dgau@marshallindependent.com
MARSHALL Â For more than a year, students at Southwest Minnesota State University have had to adapt to quickly-changing conditions, President Kumara Jayasuriya said. From suddenly switching to distance learning last spring, to all the changes and disruptions that the COVID-19 pandemic brought with it over the past academic year, seniors that graduated Saturday had been through a lot and succeeded.
“You are one of the most resilient graduating classes of SMSU. Not even a global pandemic could stop you,” Jayasuriya said this week in a recorded address for the class of 2021.
Over the course of the past week, speakers like Jayasuriya and members of SMSU’s charter graduating class of 1971 all congratulated new grads on being able to adapt to challenging times. For COVID-19 safety reasons, this year’s commencement speakers all recorded video messages that were shared with students each day of graduation week.