Hard work pays off for BU graduates

Hundreds of family members and friends cheered their loved ones on at Brandon University as Faculty of Science and School of Music students graduated Thursday morning.

Faculty of Education graduates were handed their diplomas in the afternoon.

“I feel great,” graduate Kendal Giesbrecht, the Faculty of Science valedictorian, said after the morning ceremony ended.

“It’s a surreal feeling — very proud and happy to be here,” she said.

“We’ve all put in the work, the blood, the sweat, the tears, the caffeine to get to this point, and we did it together.”

BU president Christine Bovis-Cnossen told graduates at the morning ceremony that their actions will help shape the world and build a stronger community.

“Whether you go to research, health care, education, perform innovation or use your degree to move forward in paths that do not yet exist, the world needs your creativity and your curiosity,” Bovis-Cnossen said.

In total, 530 students are expected to graduate at four ceremonies — two on Thursday and two more today.

During the ceremony, Giesbrecht congratulated her classmates and told them they have reached a major milestone.

“We should all be proud as we reflect on all we have accomplished to get here,” she said.

Giesbrecht is expecting to work at Pfizer in Brandon in an analytical chemistry position.

She said she’s interested in the field as it’s like “solving a mystery every day in the lab.”

“That has ignited a spark in me with analytical chemistry, and getting to work with instrumentation is very exciting to me,” she told the Sun.

She will be working on a drug used to treat menopause symptoms.

Asked about the rise of artificial intelligence and what she thinks about graduating at the same time, Giesbrecht said she hopes the technology doesn’t “invade” her field, as one mistake it makes can have very negative repercussions.

“Certainly not excited about AI,” she said. “I feel like it takes away a lot of creativity and a lot of human touch.”

Computer science graduate Great Adamu said the way technology has been changing over the last couple years is “a little bit more scary” than if he graduated seven years ago, where there would also potentially be more money to be made in his field.

Now, it’s important to have more practical skills to keep up, he said.

Adamu said he took computer science because it’s all he knows. He started building games and programming when he was 12 years old.

He said he has some job interviews lined up and hopes to work with anything on the tech side of the market, including as a web developer or software engineer.

Other students also told the Sun they are happy to have graduated and either move into the workforce or continue their education in other provinces.

Faculty of Music valedictorian Leeanne Gerry said she’s looking forward to starting a job as a band teacher at a school in Morris later this year.

She said it’s bittersweet as she will be leaving home.

Graduating with a bachelor of music, Gerry said, is “really super exciting.”

“I’m very passionate about education, and I’m very passionate about music, and the people in that field are also just so exceptional,” she said.

Music connects people and can teach a lot of fundamental skills, Gerry said.

“I think that it’s really important to have music in schools, because those skills show up in everything else that you do in life,” she said. “I think it shapes good people.”

Today, Faculty of Health Studies students are slated to graduate at a 10 a.m. ceremony and Faculty of Arts students will wrap up the convocation this afternoon at 2 p.m.

The ceremonies are open to the public and will be livestreamed on the university’s website.

» alambert@brandonsun.com