Note: Each year the president of Thomas Aquinas College hosts a dinner on the Wednesday before Commencement as an opportunity for members of the faculty and staff to bid farewell to the graduating class. Below are text and audio of President Michael F. McLean’s remarks and a photographic slideshow from this year’s dinner.

Address to the Class of 2018

By Dr. Michael F. McLean
President, Thomas Aquinas College
May 9, 2018

On Wednesday, as members of the Senior Class completed their last final examination, they greeted one another with hugs and congratulations on the academic quadrangle. After all arrived they headed down to the campus ponds for the traditional celebratory swim:

When members of the Class of 2018 arrive at the President’s Dinner this evening, awaiting them at each place setting will be a gift from the College — and one from an anonymous friend.

College Factual, a statistics-based guide that aims to “help students find and get great deals on the best fit colleges for them,” has ranked Thomas Aquinas College as No. 4 in the United States on its list of the 1,325 Best Colleges for the Money.

In a longstanding tradition, the younger classes at Thomas Aquinas College take turns each spring bidding farewell to the soon-to-be-departing seniors.

Last Saturday evening the juniors had their opportunity, hosting a reception and dinner for the Class of 2018 on the academic quadrangle, followed by a dance behind St. Gladys Hall.

Above is a video of “In a Doleful Train,” from the Thomas Aquinas College Choir’s recent performance of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, accompanied by the Thomas Aquinas College Orchestra and directed by Daniel J. Grimm (’76). This year’s concert was the first to be held in the newly completed St. Cecilia Lecture and Concert Hall.

When members of the Thomas Aquinas College Class of 2018 receive their diplomas at the College’s May 12 Commencement exercises, friends and family members near and far will be able to watch live on the College’s website.

“We are pleased to make the full Commencement ceremony available via livestream,” says Director of College Relations Anne S. Forsyth. “We know that there are often relatives and other loved ones who cannot travel to California for the occasion, so we are grateful to be able to bring the experience to them.”

For Thomas Aquinas College’s first annual Parents’ Day of Giving on May 1, the parents and grandparents of students past and present were challenged to raise $75,000. By day’s end, they had surpassed that total.

“When our anonymous benefactor agreed to match all gifts up to $75,000, we thought that was a very ambitious goal, and we would have been thrilled just to have met it,” says Robert Bagdazian, coordinator of the Thomas Aquinas College Parents’ Association. “But our parents exceeded even our most hopeful predictions.”

In 2015 a group of underclassmen challenged the College’s upperclassmen to a Saturday game of baseball. Somewhat presumptuously, they dubbed the event The First Annual All-American Baseball Game, suggesting that they were confident that they were establishing a longstanding tradition. Four years later, their hopes appear to have been wellfounded as, on Saturday, the campus athletic fields were the site of the 2018 All-American Baseball Game.