It’s Saturday, May 17, when two trucks pull up to Grace Hall just before sunrise. Notre Dame’s General Services team climbs out and meets the staff from the Office of the Registrar on the sidewalk. They have a lot of work ahead of them.
Meet Shawn Thomas, assistant manager of General Services, who is no stranger to the task. He has been at Notre Dame for 21 years — a legacy, like a lot of domers at this University. His father, Robert, was superintendent of the football stadium, and his brother works in Notre Dame landscaping. You could say a love for this place definitely runs in the family, when Shawn was a little boy, he told his parents: “If I don’t go to college, I want to work at Notre Dame.”
The teams cover the truck floors with blankets for protection. The Registrar’s team hands General Services color-coded boxes, sorted alphabetically, which the General Services crew loads carefully into the trucks, front to back, being careful to preserve the order. In the end, Thomas and the rest of the crew stare at all 3,000+ boxes. The loading work is just the beginning — they are about to spend the next hour and a half delivering all the boxes to each of Notre Dame’s colleges.
That, my fellow seniors, is how our diplomas will find their way to us on Commencement Weekend. Although it may seem like it, graduation doesn’t just magically happen: There are countless individuals dedicated to making it the best possible experience it can be for us seniors, families and faculty.
For the final edition of “Off the Dome,” I had the privilege of interviewing a few of these individuals.
Take one of Thomas’ coworkers Austin Mahoney. As the project coordinator at General Services, Mahoney handles the intake for all commencement work orders — including diploma deliveries, mini-graduations and sub-graduations.
“This campus is ... like a whole little mini-city in itself,” he tells me. With so many moving parts and parties to please, the weekend should feel chaotic. But Mahoney doesn’t feel that way: “The way that it’s put in place, and the people that are in the positions that they are … it goes way smoother than imaginable.” Mahoney isn’t fazed by the long hours and late nights, either. It’s easy when you’re working with a team that feels like family. “You come to know these guys like brothers,” he tells me.
While General Services serves as the boots on the ground to put on commencement, the Office of the Registrar is the main team behind planning and execution. “We start preparing in January, right when we come back to school,” says Chuck Hurley, the Registrar’s assistant vice president. “It’s close to about 100 events that are taking place between Wednesday and Sunday night that we run with an office of 25 people,” he explains.
Executing such a feat requires intense commitment on the actual weekend. During the 12 days leading up to graduation, Hurley and the team are often working 10- to 15-hour days. He shares some extraordinary stories of the staff’s dedication, times when they went above and beyond the duties in their job description.
Take Stephanie Ross, the registrar’s communications & senior reporting specialist. No one who knew Ross was surprised when, one year, she directed huge semi-trucks through the stadium tunnel in the brutal heat. She did it without a single complaint, standing there without AC, covered in construction dust. “Do you remember Mary Poppins?” Hurley asks, recalling seeing Ross that day. “Poppins after the chimney sweep? She looked like that,” he said.
Or one year, when Paul Ullrich, the Registrar’s Technology Development Team lead, was expecting his wife to go into labor any minute during the weekend. He worked through the entirety of commencement Sunday when, immediately upon returning home after an 11-hour workday, his wife went into labor. Ullrich wasted no time: he took a 20-minute nap, put his daughters to bed and drove his wife to the hospital — where his son, John, was born 40 minutes later.
Or Amika Micou, deputy registrar. Her dedication was never more apparent than in 2021 when, after being diagnosed with cancer, she soldiered through the Saturday and Sunday of Commencement Weekend just to show up, bone-tired, to her second round of chemo Monday morning.
Listening to these stories, I’m reminded of a quote from Kahlil Gibran’s 1923 novel, “The Prophet.” The novel’s section titled, “On Work” argues that work is inseparable from love; not only is it necessary, but a joyful, spiritual task that allows us to participate in eternity — to add our thread into the tapestry of life.
Gibran says, “When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music … And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving. Work is love made visible.”
To our graduating class: commencement weekend is the product of thousands of invisible acts of love, all woven together to produce a beautiful celebration. Yet, the faces behind these acts don’t have to stay invisible.
Instead, when you hold your hard-earned diploma on Sunday, try to remember the hands it passed through to get to you. Try to remember Shawn Thomas, Austin Mahoney, Zandy Eckrich, Chuck Hurley, Paul Ullrich, Amika Micou, Stephanie Ross and the many more whose names would max out this word count.
This column is dedicated to those who bring Commencement Weekend to life. To those who give so much of themselves so that we seniors can close our last chapter here. Their selflessness, their hard work — that is truly love made visible. And with humble gratitude, the Class of 2026 says: thank you.
