Arts and Sciences celebrates new Spring 2025 graduates

Florida State University honored its largest class yet with six Spring 2025 commencement ceremonies at the Donald L. Tucker Civic Center last weekend.

College of Arts and Sciences graduates participated in two ceremonies Friday, May 2. Doctoral students were hooded at the 9 a.m. ceremony while undergraduate and master’s students crossed the stage during the 7 p.m. ceremony. Each began with a moment of silence to honor Robert Morales and Tiru Chabba, whose lives were lost in the violence that shook the Tallahassee campus on April 17.

The evening ceremony featured a commencement address from Ken Jones — a member of the Florida Board of Governors, FSU College of Communication and Information alumnus, and founder and managing partner of global investment firm Third Lake Partners. Approximately one quarter of the 8,926 degrees FSU awarded are to undergraduate and graduate students from arts and sciences disciplines.

“As we continue with our recovery, this spring’s commencement was extra special," said Sam Huckaba, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. "Graduates filled the Tucker Center and, one by one, we celebrated their achievements. It was a great pleasure to help send our remarkable students off to their next adventures.”

Jaynie Curzi, David Schuler, and Elona Berisha are among the college’s more than 2,000 Spring 2025 graduates. Curzi and Berisha received bachelor’s degrees while Schuler received a master’s degree.

Jaynie Curzi. Photo by FSU College of Law.

Curzi, who earned her degree in creative writing through the Department of English, analyzed three award-winning texts on global human rights issues for her thesis, titled “The Power of Stories: Reimagining Creative Literature for a Human(e) World.” Curzi echoed the texts’ most effective writing mechanisms while crafting her own short story, “I Am Katherine, the Shrew,” a retelling of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” through the character Katherine’s eyes, contributing to a literary tradition that aims to cultivate awareness and empathy in audiences toward human rights issues.

“Literature, to me, is a simple thing to understand: a living testimony of humans speaking to other humans,” Curzi said. “I wanted to show with my research that the demonstrated effect of media having an impact on one’s perspective or opinion can be wielded for good in the world. Human rights crises are ongoing, and it’s becoming increasingly more important for our culture to become one that practices sympathy, empathy, and advocacy for our neighbors in this shared human condition.”

This year, Curzi won the department’s Mart P. Hill Award for Outstanding English Honors Thesis and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa society for maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She graduates with FSU’s Outstanding Senior Scholar distinction for maintaining a 3.9 GPA or higher, completing the University Honors Program, and defending an Honors in the Major thesis.

With a $120,000 Dean’s Scholarship from the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, Curzi plans to study entertainment law in the fall with the goal of advocating for and protecting artists.

David Schuler. Photo by Lauren Schuler.

Before attending college, Schuler was a tank crewman in the U.S. Marine Corps for nearly nine years and worked at a paper mill for five years afterward. In 2021, he earned an associate’s degree in history from Gulf Coast State College before earning his bachelor’s degree from FSU’s Department of History with a minor in anthropology in 2023. Last weekend, he received his master’s degree from the Department of Anthropology and became a two-time FSU alumnus.

“When I embarked on this journey in higher education, I never thought I’d be leaving with a bachelor’s degree and cum laude designation — let alone a master’s degree — and FSU is great about ensuring people receive the resources they need to succeed,” Schuler said. “I took to anthropology because it’s more similar to my work in the Marines than most might expect, as both use preexisting knowledge to prove or disprove what has occurred at a specific site.”

Schuler’s master’s thesis, titled “From Battlefields to Plantations: A Comparative Archaeological and Historical Analysis of Civil War Sites and the African American Experience on the Mississippi River Road,” combined archival and historical research with archaeological reports to help determine if a Union Civil War command center was established at Evergreen Plantation near New Orleans, Louisiana.

During his time at FSU, Schuler was also a member of the university’s Student Veterans Center and participated in the Coastal and Marine Laboratory’s Academic Diving Program, which trains students, faculty, and staff to conduct underwater research. Following graduation, Schuler and his family will relocate to Wellington, New Zealand, where he will seek professional opportunities in cultural resource management and underwater archaeology.

Elona Berisha. Photo by Madison Dodd Photography.

Similarly involved in research at FSU, Berisha earned a bachelor’s degree in biomathematics from the Department of Mathematics. Through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program as a sophomore, Berisha worked to optimize cell encapsulation — a technique of protecting and controlling the release of cells strategically administered as potential treatments for conditions such as Type 1 diabetes, cancer, and heart disease without one’s immune system attacking the foreign cells. During her junior and senior years, Berisha served as a UROP leader, mentoring students as they completed and presented their research.

“The versatility of biology and math — and my inability to choose just one — inspired me to pursue biomathematics,” Berisha said. “My most meaningful opportunity at FSU was my role as a UROP leader. It’s so inspiring to encourage students to meet their research goals, but I fulfilled a guiding role for more than just research; I helped students navigate their college careers, from recommending student organizations to being someone they could turn to for support.”

Berisha also served as president for FSU’s chapter of the Association for Women in Mathematics and helped organize the department’s annual Math Fun Day event. Additionally, she was a member of Pi Mu Epsilon, a fraternity for math students, and Phi Delta Epsilon, a pre-med fraternity. Postgraduation, Berisha will apply to medical schools in hopes of continuing the research she began at FSU and eventually putting this research into practice.

To learn more about FSU’s Spring 2025 commencement activities, visit commencement.fsu.edu.