female graduates, an experience that was challenging. She recalled how proud her family was. Each graduate only got four tickets to the ceremony and she had 17 relatives who had driven to Hartford, Conn., to watch.

“So my father went in with three people, came out with four tickets,” she said. “Went back in with three people, came out with four tickets. All 17 of my family got in.”

Remembering how important it was to her family, Epps asked parents, guardians, aunts, uncles and other loved ones to stand and be applauded for helping graduates on their journey.

Students also heard from commencement speaker Gov. Josh Shapiro, whose parents graduated from Temple. He recounted some of the difficulties and tragedies Temple and its students faced, including the pandemic, a drop in enrollment and increased off-campus crime — he said aloud the name of slain Temple Police Sgt. Christopher Fitzgerald and encouraged the audience to remember him.

But he said the challenges have made the class of 2023 stronger.

“You are the ones I want on the front lines dealing with the big challenges of tomorrow,” Shapiro told them. “You have that resiliency. You got knocked down and then you got back up, even stronger. You’ve got the tenacity to fight for the better world that you know you deserve.”

Pennsylvania, Shapiro said, needs Temple to thrive, a comment that brought applause from the audience.

“I’m here today to make clear that I support the efforts of this board, the leadership of Temple, the students, the new alums, all of you who have a voice in this work to confront these challenges and help see us through,” he said. “I believe in Temple and I believe in this community, and I believe as a Commonwealth, we must ensure its success.”