Approximately 680 graduating seniors participated in the ceremony, held on Sunday, May 5 at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium. The class consisted of students from across the United States and around the world.

With Hope College’s Commencement marking both an ending and a beginning for the Class of 2024, featured speaker the Rev. Shomari Tate reflected on four lessons revealed by Christ’s life, sacrificial death and the transformational beginning that Jesus made possible.

Dr. Chad Carlson of the Hope College kinesiology faculty has received this year’s Hope Outstanding Professor Educator (H.O.P.E.) Award from the graduating Class of 2024.

Dr. Kenneth Brown, who is the John H. and Jeanne M. Professor of Chemistry at Hope College, has been named the 2024 recipient of the college’s annual Vanderbush-Weller Award for having a strong, positive impact on students.

A ceremony at Hope College on Saturday, April 27, will celebrate the college’s first two international graduates, who arrived from Japan in 1871, and their lasting, 153-year impact on both Hope and their homeland.

Hope College has received 2023 Tree Campus Higher Education® recognition from the Arbor Day Foundation, the sixth year in a row that the foundation has honored Hope for its commitment to effective urban forest management.

Awards and recognition will be presented to Hope College students during the annual Honors Convocation on Thursday, April 25, at 7 p.m. in the Concert Hall of the Jack H. Miller Center for Musical Arts.

Baccalaureate and Commencement for Hope College’s Class of 2024 are scheduled for Sunday, May 5. Commencement will take place at 3 p.m. at Ray and Sue Smith Stadium, and Baccalaureate at 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. in Dimnent Memorial Chapel.

The words penned by the Rev. Albertus C. Van Raalte when establishing the Pioneer School from which Hope grew are among the college’s most foundational: education as an “anchor of hope” for the future. Through all the decades since, that promise has been shepherded by generations of faculty mentors who have not only been at Hope, but in a real sense have been and are Hope. Across campus — in the classroom, in the laboratory, on the stage, on the playing field and in countless ways between and beyond — for a combined 205 years, the eight faculty retirees honored here have embodied and helped realize the vision of transforming tomorrow by shaping young lives today.