Prospects for this year's 6,000 graduates look bright, said Cornell President David Skorton May 29 in his fifth Commencement address in sun-drenched Schoellkopf Stadium.

Despite tough economic times, more graduates this year have jobs or plans for graduate school lined up than last year's graduating class did.

"Equally important to your long-term success, though, will be what you've gained from being full and contributing members of the very special and multifaceted Cornell community and from the bonds to your families that are so evident today," said Skorton, emphasizing on several occasions the importance of family, biological or chosen, family stories and shared memories.

"Each of us is also part of a larger family: the nearly 150-year-old family of Cornell. This is a family that is also a community," Skorton said.

Commencements, he said, "provide occasions to bask in the glory of hard-won achievements; to savor magical hours in a special time and place ... to begin the next phase of the journey of life -- with all its uncertainties and boundless possibilities."

Skorton thanked graduating seniors Alex Silver and Jon Tai for their viral video tribute to Cornell, "which captures the bittersweet essence of this time," and cited a few of the Class of 2011's accomplishments, which included research on topics from genetic engineering to economic challenges facing Mongolian vegetable farmers and working in Belize with Mayan children and teachers.

"We are also so very proud of the many Cornell students who earned a large array of the most prestigious and competitive academic awards in higher education," Skorton said, noting that today's graduates hold Marshall, Luce, Udall, Goldwater, Truman and Gates Cambridge scholarships, a Carnegie Junior Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships.

"Your success confirms that a rigorous Cornell education is a significant achievement and is recognized as such nationally and internationally," Skorton said.

The graduating class's "mosaic of backgrounds, talents and aspirations ... adds immeasurably to the richness of our experiences on this campus. Equally important ... are shared values that define us as Cornellians ... Those values include, among others, respect and affection for each other, embracing and celebrating differences, openness to new ideas, willingness to reach out to others in friendship, and, in widely and wildly varying ways, to lift the world's burdens by what we do every day, in ways large and small."

More than 47 percent of the class has accepted jobs and 33 percent will continue their education, Skorton said, for a total of about 80 percent, up from 75 percent last year. Other graduates, he added, "will be involved in building communities worldwide" through service in the Peace Corps, for example.

"Whether your passion is politics or public service, professional leadership or a more individualized pursuit, I encourage you to do what you've done here -- to find some communities in which you feel safe and at home and but also to find others that will stretch and challenge you. It is through our communities that we amplify our individual abilities, combine our varied talents and ultimately forge the collaborative relationships upon which a functioning democracy depends," he concluded.