'Redefine success,' Harker tells graduates

Click here for video, slideshows and more coverage of Commencement.

As graduates gathered under early-morning sun on the practice fields surrounding Delaware Stadium on Saturday, they revealed a mix of emotions through their smiles, hugs and tears.

For graduating senior Samantha Blinder, the Commencement exercises were bittersweet.

"I'm happy to not be in a classroom anymore, but leaving my friends and us separating is going to be a very big adjustment," she said as she lined up to march onto Tubby Raymond Field for the ceremony

Blinder, one of the 3,400 students who participated in Commencement, said it's hard to explain why her time at the university meant so much to her.

"You have to come here and experience it and see what it is for yourself," she said. "It is what you make of it and I made the best four years as far as I'm concerned. It was the best four years of my life and I'd do it again in a heartbeat."

Justin Hughes, lining up nearby, had similar feelings.

"I'm excited to leave, actually," Hughes said. "But I had a lot of good times and a lot of good memories."

He said he plans to work for a year and then attend graduate school in order to become a pharmacist. However, his efforts to secure a full-time job have been unsuccessful and he's nervous about the current state of the economy.

The economy was a common theme among students and the speakers at the Commencement, the university's 160th such ceremony.

University President Patrick Harker warned graduates that they will most likely be competing for entry-level jobs against older people with more experience. He urged the students to "redefine success" by giving their time and energy to a cause they believe in.

"You don't have an obligation to do anything meaningful with the advantages you've been given, but you do have an opportunity," Harker said. "And I urge you to take it. Let that be your measure of success."

Giving the keynote address, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman told graduates that they need to be the "re-generation" generation, one that renews and refreshes America.

"The main task of regeneration is to help us as a country to get back to doing business with good values and making things of real value," Friedman said.

He said the nation's problems right now are more than just a recession.

"It's not just an economic event," he said. "No, it was just the market and Mother Nature telling us in their own ways that the system for growth that we had settled into was not sustainable for growth either economically or ecologically."

Friedman faulted his own generation for living beyond its means while saving problems - both economical and environmental - to deal with later.

"We've been what my friend Curt Anderson calls the grasshopper generation - eating through just about everything like hungry locusts," he said.

Friedman charged the graduates with restoring the virtues of their grandparents' generation, the Greatest Generation.

"There is nothing the country needs more right now than a good injection of old-time values of right and wrong, of how we do business with each other and with nature," he said, drawing cheers from the audience.

Friedman congratulated the Class of 2009 for its senior gift of solar panels for university buildings. The class raised $100,000, including money donated by students, parents and alumni.

"It tells me you understand we can no longer be sloppy anymore and just say 'We'll fix it later,' " he said. "It tells me that you understand the cold, hard truth that 'later' is over."

At the ceremony, attended by 23,000 graduates and family members, the university gave honorary degrees to Friedman, as well as Carol Hoffecker, a retired history professor; Baroness Susan Greenfield, a British neuroscientist; Charles Lewis, an investigative journalist and university alumnus; and David Satcher, a former U.S. Surgeon General.

Gov. Jack Markell presented awards to the four students who maintained a 4.0 GPA during their entire time at the university -- Vincent Baldanza, Keith Pluymers, Tessa Reisinger and Lauren Wansor.

Last updated Sun. May 31 at 1:15 a.m.

Click here for video, slideshows and more coverage of Commencement.

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