11th Annual Commencement Address
Emery C. Graham, Jr.

(Emery Graham, City of Wilmington, Delaware’s Economic Development Research Planner, took Master of Professional Studies in Development Communication program under the Faculty of Information and Communication Studies. He is one of the 2006 graduate who graduated with honors, Chancellor's list. He is also one of UPOU’s foreign-based students.)

I bring joyous greetings to the Board of Regents, Madame President, Chancellors, Faculty, Graduates, Families, and Friends. I am Emery C. Graham, Jr., and a member of this 11th graduating class of the Open University of the Philippines. I am one of the fortunate foreign students who have been privileged to study at this great institution of learning. I have been honored with the opportunity to bring the message from this year’s graduating class.

I am pleased to focus my address on the ideas of ubiquity and quality; two words that seem to describe a challenge and a pledge. Ubiquity is the state of being everywhere or in many places at once. Quality is the condition of having worth or value. We, the graduates, come from here in the beautiful Philippine Islands and from many far away places in the world. We have come from many backgrounds and interests. The Open University of the Philippines is fast becoming ubiquitous in the world. Its masthead is appearing in more and more Internet advertisements for online educational opportunities. The Open University of The Philippines’ faculty is continuing to assume leading roles in Academic, Business, Research, Government, and Technical communities throughout Southeast Asia and the world. The enrollment at OPOU is growing fast. As we take time away from our busy lives to honor the graduates, we should reflect on the opportunity, and challenge, each graduate accepts with the diploma that will be received today. We, the graduates, are making a commitment to maintain, and build on, the quality of our contributions to our families, our communities, and the quickly shrinking World. We, who have been given so much, have an obligation to improve the quality of life for those who we have an opportunity to serve. “To whom much is given, much is required.”

The Open University of the Philippines is making quality education ubiquitous in the World and we, the graduates, are the living evidence of the quality of that education. Every striving man and woman in the world has been blessed with the increasing availability of the Open University of the Philippines’s online educational assets. We must be that same blessing to the people and organizations with whom we will interact in the coming days and years. The reputation of our alma mater is really our reputation. The value of our education is really the value others place upon our service. We are the living embodiment of the quality of education received here at the Open University of the Philippines. Overtime this university has, and will, become known far and wide for its openness, its quality, and it graduates. We have accepted the challenge of continuing to enhance that legacy of contribution to the well being of mankind.

In the quickly evolving terminology of the Information and Communications world we meet a new concept, U-Commerce. “U”, for Ubiquitous, Commerce, according to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, is defined as:” the use of ubiquitous networks to support personalized and uninterrupted communications and transactions between a firm and its various stakeholders to provide a level of value over, above, and beyond traditional commerce" (Watson, et al., 2002).” We are the human embodiment of this emerging worldview that envisions a new neural network of human interaction unfettered by time or place. We have firmly planted our feet in the developing and developed worlds. We are the vanguard of a new reality that envisions an enhanced quality of life supported by the deployment of forward thinking people who use our knowledge of Communications and computers to improve the development process for the developed, and developing, peoples of the world. Indeed we represent the emerging reality of ubiquity and quality as a life enhancing force in the world. Ours is a task that will benefit from the world spanning relationships we have developed during our stay here. We now leave here having made friends and met colleagues from all corners of the earth. We each have achieved a new sense of ubiquity heretofore unimagined. The quality of our lives has been forever changed.

Thanks to modern communications we must acknowledge that in the most developed countries of the world there have been, and continue to be, “internal colonies” of underdeveloped people who exist on the barren margin of an advertised world of plenty. My experiences in the Open University of the Philippines have been ones of daily discoveries of the similarity of life and struggle in the developed and developing worlds’ realities. In each of these realities I have confirmed the same effort to bring the benefits of wealth, health, and education to a wider segment of our marginalized and oppressed people. The education and insights I have gained, as a student at the Open University of The Philippines, is a gift that I could never repay. The education provided here has filled a gap in my understanding of development. This gap represents the missing link in the West’s Development education curriculum. I anticipate a growing demand for scholars and leaders whose expertise and experience spans the field of Development and Communications. I anticipate a world calling for you.

In conclusion, I ask you to please accept my humble thanks for the honor of addressing you on this momentous occasion. Let us depart from this place of learning and enlightenment with the firm commitment to go forth to all corners of the earth and share the invaluable knowledge we have harvested in an effort to improve the quality of life for all who we happen to meet.

Thank You.