News & Events
Highlights from City Tech’s 65th Commencement
View Transcript of Chancellor Goldstein’s address
View Transcript of valedictorian Nicole Caruso’s address
View Transcript of President’s Award recipient and commencement speaker Carl Cosenzo
View Image Gallery of City Tech’s 65th Commencement Exercises
New York City College of Technology marked the annual rite of passage for more than 1,800 graduating students at its 65th Commencement Exercises on Thursday, June 2, in the Theater at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan. President Russell K. Hotzler conferred approximately 1,141 associate and 707 baccalaureate degrees.
City University of New York (CUNY) Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, in addressing the graduates, said, “This year, especially, City Tech students have demonstrated extraordinary ability to get things done. I’m constantly seeing you in the news! You’ve won research and art awards, several scholarships, and youth leadership commendations -- and your basketball team is the CUNYAC champion.”
Continuing to praise their accomplishments, he added, “I can see that each of you is a star, a point of light in a world that can sometimes seem dark. It is breathtaking and comforting to become aware of the universe of which we are a part. That’s how I feel looking out at all of you this morning. I am seeing all of the stars who will light up our universe -- and it is, truly, breathtaking.”
Delivering the commencement address and receiving the President’s Award was City Tech alumnus Carl J. Cosenzo, executive vice president and operations manager for Schiavone Construction Company, Secaucus, NJ, and founder of the Schiavone Scholars Program at City Tech.
He started with a quote from historian Will Durant: “Sixty years ago I knew everything; now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.” Cosenzo, who graduated from City Tech in 1967 with an associate’s degree in construction technology, went on to tell the graduates: “Making a difference in your life and others is what life is all about. Your parents and your teachers have invested their time in you, don’t waste their efforts. Make a difference and lead a life that is full -- full of love, full of humility and full of compassion.”
The Class of 2005 valedictorian Nicole Caruso, 19, is doing just that. Graduating in only three years with a bachelor of science degree in human services and a perfect 4.0 grade point average, she plans to earn a master’s degree in education so that she can teach young children.
Caruso expressed how important it was for her fellow graduates to know themselves and to find what makes them happy instead of trying to please someone else. She told her peers that people tried to convince her not to major in human services because there was no money in it, and proceeded to quote the philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said “envy is ignorance [and] imitation is suicide.”
While she learned at City Tech how to do things by the book, “I also learned from some of my best professors that we can forget the book. I can write my own book -- my own rules, my own choices, my own life.”
In closing, she said, “We have to find our inner genius and use it to our advantage. We must go traveling, see other places, other cultures and broaden our view of how things are done. We do not have to live our lives out ‘of quiet desperation’ as Thoreau said, because we have a choice -- this is what our educations, our degrees, should provide us.”
Bringing greetings to the graduates from the CUNY Board of Trustees was The Honorable Nilda Soto Ruiz. Professor Edward S. Kaplan (Social Science) was the grand marshal. The invocation was provided by the Reverend Doctor Rebecca M. Radillo and Reverend Tony Nicolas, a City Tech chemistry professor, gave the benediction.
6.30.05
