Text: Theresa Pierno’s Maryville College Commencement address to the Class of 2024
May 4, 2024
Theresa Pierno, president and CEO of the National Parks Conservation Association, delivered the Commencement address to the Maryville College Class of 2024 on May 4, 2024, in the Ronald and Lynda Nutt Theatre of the Clayton Center for the Arts on the MC campus. Here is the full text of her address.
What a wonderful welcome! Thank you, President Coker, the Board of Directors, faculty, administrators and staff; parents, friends and family; and last but certainly not least, the 2024 graduating class of Maryville College. Congratulations!
Before I go any further, I’d like to ask each member of the graduating class to look to your left and to your right. Now, listen for a moment to the sounds around you.
A memory researcher was interviewed by New York Times Magazine earlier this year about how memories are formed. He said it’s not only the sights, but also the sounds and smells that imprint these moments in our brains. It’s this rich detail that will capture the scene, not like a photograph but more like a painting. Our interpretation of the moment, like an artist’s.
So, I invite you to be present for this ceremony and everything that comes with this graduation experience. Because I want this memory to last a lifetime for you. You earned it with hard work and with sacrifice. With the support of your family, friends and professors gathered here today who have supported, encouraged and even challenged you at times. They’re here for you today – and will continue to be here for you on your journey through life. And in this journey, you’re at the starting line.
As president and CEO of National Parks Conservation Association, I can’t help but use this opportunity to talk about this incredible legacy we’ve all inherited. This legacy was a completely new concept, found nowhere else in the world, at its creation in 1916. And that is the legacy of our National Park System.
Our national parks exist today because of those long before us who had the foresight to protect them. Who recognized that what they were seeing was too special, too important to lose, whether it was to hunting and trapping 100 years ago, or to development and mining today.
But creating national parks is just the beginning of saving these places – not the end. It takes all of us staying vigilant and using our voices to ensure our parks, this legacy, is inherited by your kids, and your grandkids. In fact, it’s that very premise on which my organization was founded.
More than 100 years ago, NPCA’s founder, Robert Sterling Yard, said it would be the people who would save their own national parks. That’s exactly who’s protected them for the last century. And when I look out from this stage, I know I’m looking at the next generation of people who will take the torch and carry it forward. I know this because you’ve had the great privilege of living at the doorstep of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the most biologically diverse park in the entire system.
Not one of the other 428 national park sites can match the number and variety of animals, plants, fungi and other organisms that can be found in the 800 square miles of the Smokies. But the park is also full of incredible history – some of which is only just now being uncovered.
There is no doubt the Smokies is an incredibly special place, and it’s no doubt left an impression on you in your time here. But it’s just one park in the system that needs your protection. Every day these places face threats. Threats of shopping centers at their borders. Threats of mining roads tearing through delicate ecosystems. Threats of polluted air and water harming wildlife and nearby communities. And the most dangerous of them all: the threat of climate change.
All of this leads me to the first thought I want to leave with you today: Take nothing for granted.
An arrowhead on an entrance sign doesn’t make the threats go away. It just gives us a powerful platform to launch our fight. And I ask each and every one of you to join me on that platform.
Thought number two: Walt Disney was right. The world is small.
But I will add: our impact can be big. I grew up in New Jersey, where my playground was the woods close to my house. I experienced the freedom and the magic of those woods: climbing trees with friends, making forts, catching lizards and snakes in the swamp.
That was my childhood, and I treasured every one of those days being in nature. Until one day, the bulldozers came. I’ll never forget the searing images and heartbreaking sounds of the trees toppling over to make way for new homes. Talk about imprinting a memory!
As the animals literally ran for their lives, my mother and I found a lost baby duckling. I begged her to save it. And so we did. We took it to a nearby rescue and even went to visit it from time to time. It wasn’t until I was an adult that mom finally broke the news to me that our duckling hadn’t actually survived.
All those times I thought we were visiting the saved duck? Turns out it was a replacement duck at the rescue! But still, I thought we had rescued that duckling and that I had made some kind of difference amid the devastation.
Of course I had no way of knowing at the time, but the loss of those woods that meant so much to me would come to define the difference I would make in this world. That patch of woods, in the scheme of things, was quite small. In fact, my whole world was small. But the impact that event had was monumental.
Early in my conservation career, I organized my community to get involved in local development. If you search hard enough, you may find a photo of me in the local newspaper sitting on a bulldozer to stop it from, you guessed it, clearcutting woods near my home in Maryland. And when I become an elected official, the first piece of legislation I introduced, and passed, was a forest conservation bill.
This legislation helped to protect forests and, when trees did need to be cut, an equal number of trees needed to be replanted in their place. We’re told it’s a great big world and challenges can seem overwhelming. Even insurmountable. But time and again I’ve seen how individual actions become movements. And movements make change.
And that leads me to my third and final thought: question authority.
Looking around at an audience full of authority figures, you may be on edge wondering what I’m going to say next! Welcome to what life was like for my parents for many years!
We’re taught to follow the rules. We’re taught that people in positions of authority know best. But what if those in authority get it wrong?
In the early 2000s, the Chesapeake Bay was not treated with the reverence it is today. The Port of Baltimore, which you’ve heard so much about with the tragic collapse of the Key Bridge, was becoming an increasingly important shipping channel that was also growing increasingly shallow. Maryland’s Port Administration would dredge material to deepen the channel to allow ships to come in, and then dump it overboard.
So essentially, 25 years ago, the Chesapeake Bay was one big dumping ground. The dredged and contaminated material would release harmful nutrients, stir up sediments and smother bottom habitat. No one would even consider an alternative to this open-bay dumping. Not the Port Administration, Maryland elected officials, the shipping industry. This is the way it was done. And they were not to be questioned.
Well, I questioned. And I won! We reached an agreement for handling the dredged material that was good for business, good for the bay, and good for the environment. And today, I’m working to help make the Chesapeake Bay a national park site. Life has a funny way of coming full circle.
I challenge each of you to be independent problem solvers and critical thinkers. Be willing to question whether there’s a better way or a different ending than what you’ve been told. The art of debate and importance of expressing new ideas is more critical now than ever before. And while we should do so respectfully, never shy from speaking your mind and from trusting your instincts.
You received an incredible education here at Maryville. In the classrooms, yes, absolutely. But also this ecosystem that’s as diverse as any place in America. The deep connections you’ve made here to the land and to each other will take root in you and impact you in ways you can only imagine.
The question is: What will you do with that impact?
You’re about to embark on the next chapter of your lives. This may be the first time in your life when you don’t have it all figured out. But that is the greatest gift of all. A time where you get to really discover who you are and what your impact will be.
And in that pursuit, don’t assume someone else has all the answers. Ask the questions. Don’t assume someone else has the power. Take the reins. Don’t assume the truth will come out. Shine a spotlight for all to see. Don’t assume something is too big to take on. It’s yours to tackle.
When you leave the safety of this campus, this faculty, this community, keep hoping, keep dreaming, keep striving, keep giving, keep failing, and keep fighting. The future of this small world rests on your shoulders. Just as it rested on mine, and on my parents’, and their parents’.
Each generation is challenged to be great by the one that came before. And with your time at Maryville College, you’ve been given every opportunity to fulfill this mission. And you will!
Thank you again for welcoming me into your community, and for allowing me to be part of the memories you’re making together today. Congratulations!