Kellogg Developing Researcher Clare Cullinan of South Bend, Indiana, has been named valedictorian of the 2025 University of Notre Dame graduating class. She is the first student from the KDR program to be named valedictorian.
The 180th University Commencement Ceremony will be held May 18 (Sunday) in Notre Dame Stadium for graduates and guests. During the ceremony, Cullinan will present the valedictory address, and as salutatorian, Schmitt will offer the invocation.
Cullinan, a global affairs major with a studio art minor, is in the first graduating undergraduate class of the Keough School of Global Affairs. She will graduate summa cum laude with a cumulative 4.0 grade point average. She has been a member of the dean’s list every semester and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society.
As part of KDR, Cullinan worked with Kellogg faculty fellow Steve Reifenberg for three years, researching a range of topics including student and global health and well-being, team-based learning and the concept of accompaniment in international development work.
For her senior capstone, she completed a policy project through the organization Education Bridge. In collaboration with clients and teammates, she helped lay the groundwork for an alumni program ensuring access to further education for recent graduates of Greenbelt Academies, a secondary school in South Sudan.
Through her global affairs major, Cullinan has also collaborated with a variety of nonprofits, researching and launching a community gardens program in Argentina and working with entrepreneurs from low-income backgrounds in South Bend. A highlight of her Keough School experience was serving as a student teaching assistant and a peer mentor for first-year students.
Cullinan was selected as an inaugural member of the student core team for the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good during her senior year. In that role, she helped create an undergraduate apprenticeship focused on virtue-rooted leadership and organized campus-wide events that explored ethical leadership and behavior, including Fr. TED Talks, a Notre Dame Forum event last fall that discussed ideas from the Catholic social tradition.
This summer, she will return to the institute as an intern coordinator with the Signature Course Fellowship program, where she will work with scholars and students from across higher education to launch courses addressing questions about human flourishing.
While studying abroad at Trinity College Dublin during the spring of her junior year, Cullinan served as a campus ministry intern. She has also held leadership positions in the Notre Dame Folk Choir, where she performed in domestic and international tours and recorded an album in Jerusalem.
In the South Bend community, she volunteered as an after-school caregiver and tutor at La Casa de Amistad and the Boys and Girls Clubs of Northern Indiana.
Cullinan will begin a year of service at Amate House in Chicago this fall. There, she will work as a teacher and campus minister at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School. Following her year of service, she plans to pursue a doctorate and to teach at the university level.
“What guides my work is the phrase ‘Lead, kindly light,’ which is the title of a hymn I sing with the folk choir,” Cullinan said. “How can I be a source of light for other people? How can I meet people right where they are and ensure they feel included and loved? Being a Christian to me means showing people the love of Christ — whether or not they are Catholic, whether or not they have a faith tradition — and Notre Dame has been an important starting place for that.”
This article is excerpted from the original published by news.nd.edu.