Students at Rush University are set to embark on the next step of their careers as healthcare professionals. Their perseverance and dedication to service and patients over the last several years has led them to this very moment — Rush University’s 54th Commencement Ceremony.
On Saturday, May 2, nearly 800 students moved their tassels from right to left during the ceremony at Credit Union 1 Arena. The day was full of excitement as family, friends and faculty celebrated students who walked across the stage directly into the next chapter of lifelong learning and service.
Empathy is the real engine
During the ceremony, Ted Love, MD, immediate past chair BIO, former CEO GBT, shared three pieces of advice with students: be a lifelong student, be an advocate and be audacious.
“I tell you this because, in your careers, you will be tempted to follow the path of least resistance. I urge you to find the neglected problems,” he said. “Find the patients and problems that have been ignored. That is where you will find your greatest purpose.”
Love challenges graduates to change the field of medicine by looking for gaps in healthcare and becoming the bridge to fix them.
“For those of you who identify with underrepresented groups, your presence in these halls isn't just a personal achievement; it is a literal lifeline,” Love said. “For those of you who feel your colleagues are being marginalized, you need to champion, mentor and clear the path for those colleagues. If we can do this, we can realize the best for all of our patients.”
Putting humanity first
This year’s ceremony included a student speaker from Rush Medical College, Andrew Mohama. He spoke candidly about his struggles in medical school, what kept him going and what it means to choose your career every day.
“Even before I fully understood it [the importance of becoming a doctor], I knew this life would ask for steadiness — not perfection, but the kind of quiet reliability that keeps showing up when things are hard,” Mohama said. “We often think we choose our professions once. Like those first few months of school, when I believed I had to decide immediately, am I in it or not? But the truth is quieter and more demanding. We choose it repeatedly.”
Mohama told the crowd Rush has trained students in science, skill and evidence. More importantly, he said the university has taught them how to persevere.
“We enter healthcare at a time when the world beyond hospital walls feels fractured. There are forces that attempt to reduce people to labels, categories and differences that obscure our shared humanity,” Mohama says. “Rush has trained us not only to recognize inequity, but to walk toward it — toward communities underserved, toward neighborhoods overlooked, toward patients whose stories have too often been dismissed, toward the margins of society.”
Living out the Rush mission
Though students’ time at the university has come to an end, their dedication to serving patients and their community continues. The impact they will make in the lives of others will be beyond measure. While each of them ventures onto different paths, they have all been tasked with the same mission: to improve the lives of the people and communities they serve.
“You are graduating from Rush, an institution defined by its commitment to the community,” Love said. “Take that spirit with you. Go forth with excellence, lead with empathy and never, ever lose your audacity.”
Congratulations to the class of 2026!
