On Friday, May 9, with great pride and amid the enthusiastic cheering of family and friends, the University of Texas at Austin School of Information graduating class of 2025 walked the stage in caps and gowns and received their degrees. On hand to salute them were the faculty who had helped guide them along the way, and graduation speakers Kijana Knight-Torres MSIS ’07, Anandhu Mahesh BSI ’25, and iSchool Interim Dean Soo Young Rieh.
Rieh’s opening remarks set the stage for a ceremony that celebrated achievement while emphasizing that work begun at the iSchool is far from complete.
“Your journey is just beginning,” Rieh told the assembly. “In the next twenty to thirty years, our world will look very different because of your work in job roles that have not been created yet.” The interim dean then shared a bit of own career experience, including work in Silicon Valley as a UX researcher before that job title even existed.
The good news, Rieh told students, is that they enter the fray with a strong academic credential in hand, with each other to lean on as future collaborators and mentors, and with experience in the dynamic environment of the iSchool preparing them to meet every challenge head-on.
Rieh gave special recognition to the fearless undergraduate iSchool class of 2025, many of whom joined the bachelor’s degree program in Informatics as part of its inaugural freshman class. “You are the ones who were willing to embrace uncertainty,” Rieh told them, calling this cohort “pioneers.”
“YOU MADE IT!” Rieh told the crowd, to general applause. “You’ve reached an incredible milestone, and I am so proud of you all.”
That same “you made it” sentiment applies to the undergraduate Informatics program itself, which reached full size last fall and produced its first large cohort of graduates this spring. The next graduation speaker, Mahesh, was a representative of that group.
“Even before stepping into the real world, we've already made history,” Mahesh, winner of the iSchool’s graduation speaker contest, told his peers and friends. “We stand here not just as graduates, but as trailblazers.”
In addition to the 93 new Informatics graduates this year, 143 students received master’s or doctorate degrees in 2025. Knight-Torres, who earned her MS in Information Studies at the iSchool and now works as a senior manager in UX research for Fortune 1000 automotive company CDK Global, delivered a keynote speech reflecting the experience of an iSchool graduate in the workforce.
Knight-Torres’s speech revolved around three essential aspects of success in life and career: curiosity, creativity, and identity. She began by crediting iSchoolers with the curiosity that had brought them to the program and through it to graduation.
“Whether you study UX, archival science, informatics, data science, preservation, librarianship, or information policy, you've learned not to just accept the default setting,” Knight-Torres said. “You asked: Why does this exist? Who made it? Who does it benefit? And who might this exclude? Ask why, and then continue to ask why, until you're able to uncover the essence of the problems we're trying to solve.”
Knight-Torres then turned to creativity: “Your work is a creative act, and creativity is not collection. It's a necessity.” Finally, on the subject of identity, she encouraged graduates to imitate “oobleck” – a substance exhibiting traits of both solid and liquid that is a favorite plaything of her children. “We may move through the world through fluidity, until life throws a challenge in our way, and then we solidify,” she said.
After students walked the stage and received recognition for their academic accomplishment, they returned to their family and friends as UT graduates, with sage advice and heartfelt congratulations ringing in their ears. Then they stepped outside, into a beautiful May afternoon full of possibility.
Go forth, Class of 2025, and change the world!