Each year, faculty and graduating seniors at the University of Minnesota Morris select a student to receive the Curtis H. Larson Award. This award was established to honor UMN Morris’s first senior class speaker in 1964 and the recipient speaks on behalf of the graduates during the commencement ceremony.
Riley Tollefsrud, ’25, Brainerd, is the 2025 Curtis H. Larson recipient. He is graduating with a double major in psychology and Spanish. Because he had enough prior credits when he came to UMN Morris, Tollefsrud could have graduated in less than two years. Instead, he stayed and participated in numerous extracurricular activities with a goal to leave Morris more connected than it was when he first arrived in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Tollefsrud has been active with the Office of Residential Life, the National Spanish Honors Society, and the Morris Campus Student Association, where he currently serves as president. He has held many other leadership positions on campus and has participated in multiple years of undergraduate research.
UMN Morris will celebrate the 2025 Commencement on Saturday, May 10 at 1:30 p.m. More than 215 students will receive their degrees. Complete details are available at morris.umn.edu/commencement.