Recognition Day 2020: Jassen Callender

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Mississippi State University Interim Director Jassen Callender congratulates the class of 2020.

TRANSCRIPT: - Greetings, and congratulations to the Class of 2020, and all the award winners from across the School of Architecture. You have succeeded in a program known for its rigor across campus, and a discipline regarded as one of the most demanding in academia. You, and family, and friends, should take great pride in your accomplishments, the faculty and staff do, as do I. These are unusual times, for me doubly so. For the past 14 years, I was the Director of the Jackson Center, there I came to know every detail of every project. More importantly, I came to know the strengths and ambitions of each student. Today, as you prepare to move beyond Mississippi State, I know you less well than I might have hoped. In part due, to my position in Starkville, and in part, to the crisis that has kept us all out of studio, where rich, face-to-face interactions occur. Still despite the distance, there are a few things about the profession, our school, and yes, you, that I think I know, and I'd like to share. The profession you are entering faces many challenges. Addressing the ways in which the physical, and spatial aspects of inhabitation, might mitigate the spread of pandemics, are merely the most recent. Covid-19 joins climate change, resource depletion and population growth, issues of social justice, as examples, as central concerns for architects. While the economic outlook for the coming months is uncertain at best, these big challenges will demand action from the architectural community. We are charged with responsibility for housing ever-greater numbers in safer, cleaner, more responsible, and more equitable cities. There's much to be done, and it is what you have been trained to do. The education you've received at Mississippi State is one of the best architecture educations in the country, and well suited to the professional world, you now enter. The dedicated faculty has maintained and enhanced the pedagogical tradition, emphasizing climate, material resources, and social justice, as intimately tied to place and perception. It is my hope that you understand that the various problems you've been tasked with over the last five years, are essentially aspects of one question. How do we build meaningful places in a changing, and fragile environment? I think it's reassuring that we are graduating 22 people, all armed with their own possible answers to that question. I know most of you by name, a few of you better than that, through interactions in previous reviews, and conversations in the hallways of Giles. Overtime, I hope most of you will connect as alumni, dedicated to future generations for architecture students. As a class, you are a tight-knit group that deserves the pomp, and circumstance, of the traditional Recognition Day ceremony, an eye-to-eye commencement speech, an official presentation of stoles, handshakes, and hugs with faculty, family, and each other. That will have to wait. Don't wait, however, to go and make the most of your life. You are a class with extraordinary gifts, and this is a time when you should begin to figure out where those gifts fit in the wider world. I have no doubt about your futures, just go find them. Once again, on behalf of the School of Architecture, congratulations.

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