Dominican Celebrates 425 Graduates, Award Winners

Dominican University of California awarded diplomas to 425 undergraduate and graduate students at the spring 2023 commencement ceremony, May 13.

Author and poet Javier Zamora delivered the commencement keynote address. Global Public Health major Jennifer Borromeo ’23 delivered the student address.

Watch Commencement video.

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Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990. When he was a year old, his father fled El Salvador due to the Salvadoran civil war. His mother followed in her husband’s footsteps in 1995. Zamora was left in the care of his grandparents, who raised him until he moved to the United States at the age of nine. In his 2022 New York Times bestselling memoir Solito, Javier tells the story of his nine-week journey from El Salvador to the United States. Leaving behind his aunt and grandparents, Zamora travelled unaccompanied amid a group of strangers and a “coyote” by boat, bus, and foot. After the coyote delivered the travelers to Oaxaca, Javier made it to Arizona with the aid of other migrants. Zamora was reunited with his parents and grew up in San Rafael’s Canal neighborhood.

Zamora’s 2017 debut poetry collection, Unaccompanied, explores the impact of the Salvadoran civil war and immigration on his family. The collection won the Northern California Book Award and Firecracker Award from the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses in 2018. Zamora earned a BA at the University of California Berkeley and an MFA at New York University. Zamora has been a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. He holds fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Poetry Foundation.

 “Let me dedicate this speech to prepare every single one of you for believing in your accomplishments, believing that you have completed this feat, but not just on your own,” Zamora said in his keynote address.  “It takes a family, a village, a college counselor, professors, coaches, therapists, friends, and toxic people we’ve left behind. We must learn to celebrate these wins and this is a big extraordinary huge win.”

Borromeo is the outgoing president of the Associated Students of Dominican University (ASDU). A graduate of San Francisco’s Raoul Wallenberg High School, Jennifer has been involved in campus activities and activism in her four years at Dominican, starting with her first semester when she joined the Kapamilya club. Jennifer participated in the Friendship Games as a freshman then evolved into helping organize the annual Pilipino Cultural Night at Dominican with lifelong friends.

Through her Dominican years Jennifer was a student library assistant, tutored as a youth program assistant at The Richmond Neighborhood Center, and became an Orientation coordinator for incoming students. She also served as treasurer of the Alpha Epsilon Delta Kappa chapter at Dominican. Last spring Jennifer had a community engaged learning opportunity at The Spahr Center and involved herself in harm reduction outreach. That role led to another opportunity as a peer wellness center volunteer at Richmond Area Multi Services (RAMS). This summer she will begin an internship at the Summer HIV/AIDS Research Program (SHARP) based at San Francisco Department of Public Health and the University of California San Francisco.

Jennifer helped ASDU transition from a programming and event focused organization to an organization that examined policies and addressed topical issues on campus, giving the student body a voice in matters of importance. This year, ASDU helped more than 70 graduating undergraduate students experiencing financial difficulties receive their commencement regalia, free of charge. The board continues to bridge the campus community through monthly forums with campus stakeholders, called Campus Connect. 

In her address, Jennifer Borromeo recognized the students who are the first in their family to graduate from college.

 “A special shout out to my fellow first-generation Americans - our first-gen students - those that had to grind every day to get to this stage. I see you and I am with you, and I applaud your hard work,” she said.

Borromeo noted that while Dominican has provided the graduates with knowledge, skills, and the ability to understand complex challenges, learning does not end at commencement.

“Our next journey will present us with countless opportunities. Some will land their dream job, others will continue their education, and many of us will meet people and encounter possibilities that will change our trajectories for the better,” she said.

“Our journey will also be filled with challenges; some will experience racial injustice, others will have to fight for reproductive rights, and most all of us will have to contend with an ever-increasing polarization of political and personal ideology,” Borromeo added.

“Our Dominican education has positioned us to be agents of change. We are called upon to pursue the opportunities given to us and those that we create for ourselves, and we are asked, as global citizens, to engage with our communities to foster understanding and to influence change for a more just and equitable future.” 

Jared Wright ‘23, a business administration major and student-athlete from Castle Rock, CO, was named the Outstanding Student. Jared, who graduated from Dominican early and will attend graduate school at Azusa Pacific University this fall, became the first Dominican cross country runner in school history to qualify for and compete in the NCAA Cross Country Championships last December.

Nursing major Sachie Ohara ’23 of Folsom was named the recipient of the Veritas Cup, given annually to a graduating senior deemed “a friend of the class.” She served in numerous roles during her four years at Dominican, from the Student Success Center to Accessibility and Disability Services to the Honors Program to Service-Learning to Dominican Rec Sports to Advancement and Alumni Engagement.

Dr. Katie Lewis, assistant professor and Director of Dominican’s Multiple Subject Credential Program, was announced as Teacher of the Year.