Degrees, Dreams And The Promising Road Ahead
They had spent years working toward this single moment, and when it finally came, many found themselves looking back rather than ahead. On May 23, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi-NCR, held its 12th Convocation, and as the graduating class gathered one last time, pride and belonging filled the hall in equal measure.
Chief Guest C. Vijayakumar, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of HCLTech, Distinguished Guest Padma Shri Professor K. N. Ganesh, Chancellor Mr. Shikhar Malhotra and Vice-Chancellor Professor Ananya Mukherjee, reminded the graduates that achievement is incomplete without human values to ground it.
The Convocation had an extra zing to it, as it was the university’s 15th year and fell in the same year HCL turned 50.
More than 3,000 guests filled the hall with pride and love. There were parents, siblings, grandparents, and kin who had carried this day around in their heads for years. To celebrate the occasion, faculty, Ms. Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Chairperson, HCL Technologies and Trustee, Shiv Nadar Foundation, and Ms. Kiran Nadar, Founder and Chairperson, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art and Trustee, Shiv Nadar Foundation; and university staff were in attendance.
Seven hundred and ninety-four graduates took their place in the hall in the presence of our founder Mr. Shiv Nadar, Deans, and Heads of Departments at the stage. Family members of the graduates could be seen using their mobile devices to click photos of their wards in convocation regalia. In total, 581 undergraduates, 158 postgraduates and 55 doctoral scholars from the School of Engineering, School of Natural Sciences, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and School of Management and Entrepreneurship graduated in the grand ceremony.
In his message, Mr. Vijayakumar took the graduates back to the early 1990s, to an India just opening up and to the launch of HCL at what he called a trijunction of change. He asked the graduates to picture the young engineer he had been, suddenly having to multitask, build teams and lead from the front, all at once. The takeaway he offered, though, was not really about scale. “Growth and leadership go together,” he argued, “and you get neither without trusting the people around you and staying willing to learn.”
His softer advice landed harder. “Hold on to empathy,” he told them. “Build workplaces where people of all kinds actually belong. And keep something in your life that has nothing to do with work, because a career without it tends to hollow out,” he said.
Delivering his speech, Professor Ganesh urged the Class of 2026 to “remain curious, embrace uncertainty, and continue asking questions that deepen understanding rather than seek quick answers. What stays with you after you leave an institution,” he said, “is less the coursework than the values and habits of mind you pick up along the way.” He added, “I am delighted to see that Shiv Nadar University, in a short span of 15 years, has already become the youngest private university to be recognised as an Institution of Eminence by the Government of India, which is a very great achievement. This is due to the kind and clear vision of its founder, Shri Shiv Nadar, who has always prioritised higher education nationally and internationally, as well as in society. I wish to congratulate all the students who are graduating today and the many winners.”
The university’s own leaders struck similar notes. Chancellor Shikhar Malhotra said he wanted graduates who pair “talent with purpose, ambition with integrity, and success with a sense of responsibility towards society,” and that the university could not wait to see what they did next. In her address, Vice-Chancellor Professor Ananya Mukherjee urged graduates to consider the big questions of this moment: how do we harness the wonders of science, engineering, and technology to create a positive impact on society? She emphasised the need for institutions that can ensure such impact, ending her address with a tribute to our founder, Mr. Nadar, for his visionary approach to building new institutions.
On May 8, the university’s leadership visited the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bengaluru to confer an honorary doctorate on Professor C.N.R. Rao.
This year, 24 students from undergraduate and graduate courses across four schools were given special awards for their academic performance.
The grand finale was a crescendo of celebratory music, with ticker tape filling the venue and jubilation accompanied by the throwing of caps. Then it was the usual scramble for photographs with family and faculty. But, this time, the goodbyes ran a little long. The students who had walked in looking backwards four years ago after a crippling pandemic had stalled everything, walked out the other way, headed for new beginnings. They had aimed at this one afternoon for years. Now it was behind them, and the harder part was only starting.
As the graduates trickled out of the venue to celebrate with family, plans loomed large, mixed with memories of their formative years at Shiv Nadar University.