ASU graduates overjoyed — and employed

Adam Wiechman will soon be headed to the Big Apple. Grace Reiter will be pulling up roots in May and moving to Ann Arbor, Michigan. Omkaar Shenoy is Philly bound. And Blake Niemann will be building his future in Phoenix.

What do these four Arizona State University students have in common?

They already have jobs lined up before they graduate early next month.

“It’s an immense burden lifted off my shoulders,” said Niemann, who has been working as a multimedia journalist for FOX 10 since February. “To already have a job in a top 12 market like Phoenix and to be able to cover sports in a profession that I love is a dream come true.”

Niemann, who will graduate a year early from ASU’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a Bachelor of Arts in sports journalism, has covered some of the largest sporting events nationally and internationally. They include the 2024 Paris Olympics, NCAA Men’s Final Four and College Football Playoff. He credits the Cronkite School for his entree into the workforce.

“I come from a place called Philomath, Oregon, and I arrived in the Valley as a small-town kid with no connections,” said Niemann, who was the valedictorian of his high school. “Within the first two weeks of being on campus, I got involved with student organizations Blaze Radio and the Walter Cronkite Sports Network, and was able to get on air and get immersed in real hands-on experience out in the field, which is totally invaluable.”

But before Wiechman, Reiter, Shenoy and Niemman officially begin their new roles, there’ll be an opportunity for some celebratory festivities.

These four are part of more than 21,000 undergraduate and graduate students earning their degree this May — the largest graduating class in ASU history. Their degrees range from engineering to sustainability to public service and health. Of that total, approximately 7,300 are graduating with a master’s degree, Juris Doctorate or PhD.

WATCH: Tutorial on how to wear the bachelor’s cap and gown

Several colleges in particular are seeing big increases in students graduating.

The W. P. Carey School of Business has nearly 4,000 students graduating, an increase of 24% over last spring, and the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts will celebrate about 1,300 new alumni, up 10%. The largest graduating college this year comes from the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, which will hand out diplomas to about 4,700 new ASU graduates.

All three are helping to shore up key areas for Arizona’s workforce, including the needs of the burgeoning semiconductor industry in the Phoenix area.

Shenoy’s degree in computer science has already served him well. He was hired by Aramark in late March as a data engineer analyzing food supplies and building dashboards to monitor inventory. He’ll be moving to Philadelphia in June to start his new life. But not before he collects his diploma in a few weeks.

“ASU was very helpful in terms of giving me the resources to find this job,” said Shenoy, who will graduate from the Fulton Schools of Engineering on May 12. “The university also gave me a great foundation in coding and a broader skill set in media and sciences, which allowed me to explore my creative side.”

It didn’t hurt that Shenoy served as director of sunhacks, which hosts a yearly hackathon designed to support students in shaping ideas, coding and prototyping. Shenoy was also a member of Engineering Projects in Community Service, a social entrepreneurship program that designs, builds and employs engineering-based systems to solve challenges for charities, schools and other nonprofit organizations.  

“ASU gave me a great launchpad to start off my career strong, and I’m looking forward to where my degree and my future alumni connections will take me,” Shenoy said. 

ASU grads like Shenoy are among the most employable in the world, with the university being named second among public U.S. universities for employable graduates by Times Higher Education.

Reiter discovered this for herself in January when she was hired by Lineage, the world’s largest temperature-controlled warehousing and logistics company. She’ll be headed to the Great Lakes State shortly after graduation to begin her new job as a financial analyst.

“Having a job before graduation is one of the things I’m most grateful for right now because my family is in Ohio, and I’ll be about 90 minutes away when I start my job,” said Reiter, a sustainability major and this spring’s College of Global Futures Outstanding Undergraduate Student. “I credit ASU for giving me the tools, because the plethora of opportunities here is just honestly unmatched.”

As a member of the Luminosity Lab, Reiter and two other ASU students created Verdantt Fresh, a mobile app and vending machine designed to reduce food waste and increase access to fresh produce. Her research spans a wide variety of sustainability and technology initiatives, including investigating power beaming for solar energy in Space to Solve Climate Change, reimagining educational technology with Zoom and Apple Classroom, and exploring materials for Aegis, an inflatable lunar landing pad that secured second place in NASA’s Big Idea Challenge.

“I came in as an architecture student but recognized the College of Global Futures was a place where I could find my niche,” Reiter said. “I found it with sustainability.”

WATCH: How to wear the master’s cap and gown

ASU’s spring graduating class also includes nearly 7,400 students who earned their degree online. It’s another milestone year for ASU Online, which has graduated over 100,000 total students from the university. A good amount of those students earn their degrees through the trailblazing Starbucks College Achievement Plan and ASU-Uber partnership.

ASU’s Graduate and Undergraduate Commencements are the universitywide ceremonies at which President Michael Crow confers degrees. Graduate Commencement takes place at 9 a.m. Monday, May 12, at Desert Financial Arena while Undergraduate Commencement begins at 7:30 p.m. the same day at Mountain America Stadium — both on the Tempe campus.

The two commencements headline a week — May 10–17 — filled with celebrations honoring students’ accomplishments. 

For a full listing of spring 2025 graduation events, visit the schedule page on ASU’s graduation website. Also, find out where to enter and exit the different venues, along with information about parking, what not to bring, food and beverage options and more elsewhere on the graduation page.

The main ceremonies together are expected to draw approximately 60,000 people between graduates and guests.

Elizabeth Alexander, a multiple Pulitzer Prize finalist and now the president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts and humanities, will speak at the May 12 undergraduate ceremony.

Red Cross President Katie Forbes, a 1973 alum of the W. P. Carey School of Business and a member of the W. P. Carey Hall of Fame, will speak at the graduate ceremony earlier that day.

Both recipients will receive honorary degrees from ASU and will be hooded during the undergraduate ceremony.

RELATED: Read more about the speakers.

WATCH: How to wear your doctorate cap and gown

Adam Wiechman, who will receive a PhD in sustainability and is the College of Global Futures’ Outstanding Graduate Student, has made a connection of another kind — with a professor position at New York University’s Wagner Graduate School of Public Service in September 2026.

Wiechman, who is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, delayed his tenure at NYU so that he could conduct postdoctoral research at the High Meadows Environmental Institute at Princeton University in August. He said ASU gave him the freedom to explore interdisciplinary research during his academic quest to discover himself.

“This required me to straddle engineering, political science and public policy, and set me up for this position because NYU was looking for someone with many different perspectives,” said Weichman, a native of Allen, Texas. “The academic job market is difficult so getting hired is a very big relief. It’s nice to have something solid in place.”