Tom Cecere to deliver commencement address to veterinary college Class of 2025
There is no doubt that Tom Cecere knows a lot about anatomic pathology and educating the next generation of veterinarians, but that’s not the principal reason the Class of 2025 chose him as this year’s commencement speaker for the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.
“Students don’t really care how much you know until they know how much you care,” said Cecere, associate professor of anatomic pathology and assistant head for DVM curriculum coordination at the veterinary college.
While Cecere said he has reviewed plenty of commencement addresses in preparation for his talk to graduates on Friday evening, May 16, at the Moss Arts Center, most of those addresses were given by famous people who had little or no connection to the thousands of graduates to which they were speaking.
“This is just the opposite,” Cecere said. ”The honor and the privilege of being invited to speak with these students is the result of the personal connection that we as faculty have with our students and have developed and cultivated over their last four years here.
“My goal is to provoke thought and to hopefully inspire confidence and excitement at the end of their milestone of their veterinary education and at the beginning of their career as veterinarians, which should be an exciting and rewarding point in their lives.”
A proud “triple Hokie,” Cecere earned his B.S. in biochemistry in 2001, Doctor of Veterinary Medicine in 2005, and Ph.D. in viral immunology in 2012, all at Virginia Tech. He also completed a residency in anatomic pathology at North Carolina State University and is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists.
Since joining the veterinary college faculty in 2012, Cecere has become known for his passion for teaching and mentorship, inspiring students and residents through both classroom instruction and hands-on diagnostic pathology.
His research is primarily collaborative and ranges from ultrastructural pathology to infectious diseases to neuropathology. Cecere believes in lifelong learning and strives to ignite curiosity and discovery in his students.
Cecere is also a talented violinist and former student concertmaster for the New River Valley Symphony Orchestra. He is a devoted family man, avid reader, and enthusiastic traveler, always seeking new adventures with his wife — Julie Cecere, clinical associate professor of theriogenology — and their children.
Cecere said he was “simultaneously surprised and honored” to receive the invitation to speak at commencement, chosen by the graduating class.
“One of the most rewarding parts of this job for me is to is to see our students come in year one from a wide variety of backgrounds, different life experiences, different foundations — they're excited, they are apprehensive sometimes, about what lies ahead — and to watch them go through this metamorphosis, which really is the result of their hard work,” Cecere said. “There’s no way to short-circuit that. We provide the environment, the instructional material, the opportunities, the access to experiential learning and faculty expertise, and they put in the hard work and dedication.
“I especially love being on clinics with the fourth-year students right before graduation, because they have become veterinarians, and we can have meaningful and deep conversations about cases at a level that is noticeably advanced from the beginning of their clinical journey. That sort of transition, that arc, I love. It never gets old. I really love that.”
