Michael Meth

Interim Dean, College of Professional and Global Education

Hello everyone, my name is Michael Meth and I'm the Interim Dean of the College of Professional and Global Education, as well as the Dean of the San Jose State University King Library.

It is wonderful to be here with you today to celebrate the 2024 iSchool graduates, their families, friends and loved ones, along with your professors and the staff of the iSchool and the college.

As is tradition in their college, we host a celebration before the formal graduation ceremony that will take place next week. This is one more chance for you to say hello to your classmates, meet your professors and the staff who have supported you all the way throughout your studies.

And truly, a celebration it is. In fact, this time of year is the highlight of my semester. To be here with you as you are at the end of your journey as students in the School of Information is the greatest of honors.

To the graduates, you have worked hard. You've learned a lot. You've gathered experience and knowledge along the way. And I have no doubt you've made some wonderful connections and hopefully gained a few friends along the way. I have every faith that you are now well prepared to go out into the world and do incredible work.

The degrees you have earned at SJSU, along with all that you have to offer, will present you with great opportunities in the future, opportunities in fields that may be well established already, or perhaps just on the cusp of emerging. The rapid advances in AI, robotics and big data, to only name a few areas, will significantly impact your careers.

Along with these new areas will come questions and challenges in cybersecurity, governance of these systems and technologies, and questions about their ethical uses. All of these technologies will touch each and every one of us in our society. However, your degrees in information have prepared you well to be active participants in these developments. Your degrees and knowledge will put you in leadership positions in your organizations where you can guide and shape these conversations. I am so excited for you and our collective futures.

Before I wrap up, I want to just briefly reiterate what Dr. Chow already shared. We have nearly 500 graduates this semester alone. That is truly amazing. So give yourselves a round of applause for that one. I also want to quickly just point out again, a couple of things, which is you're joining an incredible alumni network of 13,000 alumni worldwide. These are alumni that will help you throughout your careers that you're going to meet and that will bring you together in a shared experience.

I want to share one more exciting announcement with you all. Starting in the fall of 2024, the College of Professional and Global Education, where the School of Information is housed, will become the College of Information, Data and Society. This name change took a lot of work and effort, and many of you contributed to your thoughts when we sent out the survey earlier this year. So in the future, don't be surprised if you receive emails and communications from the iSchool and the new College of Information, Data and Society at San Jose State University.

To the graduates one more time, you are now joining an incredible group of alumni and professionals. Please stay connected with each other, with the college, with the university, and reach out to folks in the network.

We're always here to talk, we're always here to advise, we're always here to chat and help out.

Congratulations again to all of you.

Thank you.