Congratulations to the Class of 2024
Every May we celebrate the hard work and achievements of our graduating class, but this year, we are particularly proud of their resilience.
These are the students who took their first college classes on Zoom. They lived alone in their dorm rooms. Their freshman year was void of many of the rites of passage they’d looked forward to: basketball games, concerts, Little 500. Their college career started with isolation and ended with war and protests.
Many students talked to me about the effect these events had on their sense of well-being and mental health.
But the Class of 2024 persevered and did not lose sight of their goals: learning, making media, making friends, experimenting, and thinking about what the next steps in their lives may be.
Many of them did not have a high school graduation ceremony, at least not a traditional one with appropriate pomp and circumstance. So I’m thrilled we were able to give them that earlier this month when we celebrated about 475 Media School graduates at our recognition ceremony and then formally turned the tassels the next day at Commencement. (If you weren’t there, you can watch our recognition ceremony online).
As a new dean, I was humbled by shaking 375 hands for the first time and talking about all that makes our school great including our students, staff, and faculty members, many of whom were in attendance. And speaking of great, wow — how about Emma Watson’s speech? Nice.
Congratulations, Class of 2024. It was an honor to celebrate you.
Recognizing our world-class faculty
Speaking of celebrations, our faculty have many accomplishments to celebrate this month as well:
We’re thrilled to support faculty research and creative activity through our Summer Faculty Fellowships and Research and Creativity Grant-in-Aid Program. Congratulations to this year’s recipients: Cara Caddoo, Mike Gruszczynski, Raiford Guins, Minjeong Kang, Esi Thompson, and Jason Peifer.
Strengthening our future
Come August, we’ll be strengthening our faculty even more with new hires. Alumna Nicky Lewis, BS’06, MA’12, PhD’15, will join us as an associate professor, and Brandon Wallace as an assistant professor, both in the area of sports media. Patricia Pizer will join us as a professor of practice in game design. And alumnus Edgar Jamison-Koenig, BS’11, MA’14, PhD’23, will be a visiting lecturer for the 2024-25 academic year. We’re thrilled to have them on our faculty.
I’ll be taking the summer off from monthly updates. Stay tuned to The Media School's news and events pages and social media to stay in the know in June and July, and I’ll be back in touch in August.
David Tolchinsky
Dean, The Media School at Indiana University
