Maggie Rogers is headed back to her alma mater to help send off this year’s class of graduates, with the singer/songwriter announcing Monday (May 5) that she’ll speak at the 2025 New York University Tisch School of the Arts commencement ceremony later in the month.
Sharing a nine-year-old photo of herself in her purple graduation robes and cap, Rogers — who completed a bachelor’s degree at the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music in 2016 — posted the news on Instagram and wrote, “see you at graduation.”
Tisch also posted the announcement on its official account, revealing that the “Alaska” singer will serve as the school’s 2025 Salute Honored Speaker. The ceremony will take place May 16 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.
Rogers’ participation in the school’s commencement is sure to be a full-circle moment, given how her career first took off when she was still in an NYU classroom. A filmed 2016 masterclass guest-led by Pharrell Williams for the Clive Davis Institute famously propelled the Maryland native into the spotlight, with the producer declaring in the viral video that he’d “never heard anyone like” Rogers after listening to her then-unfinished song “Alaska” during the session.
The musician has since dropped three albums, all of which charted on the Billboard 200; Heard It in a Past Life, which features “Alaska,” arrived in 2019, followed by 2022’s Surrender and 2024’s Don’t Forget Me.
In addition to earning her bachelor’s at NYU, Rogers also finished a master’s degree in religion and public life at Harvard University in 2022.
See Tisch’s announcement below.
