3:00 PM, May 17, 2025 | BAAC Auditorium

Dear Colleagues, parents, guests, and most important, our graduates:

Welcome to the 2025 CS graduation ceremony. I’m the department chair Professor Chen Ding.

Our 150 bachelor graduates and 30 MS graduates, here and elsewhere, you make today special: not just the day of graduation, but also the day we graduate the largest class in the department’s 50-year history.

At a commencement 20 years ago, David Foster Wallace told a parable: Two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit. Then one looks at the other and asks, ‘What is water?’

Parables are open to interpretation. So what is water the pervasive medium shaping our life? It is tech and increasingly CS. Computing principles drive every aspect from hardware to software to application. Blockchain, quantum computing, and autonomous driving all emerged from CS research. According U.S. Labor Statistics, over 60% of STEM jobs require CS skills. CS is transformative in other fields too. In this class, 96 undergrads, or almost two-thirds, took another major or minor.

Before going for his PhD, a student of mine plans to traverse the Continental Divide from El Paso, Texas, to Banff, Canada. Let his journey be not a symbol but embodiment of the grueling work of learning you did in the past and the daunting uncertainty of future you may be facing now.

Marcus Arellius said: Impediment to action advances action. Think 2700 miles, on a bike, alone, and camping under open skies. What stands in the way, becomes the way. Every challenge and setback is not blocking your path. It is the path. Our muscles strengthen, and our brain forms strong neural path ways when we work through our difficulties, none when things are easy.

You have done the hard work. What is the future?

CS is the engine of innovation. So much we have today did not exist even last year. This SSD card, a stamp in size, not much thicker, stores 1TB data. A question for parents and guests: raise your hand if you have used ChatGPT? An open-source equivalent is DeepSeek. You can download its data. The full model is 1TB. Most things we ask on Google you can now ask on ChatGPT or DeepSeek. Hence, information equivalent to Google Search is literally at my fingertip.

The power is immense majestic and terrifying. We see increasing inequality and political polarization at home, conflicts and wars abroad. CS is not innocent. Do you realize that we are the last generation who lived before social media? This little card tokenizes either human knowledge with unlimited potential or an existential threat, the ultimate FOOBAR.

This brings me to my final point, a last lesson if you will. A principle I teach in collaborative software design is that we are all fallible. Software is designed by people for people. Moral and human questions are infinitely more complex than math and science. There is no logical or mathematical certainty. The truth depends on a balance between two sets of conflicting reasons. It is crucial that you listen to people with whom you disagree, so you can go through the same mental journey they took to their conclusion. Quoting JS Mill: “In the human mind, one-sidedness has always been the rule, and many-sidedness the exception. Therefore, open our minds to listen to our opponents, thank them to do for us that otherwise we ought to do for ourselves.

To recap, everyone is fallible. We approach truth best by working together.

Speaking on behalf of all faculty and staff, congratulations. We will watch you with joy and pride. And we will always be here when you return to visit.