Tuesday, May 6, 2025
Graduate and undergraduate students to share reflections on resilience, community and personal growth
by Adam Grybowski
As Rider University prepares to celebrate the Class of 2025, two students — one undergraduate and one graduate — have been selected to serve as this year’s student Commencement speakers.
Jared Hiller, a senior double major in secondary education and mathematics, and Karen Altice Stutzman, who is earning a master’s degree in sacred music, will deliver remarks at their respective ceremonies, offering reflections on the experiences that have shaped their time at Rider and the people who helped them along the way.
Hiller, the undergraduate speaker, will speak to the powerful sense of community and transformation that defined the college journey for this year’s graduates, many of whom entered Rider just after the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“As the first class to enter campus after two years of asynchronous learning, we had to step up and bring this campus back to life,” he writes in his speech. “We strengthened our community by going to on-campus events, joining organizations, completing internships and even building communities beyond the country.”
As a student, he found the common experiences and opportunities shared at Rider helped unite the graduating class in building lasting friendships and finding their purpose. Hiller has been deeply involved in campus life, serving as treasurer and vice president of the Rider Dance Ensemble and as a lead tour guide for the Office of Admissions, among many other roles.
“I will forever be grateful to Rider for allowing us, the Class of 2025, to learn, grow and persevere together, as a community,” says Hiller, who is currently a student teacher at Henry C. Beck Middle School in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Graduate speaker Stutzman brings a perspective rooted in personal and professional transformation. A musician and teacher who works full-time for a nonprofit in community partnerships and part-time at a church in worship and music leadership, she returned to school two decades after completing her undergraduate degree, balancing graduate studies with work and parenting two teenagers.
“Starting graduate studies at Rider was a leap into unfamiliar territory for me,” Stutzman writes in her speech.
Waiting for the perfect time to pursue your dreams is a mistake, she believes, because the perfect time will never come. Stutzman says she never would have pushed herself without the encouragement of close friends and family who believed in her, perhaps even more than she believed in herself.
“Enough people who love me believed in me,” she says. “They pushed me beyond what I believed was my capacity.”
In her speech, Stutzman shares lessons learned through the journey of returning to school and reminds graduates not to underestimate themselves. “We are real-life superheroes,” she says. “Don’t settle for less than what you are capable of — which is 10 times more than you actually believe about yourself.”
Rider University’s 2025 Commencement ceremonies will take place at the CURE Insurance Arena in Trenton, New Jersey, on Saturday, May 17. U.S. Sen. Andy Kim will receive an honorary Doctor of Laws during the undergraduate ceremony and Dr. Rosephanye Powell ’87 will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Music during the graduate and doctoral ceremony.
For more information, visit rider.edu/commencement.