(Snow)caps and gowns

Green and white streamers explode over the 2025 fall Commencement ceremony

(Snow)caps and gowns

OHIO celebrated Fall Commencement under a wintry sky, as loved ones gathered to cheer for our newest batch of Bobcat alumni.

Photos by Rich-Joseph Facun and Ben Siegel | December 17, 2025

Snow began to fall just as the last degrees were conferred Saturday afternoon, a seasonal close to ��Ƶ’s Fall 2025 Commencement. Inside the Convocation Center, graduates, families, and faculty gathered despite a winter storm warning that brought significant snowfall and unusually cold temperatures to the region.

Pictured from behind, a graduate in cap and gown holds up a diploma outside the Convo, snow falling around him

"Knowledge, wisdom and love"

President Lori Stewart Gonzalez acknowledged the uncertain weather with a smile before turning to the moment at hand. She praised OHIO graduates for their persistence, resilience, and care for one another, noting that many of them balanced coursework with jobs, families, military service, and caregiving responsibilities in pursuit of their degrees. “You’re graduating into a world that needs exactly what you bring,” she told the Class of 2025. “Insight, creativity, empathy, and courage.”

She reminded graduates that ��Ƶ is, like one’s home, a lifelong community. As grads join more than 290,000 Bobcat alumni worldwide, she encouraged them to carry forward the university’s values of learning, service, and compassion, even if a traditional post-ceremony walk across the College Green was forced to wait for clearer skies.

“Take a moment to reflect on the words engraved there, words that aren't just etched in stone, but woven into the very heart of the University: ‘So enter that daily thou mayest grow in knowledge, wisdom and love, and on the other side so depart that daily thou mayest better serve.’”

President Lori Stewart Gonzalez shakes hands with a new graduate

A faculty member places a doctoral hood for an OHIO graduate

Fall Commencement celebrates undergraduate and graduate students.

The program includes the doctoral hooding ceremony.

Commencement procession includes a banner

A new graduate waves from the procession

At the Commencement ceremony, a new graduate smiles at the camera

Honoring perseverance

a graduate in cap and gown stands among other graduates, smiling

a crowd of graduates watch streamers fall from the ceiling

a new graduate waves from the stage of the Convo

��Ƶ Distinguished Professor Dr. Kevin Mattson delivered the keynote address. In prerecorded remarks, Mattson exhorted graduates to embrace their roles as citizens, offering a description of “the idea of what it means to be a citizen, to enrich your knowledge through deliberation with others and those who hold more power than you do now.”

Mattson noted, “We should embrace the idea of academic freedom,” and heralded the University as a source of inspiration for its graduates. “I hope that the memory of a course you had at OU or with a specific professor or with a fellow student, that you learned something through sensible discussion,” he said, “and that can guide you through a rocky world."

At the Commencement ceremony, a graduation cap with a small book attached reads "To the next chapter of our adventure"

At the Commencement ceremony, a graduation cap features an image of a painter in a natures setting with the words "Happy Little Graduate"

At the Commencement ceremony, a graduate whose cap is decorated with leaves smiles at someone beside her.

Embracing the next chapter

A new graduate receives a hug in the snow outside the Convo

Outside, snowflakes dusted caps and shoulders as students and families gathered for photos, marking the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next.

The Athens area received between 3 and 6 inches of snow starting Saturday afternoon into the early hours of Sunday morning. While this made for a picturesque campus scene, travelers had to make their way home carefully this weekend, as low temperatures plummeted into the single digits on Sunday.