"Congratulations, graduates, on earning a doctoral degree from Cornell," said President David Skorton at the 15th Ph.D. recognition ceremony in Barton Hall on May 26. "You're completing a major, major, most memorable undertaking. We're very proud of you, and we're very pleased to recognize your achievements in advance of tomorrow's ceremony in this more personal way."

Acknowledging the contributions of their families to the graduates' success, Skorton noted, "I know how proud, happy and relieved you must be today." He called the doctoral degree "the ultimate achievement in higher education" and said it represents "the end of a long and complex journey."

Skorton continued, "Completing a doctorate, whether in the sciences, the social sciences, the arts, the humanities, law, takes insight, but also takes time and hard work, an unwillingness to settle for 'good enough' or 'almost.' As doctoral students, you have discovered that courses and grades ultimately were less important than crafting the research project, the questions, the inquiry, and communicating your original contributions and interacting with fellow scholars.

"On the road that now lies ahead, these skills and experiences will be at least as important as the substantive knowledge you have acquired, and they will enable you on your own and with your colleagues to make contributions to your discipline and to the larger society."

The ceremony's main speaker was Joel D. Brock, professor and director of the School of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell. "Each and every one of you is now quite literally the world's expert in something," he said. Employing a metaphor of melting and freezing at the atomic level, he noted, "Even in the physical world, it takes greater time, patience and skill to create something valuable than it does to destroy the same thing. ... I strongly urge you to create things of value."