By Tena L. Cook, Marketing Coordinator
CHADRON, Neb. – One hundred and seventy Chadron State College undergraduate and graduate candidates for graduation were honored Friday during Winter Commencement in the Chicoine Center.
CSC alumna, Distinguished Young Alumni Award recipient, and mathematics educator Dr. Hortensia Soto urged graduates to be their own hope during the ceremony, weaving personal reflection, humor and heartfelt advice into an address centered on emotional intelligence.
Soto, a professor of mathematics at Colorado State University, said returning to campus and speaking at a ceremony that included her niece, graduate Jayden Kanno, stirred deep memories.
“Chadron State is where I realized I had wings,” Soto said. “This is the place where my eyes were opened to the realms of possibility.”
She encouraged graduates to embrace the excitement, hope and uncertainty of the moment and framed her message around the idea that hope spreads like wildfire.
To illustrate that theme, she shared a story about an 1877 geometry book given to her decades ago. Inside the fragile volume, the author had inscribed a message to a student: “Each one is his own hope.”
“That phrase startled me,” Soto said. “It sounded like something I would say.”
Soto explored three types of intelligence, physical, rational, and emotional, and proposed that emotional intelligence offers the greatest potential to create change by fostering empathy, compassion and curiosity.
“People with strong emotional intelligence communicate difficult decisions in more humane ways,” she said. “They create an environment where different is valued rather than viewed as friction.”
She encouraged graduates to resist dualistic thinking, which pits one viewpoint against another, and instead develop a non-dualistic outlook capable of considering opposing viewpoints. That mindset, she said, leads to wonder, creativity and connection.
“A non-dualistic approach has the potential to bring hope, seeing that while we are different, we have much more in common,” Soto said.
Drawing from her experiences as a student living in the basement apartment of an elderly Chadron woman, Soto told graduates that engaging with people who think and live differently can strengthen emotional intelligence. She concluded with several quotes offering guidance on purpose, resilience, joy and love.
Soto said naming and noticing love in everyday life is a sure way to nurture hope.
“I invite all of us, especially the graduates, to make a commitment to be your own hope,” she said. “For those you love, for those who are different from you, for those you have yet to meet, and especially for those with whom it is difficult to see eye-to-eye. Show up a little more as the person you want to be. Tomorrow, do it again.”