WPI Commencement

WPI Class of 2025 Encouraged To Tackle Problems, Build Communities

In separate undergraduate and graduate ceremonies, Levi’s CEO Michelle Gass ’90 and inventor and entrepreneur Noubar Afeyan provided guidance and inspiration
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May 16, 2025

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) celebrated its 2025 Commencement with a series of ceremonies honoring the achievements of graduates across all degree levels. For the second year, commencement exercises were held at the DCU Center, where WPI conferred 1,298 bachelor’s degrees, 867 master’s degrees, and 87 doctoral degrees to members of the Class of 2025, representing a diverse range of disciplines in science, engineering, technology, business, and the humanities. 

Undergraduate Commencement 

President Grace J. Wang, PhD, and Board of Trustees Chair William Fitzgerald presided over the 156th Commencement exercises on Friday, May 16.

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Grace Wang

President Grace J. Wang, PhD

Wang told members of the Class of 2025 they are entering a changing world filled with competing visions for how to solve challenges and advance society. But, she said, along with knowledge and technical competence in their chosen fields of study, WPI graduates have been equipped with the ability to think critically, to be resilient, to work in teams, and to do it all with a sense of ethics and global responsibility.  

“Outside these walls today is a world that needs you,” Wang said. “Not just because of what you have learned to do in your chosen field, but because of who you are, and also because of the leadership qualities you built at WPI.” 

Delivering the undergraduate Commencement address, Michelle Gass ’90, president and chief executive officer of Levi Strauss & Co., reflected on her journey from student to global business leader to inspire the Class of 2025. Gass said she’s often asked how a chemical engineering graduate from WPI became CEO of one of the most iconic apparel companies in the world. The answer, she told the graduates, lies in a handful of guiding principles she started refining in her years on the WPI campus.

“I’ve realized that to the extent I’ve been successful and able to engineer the kind of life I wanted for myself and my family, it’s largely because I learned how to approach problems and moments intentionally and productively, while keeping real people in mind at all times,” Gass said. 

Gass and Mark Fuller, chair and treasurer of the George F. and Sybil H. Fuller Foundation, a significant supporter of WPI, received honorary degrees as part of the ceremony. 

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Outside these walls today is a world that needs you. Not just because of what you have learned to do in your chosen field, but because of who you are, and also because of the leadership qualities you built at WPI. Beginning Quote Icon of beginning quote
  • WPI President Grace Wang, PhD

Student speaker Dhespina Zhidro, a biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering double major, reminded fellow graduates about the community they formed for themselves, shaped by a collective experience that included struggle, doubt, and, ultimately, achievement. 

“WPI has given us more than an education,” Zhidro said. “It has given us a blueprint for how to live, how to lead, create meaningful change, and leave every place we enter better than we found it.” 

Graduate Commencement 

During the graduate students’ ceremony on Thursday, May 15, Wang urged graduates to embrace true leadership and push boundaries, values that have been part of WPI since its founding in 1865—the same year Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address.  

“You share a spirit that has been with us since the very beginning of our university,” Wang said. “Believe in the power of discovery. Be creative. Explore.”

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Graduation stage

Graduate ceremony speaker Noubar Afeyan—inventor, entrepreneur, and founder of Flagship Pioneering, and co-founder and chair of Moderna, the pioneering messenger RNA biotech company—encouraged graduates to make room for artificial intelligence in their research and their careers, and to use it. 

The advent of AI has brought together machine, human, and natural intelligence into what he called “polyintelligence,” a combination that will open the door to an entire new world of scientific discoveries, he said, adding that humans will not be sidelined.

“This new era will need each and every one of you,” Afeyan said. “It will need data scientists, robotics engineers, biologists, physicists, civil engineers, entrepreneurs.” 

Afeyan and Francesca Maltese, who served 15 years on the Board of Trustees and led the board’s facilities committee during the planning, design, development, and construction of several buildings at WPI, received honorary degrees at the event.

Student speaker Shelley Joshi, who earned a master’s degree in information technology, said some of her fellow graduates came to WPI from one town over. Others crossed oceans to get here. But they’re all leaving with a shared experience of camaraderie and growth they’ll take with them as their careers develop. 

“We learned that leadership doesn’t always mean leading the charge, sometimes it just means showing up with a snack, or with a smile, or just with presence,” Joshi said. 

ROTC Commissioning 

WPI’s 2025 Commencement Week also included a Commissioning Ceremony at Alden Memorial for the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts’ Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC). On Wednesday, May 14, 20 cadets in the Army and Air Force programs at Brown University, the College of the Holy Cross, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, WPI, and Worcester State University were commissioned as officers, having completed both their academic requirements and their military science courses and training. The commissioning officer was Major General Richard F. Johnson, deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Forces Command.

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