University to host four 2025 Commencement ceremonies

05/06/2025

SUNY Cortland’s seniors and graduate students will advance to the next stage in their lives during Commencement weekend, Friday, May 16, and Saturday, May 17, in Park Center Alumni Arena.

The university’s graduate Commencement ceremony will take place on Friday. Three undergraduate Commencement ceremonies will be held on Saturday.

The undergraduate ceremonies will begin at 9:30 a.m., 2:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday. The graduate ceremony starts at 7 p.m. on Friday. A reception immediately following the graduate ceremony will take place in Park Center Corey Gymnasium.

A total of 1,555 seniors applied to graduate during the 2024-25 academic year and most of them plan to don cap and gown to receive bachelor’s degrees during the three undergraduate ceremonies. More than 5,000 of their guests are anticipated.

The university also will award 336 master’s degrees and 40 Certificates of Advanced Study, with many planning to attend the ceremony with their guests.

“Commencement is always a time of great joy at SUNY Cortland, especially for our graduates and their families,” said President Erik J. Bitterbaum. “It marks the culmination of years of dedication, perseverance and sacrifice. These ceremonies are not only a celebration of academic achievement but also a gateway to the exciting opportunities that lie ahead.”

This year, the 10 most popular majors at SUNY Cortland are:

physical education (210)
early childhood and childhood education (161)
business economics (134)
exercise science (127)
psychology (121)
sport management (108)
inclusive childhood education (76)
communication studies (67)
criminology (62)
speech and hearing science (53)

This year’s undergraduate Commencement speakers are Girish Bhat, a professor in SUNY Cortland’s History Department honored in 2010 with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching; Diane L. Gill ’70, a widely respected scholar on social psychology and physical activity and recipient of this year’s SUNY honorary doctor of humane letters; and Beth Klein, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor and professor in SUNY Cortland’s Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department.

Bhat, the coordinator of the Honors Program from 1995 to 1999, will present at 9:30 a.m. during the first ceremony. A specialist in Russian history, his course topics span law, the history of women in Europe and the Silk Road. He has advanced Cortland’s study abroad efforts, particularly in Southern India, and helped establish the continuing exchange partnership with St. Aloysius (Deemed to be University) in Mangalore.

Gill, whose teaching and scholarship has helped the world better understand the connection between physical and mental health, will speak at the 2:30 p.m. ceremony. A kinesiology professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, Gill’s textbook, Psychological Dynamics of Sport and Exercise, was lauded as fundamental within sport and exercise psychology. She has led the North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity.

Klein, who received a 2016 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service, will speak at the 7 p.m. ceremony. As campus sustainability coordinator, her advocacy helped the university earn silver honors from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) in 2025. Klein provides her teacher candidates with nature-based learning opportunities as they prepare to teach their own outdoor classrooms.

Sigal Keren ’23, M ’25 of Staten Island, N.Y., who graduates in May with a Master of Science in Communication Disorders and Sciences, will deliver the Graduate Commencement speech.

The president of the National Student Speech Language Hearing Association during the 2022-23 academic year, Keren has a 3.93 grade point average. She served as her department’s student facilitator for the Cortland Experience (COR101), a first-year seminar designed to aid new students. Sophia’s Garden, an institute located in the Center for Ethics, Peace, and Social Justice (CEPS), presented her with a teaching assistant award of excellence. Keren has worked part-time as a graduate assistant and as a student technology assistant. After graduation, she departs for Aventura, Fla., where she will work for a private practice serving a wide range of speech and language disorders. In the future, Keren hopes to specialize in the areas of augmentative and alternative communication and autism.

SUNY Cortland has graduated more than 90,000 students, and this year’s class will join the ranks of alumni who reside in all 50 states and nearly 60 other countries. Flossie Bell Lomax ’86, M ’90, C.A.S. ’96, Ed.D., president of the SUNY Cortland Alumni Association, will address the university’s newest alumni after all Commencement ceremonies.

Details on all 2025 Commencement ceremonies, including links to live video streams of the events, are available on SUNY Cortland’s Commencement website.

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