Sam Fox School Celebrates Graduating Class of 2025

The Sam Fox School held its all-school recognition ceremony on Sunday, May 11, marking the completion of studies for students in art, architecture, and design. Many students also attended the university-wide commencement ceremony on Francis Olympic Field on Monday, May 12.  

There ceremony began with remarks from Carmon Colangelo, the school’s Ralph J. Nagel Dean, followed by a keynote address by alumna and celebrated artist Ebony G. Patterson, MFA ’06. Graduating student speakers Maddie Baker, MFA ’25, and Ceci Gutierrez, AB ’25, also gave brief addresses, sharing stories and messages of optimism with their peers.

Colangelo, who is also the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts, noted the 2025 cohort’s great resilience and optimism in the face of global challenges, along with their commitment to activism and potential as problem solvers, innovators, makers, and leaders. “Today, as you mark the end of one phase and prepare for your next steps, I want to remind you that your journey in life is made up of human relationships and serendipitous connections,” he said. In the 42 years since graduating with his MFA, Colangelo said, the key to his success, and what will be the key to each graduate’s success, is “relationships with mentors, colleagues, friends, and family… the essential network that will help you achieve your goals and do extraordinary things.”

Patterson — who was awarded a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship earlier this year — detailed the story of her journey to WashU from her home country of Jamaica, laughing with the audience as she recounted getting caught in a rainstorm with her mother while they were visiting St. Louis. Her advice to graduates centered on openness, whether through working a plan, changing course, or “bulldozing” a new opening. “The opening you make is not just for you,” she said. “It creates new roads for others behind you… After all, this is what we are: way-makers.”

During her address, Baker, a graduate of the MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture program, read from the children’s book “Extra Yarn” by Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen. The story follows Annabelle as she knits sweater after sweater and hat after hat for her town, never running out of yarn, and declining to sell her yarn box. Even when it’s stolen away, the box floats back to her, miraculously full once more. Baker compared the story with the graduates’ own creative energy. “Somehow, even though you’ve made lots of things, you still have a little left over to keep making the world a more beautiful place,” she said.

Gutierrez graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Architecture and focused her address on the ability of creatives to ask, “what if?” and imagine new futures. Along with having the courage to ask big questions, she noted the importance of supporting each other, intentionally working to create community, and utilizing the power each person holds. “Regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not, intentional or not, we are modifying the cultural landscape and influencing the stories around us,” she said. “So commit, wholeheartedly, to the stories you want to tell.”

Prior to the ceremony, students received awards and funding for future work. Among the most prestigious awards in art are the Jeffrey Frank Wacks Scholarship, awarded to Bei Qi; the John T. Milliken Foreign Travel Award — both a monetary award and a residency at the school’s Cité internationale des arts studio in Paris — awarded to Eloise Harcourt at the undergraduate level and Addyson Hoey at the graduate level; and the Caroline Risque Janis Prize in Sculpture, also awarded to Harcourt. In architecture, the Frederick Widmann Prize was awarded to Jiahe Jin at the undergraduate level and Abigail Fonville at the graduate level; the Alpha Rho Chi Bronze Medal was awarded to Hannah Grau; and Mason Burress was nominated for national recognition with the AIA Medal of Excellence.