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From the stage in Ira Allen Chapel, Professor Miller Celestin addressed the Nursing Class of 2024 with congratulations and a call to practice with intention and love.

"As I look at your faces, I think back to our first class together," Celestin said. "I started off with what I thought nursing was - and that's just difficult conversations with strangers, often on the worst day of their life." Celestin recalled sharing a case study of a woman he cared for who was critically ill, and who, in her worst moment, thought only of friends and family.

"What she prioritized highlights what I believe is the most important concept in existence, and key to what being a nurse is: relationships," said Celestin. He offered another example of the role of relationships in nursing practice - the discovery of a 15,000-year-old healed femur fracture, considered by anthropologist Margaret Mead to be the first evidence of human civilization.

Celestin explained that for a person with such a severe injury to survive, they would have had to rely on the relationships they had formed with people who were willing to help.

"Those who cared for this person did so selflessly and at the risk of their own survival," he said. "We must assume it was because they valued this person and they refused to let them die.”

Celestin went on to describe the fundamental roles that love, empathy, and relationships have always played in nursing practice - and humanity.

"Your ability to empathize and to love must be intentional, always fostering your connection with the person who's in front of you," said Celestin. "Remember this when you look into the eyes of someone who's having the best day or the worst day: all they want is a human connection."

Celestin also called attention to the ways that relationships, and many lives, are devalued within modern health care systems, as profits are prioritized and marginalized voices silenced. He urged the new nurses to push back against these trends.

“Whether it be in quiet rooms with just you and your patients . . .or leadership positions. . . or at the nurse's station. . .every act, every word, every decision must be intentional if you want to restore the values that make us human,” said Celestin.

Following a standing ovation to Celestin’s remarks, Professor Brandon Brown called each student to the stage to receive their nursing pin. The 113 new nurses chose to enter the healthcare professions during the uncertain times of a worldwide pandemic, amid radical loss and change.

When each student received their pin, class speaker Quinn O’Reilly took the stage. O'Reilly shared memories and highlights of the �պ����� nursing experience with his classmates and complimented the clinical faculty for their patient teaching and influence in the students' lives. He also echoed Celestin’s words about the value of the experience of caring for others.

“During clinical, we experienced what it meant to be a nurse - to be someone that advocates for their patients’ physical, mental, emotional, spiritual or religious needs - to be someone that goes to great lengths to ensure that those who have been entrusted to our care are treated with dignity, respect, and honor,” said O’Reilly. “It's truly a blessing to have the ability to interact deeply with only a few patients at a time, to give all our attention to them. To really listen to their story and attend to their needs.”

History of the Pinning Ceremony

Florence Nightingale started the pinning tradition more than 150 years ago by presenting her nursing school graduates with the symbolic “badge of courage” to encourage them to faithfully serve the injured, sick, and dying in challenging circumstances.