Buffalo Seminary graduated 43 remarkable young women on a gorgeous afternoon at Westminster Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, June 14.
Susan Drozd, chair of the fine arts department and theatre teacher gave an epic faculty address with Glenda the Good Witch at its core; Guest speaker Amanda Terkel, politics editor at The Huffington Post exhorted SEM students to refuse to be dismissed because they are women.
Jody Douglass, who retires as head of school at the end of June, gave her final commencement address and with Board Chair Margaret Brown '73 awarded the seniors their diplomas. Ms. Brown also presented the Captain John Brown Award for new faculty excellence to Joan Wienckowski, chair of the science department.
Graduates of the Class of 2016 are the most adventurous in SEM's history according to College Counselor Molly Greene '98 - they applied to more schools, more places than any class before them.
Final choices made, SEM students plan to a majors in a wide variety of fields from public service to business and medicine. They will study drama at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, forensics at St. Edward’s (Austin TX), accounting at Skidmore, journalism at Ithaca College, math at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, pre-law at Georgetown and American, business at Hobart William Smith, and aerospace engineering at MIT. One graduate will defer her entry to study engineering at Cornell to take a gap year to study film in Italy.
Buffalo Seminary has held its commencement at Westminster Presbyterian Church for as long as anyone can remember. Uniquely, the entire student body attends graduation as is part of the ceremony.