RALEIGH (Dec. 4, 2020) – Record-setting astronaut and North Carolina State University alumna Christina Koch sees a one-word parallel between the first commercial flight to the International Space Station last month and the NC State Class of 2020: Resilience.

The four crew members on the Spacex flight chose a special name to reflect the pandemic conditions under which the flight nevertheless lifted off. 

“A name to share that adversity doesn’t affect our core values but goes to the very heart of why we choose to act upon them,” Koch told 9,000 spring, summer and fall graduates in a virtual address Friday evening. “That name was Resilience.”

 Koch spoke about who the graduates of 2020 are – and who they aren’t.

“We are people who see the value in new perspective,” she said, pointing to graduates’ ability to view situations from a new angle and discover new ways to live.

“We are not people who rely on how it’s always been to define our vision of the future,” she said, referring to the social tensions and upheavals of 2020. “We embrace inclusion as a guiding principle.”

Koch, who set a record this year for the longest time in space for a female astronaut – 328 days – told the graduates that through their various specialties, they are prepared to solve the world’s next great challenge.

She then described the sensation of being at the nose of a rocket, with incredible thrust driving her relentlessly upward.

“When Resilience launched, there was nowhere to go but up, and that’s where you are poised to go,” she said, urging the graduates to adapt, take risks, create, work as a team and – NC State’s theme – think and do.

“It’s how you’ve turned 2020 into an opportunity. It’s how you have a prologue of grace under pressure already written for the rest of your story to build on. Though opportunities may look different than what you expected back when you were plugging through those freshman year assignments, with every step that you don’t give up, you are moving up,” she said.

“Resilience is your trajectory.”