Salt Lake Community College’s 2025 graduating class is representative of its model of being an open-access college serving students coming to the campus from various walks of life and diverse backgrounds.
On Friday, 3,385 students earned degrees, with the youngest graduate being just 16 years old. The oldest is 67.
This year’s graduating class represents 45 countries and 33 states, with 1,080 first-generation college students earning their degree.
“The American dream is in the building, isn’t it?” said Branigan Knolton, foreign service officer at the U.S. Department of State and SLCC alumnus.
Knolton’s title has taken him around the world, navigating diplomatic challenges while living in Hong Kong, Mexico, Canada and Italy over his 12-year career with the State Department.
“There are only right reasons for landing at the community college. Since stepping foot on the Redwood campus in the fall of 1999, I’ve spent more time living outside of the United States than in it. My time at the community college, it changed the way I saw the world, and it changed what I wanted from life,” Knolton said. “It was a truly transformational experience, and I know your time at the community college has changed you, too.”
On Friday, Knolton spoke to the graduates about staying curious, practicing “intellectual humility” and building community.
To set the stage, Knolton reminisced on his time in a public speaking class at SLCC that he described as a “wonderful cross section of the student body” with “young punks” like himself sitting beside single parents, working professionals, foreign exchange students and more.
In the beginning, the speeches were on easy topics like a favorite hobby or sports team. As the class went on, they moved on to topics like persuasive and debate speeches.
“Things got real. Emotions ran high, arguments flew and people left class frustrated. That discomfort, it meant that we were growing. We were hearing new perspectives and challenging our thinking,” Knolton said.
But it was the personal narrative speeches, he said, that changed everything for him.
One of his classmates spoke about the struggle of making ends meet while supporting two kids, working nights and attending school. Another opened up about the emotional toll of leaving their faith and the pain of seeing how it affected their family.
Knolton himself shared that he was raised by a single mother, as his father died in a Navy plane crash when Knolton was only 11 months old.
“After those speeches, no one left class angry. We lingered. We listened. We supported each other. That cross section of students became a community,” Knolton said. “I think that’s our obligation, as graduates of a community college: to build and strengthen communities. Community is in the name of our school. So at work, at home (and) in social situations, it’s on us.”
He emphasized being thoughtful, authentic and unifying, pointing to “divisions in society and the breakdown of communities.”
In the final assignment of his public speaking class, Knolton and his peers were tasked with performing a roast of the professor.
“The professor, he took it all with a smile. And that was the final lesson of the class,” Knolton said. “Not how to roast someone or that we need some perceived shared enemy, but how to choose not to be offended. And I think that lesson is more relevant today than ever. Entities and the companies that control our online existence, they’re incentivized to keep us offended, to keep us angry, to keep us polarized.”
The more time people spend in their own echo chambers, he said, the more they stop learning and listening, instead believing to have it all figured out.
To fight this certainty, Knolton encouraged students to embrace curiosity.
“Curiosity is active. It pushes us to ask, ‘Why is this happening? What can be done? And how can I contribute?’” Knolton said. “Curiosity is the ability to update and change our existing beliefs. To approach challenges with a mindset of learning instead of one of fear. It’s not about having the answers, it’s about staying open enough to find better ones.”
This, he said, is what his time at SLCC helped instill into him.
“That’s the real power of a community college education. It doesn’t just prepare you for a career, it prepares you to be a force for good in a complicated world,” Knolton said. “And we need that now more than ever.”