Remarks of Dean Marie Lynn Miranda to SNRE students attending the 2013 Commencement Exercises, held May 4, 2013, at Rackham Auditorium.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this astonishing venue and to a remarkable event.

I am Marie Lynn Miranda, dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment.

It is my tremendous honor to represent SNRE faculty and staff in officially opening the Spring Commencement Ceremony.

In so doing, I have the honor of being the first to say:

Graduates…Congratulations.  Nicely Done!

Today we come together as many families (literally) and across many disciplines and types of degrees…to form one community…a community whose trust and deepest bond is our love of the environment and our commitment to sustaining it.

As many of you know, SNRE lost a beloved member of its community this past Monday.  Beth Diamond, an assistant professor of landscape architecture, died of cancer. So before we go on with the graduation ceremony, I’d like for all of us to take a few moments to quietly remember Beth and all the many things she brought to the SNRE community.

Thank you.

As sad as we are about Beth's passing, this afternoon is about celebration.  We gather in this beautiful space to…

… celebrate with undergraduate students from the Program in the Environment, a jointly administered program between SNRE and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

… to celebrate with master’s students graduating from SNRE … who have earned a master of science or a master of landscape architecture degree.

… and to celebrate with students who have completed a doctoral degree from SNRE ... that ultimate challenging process of scholarship and inquiry.

SNRE students and alumni possess the science, policy, and design knowledge and experience required to understand and act on the most pressing environmental challenges of our day – the challenges that must be addressed for we ignore them at our peril.

To the families and friends of these alumni, the SNRE community wants to recognize your contributions and perseverance.

You made emotional and financial sacrifices in support of our students' goals to ensure that they could be here today, in this building, at this moment.

And you did all this perhaps not really knowing what this environmental stuff was all about – but knowing that the passion you saw first in our students was something to be encouraged.

Let’s take a moment to thank all of them.

I recently returned from fieldwork in Tanzania, and want to tell three stories from my time there – stories which seem especially fitting for graduation. Our work in Tanzania is focused on an environmental intervention to prevent malaria.  Everyone working on malaria, more than anything, wants a vaccine. But even with the most recent promising results, we are years and years (perhaps decades) away from having an effective vaccine.  So in the meantime, scientists are experimenting with numerous innovations. Beyond insecticide treated bednets, most new approaches are focused on treating malaria the disease more effectively to minimize the downstream health impacts of getting sick. Our trial is somewhat novel in that we are focused on an environmental intervention designed to knock down the population of mosquitos, to decrease the number of vectors that are responsible for transmitting the disease.

So my first story: We were working very late on a Wednesday evening getting ready to deploy to our field site. Wednesdays are the weekday evening when the churches meet. As we worked, we had amazing vocal music coursing through the air and so much clapping and rhythmic beats coming at us from all different directions. It made the work light and reminded me for the thousandth time since I had arrived that I love Tanzania, and I love the Tanzanian people.

So the message from my first story? Do what you love. Because if you do what you love, no matter how hard the work is, you will find great joy in it.

My second story: I have a reputation on the field team, or rather my backpack does. There are a hundred different situations that arise around which you have to improvise. So people will walk up to me, tell me the problem, and then I'll say "If only we had some _______."  The trick of course is to be able to immediately retrieve that very item from my backpack.

In three years of field work, no one has stumped me. Fine point sharpies. Spring-loaded lancets. Peanut butter. WHO hemoglobin tables. Tums.  \Nitrile gloves.  The list goes on. Of course, I am firmly of the belief that most field problems can be solved with a roll of duct tape. You would be amazed by what I can do with duct tape. When I leave, there is always a little ceremony where the remaining roll of duct tape is presented to the hardest working field staff. Receiving it is considered a very high honor.

So the message from my second story?  Do what you love, yes, but also, be prepared to do it. So that thing that you are doing, that thing that you love, that thing that is so important to our world, do that thing WELL. Also, always carry a roll of duct tape.

I’ll save my third story for the end.

Today, we tell the world that:

YOU are ready to join SNRE alums, an unmatched group of business leaders, policymakers, scientists, and designers.

YOU are ready to ask hard questions and to pursue elusive answers.

YOU are ready to lead.

Let's begin.