Commencement
2024 Commencement Memorabilia
Download a digital copy of the commencement program, view photography captured from the day or rewatch the live-stream of the ceremony.
2024 Commencement Speaker, Dr. Michelle R. Weise
Nationally renowned author and higher education leader Dr. Michelle R. Weise will be Indiana Tech’s commencement speaker during the university’s annual commencement celebration on Saturday, May 11, 2024. During the ceremony, Dr. Weise will be recognized with an honorary doctorate for her contributions to Indiana Tech and to the field of higher education.
Dr. Weise (pronounced W-ice) is the author of Long-Life Learning: Preparing for Jobs that Don’t Even Exist Yet (Wiley, 2021). Her book was awarded the 2021 Phillip E. Frandson Award for Literature by UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association), recognizing the author and publisher of an outstanding work of continuing higher education literature. Thinkers50 named her one of 30 management and leadership thinkers in the world to watch in 2021.
Dr. Weise leads Rise & Design, an advisory service tailored for organizations seeking to design education and workforce strategies that will prepare working-age adults for the jobs of today and tomorrow. In this consulting role, she has worked with Indiana Tech’s leadership, faculty and staff over the past two years, advising their work to develop strategies and tactics for the university to develop best-in-class student support services for students of all ages.
In the past, Dr. Weise has served as Vice Chancellor of Strategy and Innovation at National University System, and Senior Advisor at Imaginable Futures, a venture of The Omidyar Group. She was also the Chief Innovation Officer of Strada Education Network as well as of Southern New Hampshire University. With Clayton Christensen, she coauthored Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution (2014) while leading the higher education practice at Christensen’s Institute for Disruptive Innovation.
Dr. Weise has also served as a commissioner for then-Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning, Harvard University’s Task Force on Skills and Employability, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Future of Undergraduate Education. Her commentaries on redesigning higher education and developing more innovative workforce and talent pipeline strategies have been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review and on PBS NewsHour.
Dr. Weise is a former Fulbright Scholar and a graduate of Harvard and Stanford.