Faculty Speaker
Sean Williams, Ph.D.
Sean Williams is an ethnomusicologist—an anthropologist of music—and she teaches music and cultural studies. Her interests include liminality, language, gender, religion, and food; because of teaching with so many colleagues, those interests have expanded to include so much more. She has been very fortunate to teach with specialists in theater, physics, philosophy, psychology, agriculture, film, writing, cultural studies, linguistics, history, marine biology, literature and more. It has given her both breadth and depth in her teaching, along with the opportunity to observe outstanding colleagues at work.
Sean teachers her students to play and sing in whatever genre and language they explore. Her best teaching occurs when she and her students can work as a team to explore and understand together. We ask questions, we experience deep listening and we highlight our observations and critical thinking above whether something “rocks” or “sucks.” Because music is always best understood in combination with an issue—politics, spirituality, liminality, language— our contextualization of music yields the clearest results.
Undergraduate Student Speaker
Grace Selvig ’24
Grace Selvig was born and raised in Skagit Valley, Washington. She started her Evergreen education in 2020, with her first year being entirely online due to Covid-19.
While at Evergreen, she got involved in the campus community playing an active role in student governance as the board coordinator for the Services and Activities Fee Allocation Board in her junior year. Grace has also worked with the student newspaper, The Cooper Point Journal, for two years and this last year she took on the role of creative director. While at the paper, she wrote several articles related to labor union justice, activism and literary romance. Grace has a lot of love in her life. She loves her family, friends, boyfriend and dog. She loves painting, swimming, eating pastries and collaging. As a multimedia artist, Grace’s area of emphasis at Evergreen was visual arts. She took several art classes and a year-long ceramics and ritual studies program. She also enjoyed her programs about humanities, poetry and literature.
Grace feels that she has gained so much from her Evergreen education and is excited to take her new knowledge and ways of considering the world back to her valley to help her grow her own community.
Graduate Student Speaker
Melissa McKee ’21, MPA ’24
Melissa McKee is a 2024 MPA graduate. Daughter of Dennis McKee and Debbie K. Johnson, Melissa was born and raised in Lewis County, Washington. Melissa’s higher education journey began with the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound while incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Before her release from prison, Melissa realized that education was a pathway to transformation and applied for admission to Evergreen. Melissa completed her BA in 2021. The following year, she completed an academic certificate in Applied Animal Behavior at the University of Washington, before returning to Evergreen for the MPA program.
Melissa believes in the potential for transformative growth, not only on an individual level but also within our government, organizations, systems and society. After her decade-long experience with incarceration, she has emerged as a resilient and compassionate leader. Since her release in 2017, Melissa has dedicated herself to breaking through imposed barriers, challenging outdated systems of thinking and advancing equity.
Melissa's journey through incarceration shaped her as a leader. She brings a unique perspective and a deep understanding of the issues facing marginalized people, coupled with a sincere desire to change the world within her reach—and with each passing year, Melissa’s reach is extended.
Melissa is the mother of four beautiful children and the partner of an amazing woman to whom she will be wed this winter.