Sam Fox School Celebrates Graduating Class of 2024

The Sam Fox School held its all-school recognition ceremony on Sunday, May 12, marking the completion of studies for students in art, architecture, and design. Many students also attended the university-wide commencement ceremony on Francis Olympic Field on Monday, May 13. 

Carmon Colangelo, the Ralph J. Nagel Dean of the Sam Fox School, began the ceremony with a group photo of the graduates before sharing his remarks. “You have successfully navigated your degree requirements at a time of unrest globally and here at home, and you have demonstrated great resilience,” he said. “I admire your tenacity and perseverance as so many aspects of our culture have changed and shifted. I believe the experiences of the last number of years will make you stronger as problem solvers, innovators, makers, and leaders.”

Colangelo went on to introduce the ceremony’s keynote speaker, Jared Della Valle, MArch/MCM ’96. A LEED-certified licensed architect, Della Valle is a co-founder and CEO of the design-focused development company, Alloy. He began his address with a ground rule: “forget everything I’m about to tell you. He went on to explain that it was now his job, as well as the job of parents, teachers, and mentors, to learn from, support, and invest in the value and values of the graduates.

“I’m here to encourage you to push, to demand that you take a leap to reconsider the course you’ve carefully curated in your mind, to be open-minded to change and capitalize on serendipity, and to trust instincts, and above all, to abandon all preconceived notions of the boundaries of what you thought you could achieve,” Della Valle said. “I want you to reflect on who you are, on what you believe. And I want you to alter the course of your life and your chosen profession, and perhaps to dare to change the course of our society. Simply put, I want you to manifest what you thought was unimaginable.”

Prior to the ceremony, students received awards and funding for future work. Among the most prestigious awards in art are the Jeffrey Frank Wacks Scholarship, awarded to Sarah Wang; the John T. Milliken Foreign Travel Award — both a monetary award and a residency at the school’s Cité internationale des arts studio in Paris — awarded to Benjamin Levine at the undergraduate level and Cora Trout at the graduate level; and the Caroline Risque Janis Prize in Sculpture, awarded to Rachel Park. In architecture, the Frederick Widmann Prize was awarded to Qingheng Yu at the undergraduate level and Celine Haddad at the graduate level; the Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal was awarded to Abraham Diaz; and Cody Heller was nominated for national recognition with the AIA Medal of Excellence.