Families cheered in the Wisconsin Center ballroom Sunday as 240 students received their bachelors’, masters’ and doctoral degrees from Cardinal Stritch University.
They wore caps decorated with personal touches: a sparkly Mexican flag, a Hamilton quote, a teacher’s apple.
"I made it! It’s over!" said Le'Sarah Fortson, who just earned her bachelor’s degree in nursing.
Fortson chose Stritch for its direct entry nursing program, along with its small class sizes and the close connections with professors. Now she’s part of its last graduating class.
"You never want to hear that about the school that you go to," Fortson said of her reaction to Stritch's closure. "But I will continue to say I went to this school, I attended this school, proudly — because it served me well."
Cardinal Stritch President Dan Scholz announced in early April that the school would close after this semester. Enrollment has plummeted over the last 10 years, leaving the school with a $6 million deficit it wasn't able to make up, according to Scholz.
At Sunday’s 2023 commencement, Scholz and others were thinking about how the school's legacy will live on, even after the campus closes.
"As the final graduating class from Cardinal Stritch University, you are the institution’s lasting legacy," Scholz said. "I know you will do all of us proud, because your Stritch education and experience has prepared you not just to answer this challenge but to triumph."
Graduate student speaker Samantha Erschen Thurner encouraged graduates to live by the Franciscan values they were taught at Stritch. Those four values are showing compassion, making peace, creating a caring community and reverencing all of creation.
"While the doors of Cardinal Stritch University will not be open going forward, the values live within each of us," Erschen Thurner said. "They will give us strength as we grieve the loss of the university and empower us to allow Stritch to live through us."
The values were instilled at Cardinal Stritch by the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi, who founded the school that became Stritch in 1937, and actively ran the campus for decades.
Mary Lea Schneider, 81, was the last Sister to serve as president of Stritch, from 1991-2008. In her retirement, she’s taught religion part-time at the university. Schneider was sitting among other faculty on the stage at Sunday’s graduation.
"I think this is probably my 120th graduation or close to it," Schneider said after the ceremony. "But each one is a wonderful, wonderful experience. I think I want to be buried with ‘Pomp and Circumstance,’ to heck with the church hymns."
Schneider says this ceremony, of course, was particularly poignant because it’s the last one. She’s sad, but says, nothing lasts forever.
"And as [Saint] Francis said, 'I have done what was mine to do, and may you find what is yours to do,'" Schneider said. "And I think we have done what is ours to do."
Schneider is grateful for Stritch’s accomplishments over 86 years, including this final class of graduates.
Now the focus shifts back to helping the hundreds of students who didn't cross the stage Sunday find other schools to complete their degrees.
WUWM's Audrey Nowakowski contributed to this story.
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