Stories
With Gratitude: stories from CMU graduates
CMU launched its graduation weekend celebrations with the annual Spring at CMU.
Held the day before the graduation ceremony in the Loewen Athletic Centre, Spring at CMU featured the long-standing tradition of 'With Gratitude', a time for graduating students to reflect on their time at CMU.
This year, four undergraduate students and one graduate student shared stories of connection and the multitude of ways CMU has brought them closer to their understanding of what it means to live a life of leadership in service to others.
Renae Stahl (BA, Three-year, English) reflected on the communal commitment of attentive faculty. She said the various faculty members helped unite her diverging passions, letting them blossom in a way that felt real and that mattered. Not only was she surprised by how they helped her, but also by the attention they paid to each individual student of CMU. "It is this willingness to witness to the individual that allows us to become part of something greater than ourselves," she said. "This is the shape of a community rooted in Christ."
Kara LeBlanc (BA, Four-year, Communications & Media) is a world traveller who shared stories from her experiences globe-trotting through CMU's intercultural learning opportunities abroad. Through Outtatown and Estamos (two now discontinued programs), LeBlanc says she will never forget "how open people were to share their beliefs and practices with us." These "impactful" moments, LeBlanc said, helped shape a greater understanding of what a global community can look like. "Across these amazing adventures, I met so many people and heard so many stories about how the world works. I saw kindness, openness, resilience, and love that I hold with me and try to display at home."
Abreham Jember (BBA, Business Management) shared about his distinct experience at CMU as an international student from Ethiopia. He says the CMU community helped transform him from a "quiet first-year student." Part of this, he acknowledged, came from the structure of CMU courses themselves. As a business student, he says classes that studied the well-being of leaders helped him better understand and wrestle with his own leadership style. While at CMU, Jember became an international student leader who helped other newcomers settle in a new environment. It was a role he says "helped me grow in confidence, build relationships, and apply what I learned."
Eleanor Reimer (BSc, Four-year, Biology) initially thought studying science at CMU would be a waste of time. "I had certain expectations of what a science education should look like, and mandatory theology courses did not fit into that," she shared. After talking with her parents, she decided to apply, and a few months later, she received a personal phone call from President Pauls congratulating her on receiving the prestigious Leadership Scholarship. "I thought, 'Wow, the president of this university is personally calling me to tell me there are strangers generous enough to help me pay for my education. I definitely need to be more open-minded." During her studies, she got the opportunity to present at a science symposium in Wisconsin, inspiring her to keep pursuing her studies and research. "I learned so much from this process about what science is like outside of an undergraduate education, which is exactly what should happen for science students everywhere." She ended her speech by saying, "I am happy to say I received an amazing science education at CMU."
Hannah Janzen (MA, Peacebuilding and Collaborative Development) was the only speaker of the night who was graduating with a master's degree. She spoke about how CMU's Peacebuilding and Collaborative Development check all the boxes she was searching for in a graduate program. "CMU gave me room to explore the intersections of peacebuilding, development, and faith," she said. Throughout the course of writing her thesis, she was challenged and encouraged by CMU's interdisciplinary approach to courses. "I found there is a richness to living and learning in an interconnected and integrated way. And CMU does this interconnectedness well."
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