Charles Silver ’26 was announced as the valedictorian for the Class of 2026 at the senior toast in the Mission Gardens on Friday, May 29, 2026. **(Dylan Ryu/The Santa Clara)**

Before Charles “Charlie” Silver ’26 became Santa Clara University’s Class of 2026 valedictorian, he was still trying to find his place.

He had left the University of Miami, moved across the country from Rhode Island and arrived at Santa Clara University as a transfer student. He liked California’s coast, the mountains and the chance to spend more time outdoors. But what ultimately brought him to the University was not only the landscape around campus. It was the possibility of belonging to something.

That possibility first came through a phone call.

Before transferring, Silver said he spent about an hour speaking with Jules Holland, a former president of Into the Wild, Santa Clara University’s outdoor recreation program. Holland told him about the trips, the people and the community she had found at the University.

“I was feeling lost and not sure where I wanted to go after Miami,” Silver said. “She told me all about Into the Wild, all about Santa Clara, and I was like, this is the school for me.”

Three years later, Silver is preparing to stand before the graduating class at commencement as someone who searched for belonging, then learned how to create it for others.

Charles Silver ’26 was announced as the valedictorian for the Class of 2026 at the senior toast in the Mission Gardens on Friday, May 29, 2026. **(Nina Glick/The Santa Clara)**

When he talks about being named valedictorian, Silver, a management major in the Leavey School of Business, does not describe it as an honor built only in classrooms.

“I think grades are obviously important, but that’s definitely not the most important part of this,” Silver said. “You can get good grades, but it’s also so much about what you do outside of the classroom.”

For Silver, much of that work happened through Into the Wild. Shortly after arriving at the University, he went on a rafting trip in Oregon that helped him see what he wanted his time at the University to become. He made one of his best friends on that trip. More than that, he found a model for the kind of welcome he wanted to give others.

In the years that followed, Into the Wild became the center of Silver’s Santa Clara University experience. He moved from participant to leader, guiding trips that helped students find one another outside the rhythms of campus life.

“The place where I interacted with the most students was through Into the Wild, obviously leading trips and providing that space for others to build their own communities,” Silver said.

Cooper McCarthy ’26, president of Into the Wild, said that sense of belonging is not incidental to who Silver is. It is something he brings into the spaces around him.

“I think he creates community wherever he goes,” McCarthy said. “I’ve seen a lot of it with Into the Wild, and how he listens, and how he is genuinely interested in what you have to say, and wants to get to know you personally.”

The two met early in Silver’s sophomore year, when Silver was interviewing to become a new Into the Wild leader. To be Silver’s friend, McCarthy said, is to feel deliberately included.

“He cares very deeply and checks in and shares, and is honestly a very open person,” McCarthy said. “He does a good job of making you feel heard and included in his life.”

McCarthy said Silver’s openness is part of why students respond to him on trips.

“He doesn’t hold himself back,” McCarthy said. “He doesn’t filter himself to create some sort of image. He instead embraces who he is, and that allows other people to embrace who they are.”

For Silver, the reward came after the trips ended. Students who met while rafting or backpacking continued spending time together once they returned to campus.

“He doesn’t hold himself back,” McCarthy said. “He doesn’t filter himself to create some sort of image. He instead embraces who he is, and that allows other people to embrace who they are.”

That arc—from searching for belonging to helping others find it—became one reason Silver stood out in the valedictorian selection process.

Naomi Andrews, professor of history and a member of the valedictorian screening committee, said candidates first have to meet an academic threshold. But being named valedictorian is not based on GPA alone.

“You start out having to be in the top 7% of the graduating class by GPA, and then you have to do a really great speech,” Andrews said.

Candidates are also evaluated on broader qualities, Andrews said, including “leadership on campus, excellent academics, a visible presence, not just being down in one silo.”

“We look for students who can speak to the moment and to something that seems to evoke the common experience of a class,” Andrews said. “We’re looking for a representative of the campus and representative of the student body.”

Andrews said the process looks for a balance between academics and contribution to campus life.

“The balance of academic excellence and broad campus involvement, contributing to the community as a whole—you want a valedictorian that people know,” Andrews said.

In Silver’s case, Andrews said his experience as a transfer student was part of what made his perspective meaningful.

“I thought that was great, and the way he thinks about it has a heightened awareness of community and welcome,” Andrews said.

Being named valedictorian, Silver said, felt like both a personal achievement and a responsibility. He was proud, but also aware that he was being asked to speak for a class full of people he admires.

“There are a lot of brilliant people in our graduating class,” Silver said. “I was actually hesitant to even submit my application.”

His commencement speech, he said, will center on community building and how graduates can provide that for others after leaving Santa Clara University. He wanted it to be personal enough to be honest, but broad enough that his classmates could see themselves in it.

“When I sat down, my goal was, I don’t want to write something that anybody else could write,” Silver said. “I want it to be personal, not necessarily just to me, but to Santa Clara as a whole.”

McCarthy said he hopes Silver’s speech reflects the way he has lived his time at the University: by committing deeply to what matters to him.

“I hope that he talks about throwing yourself into things and not being one foot in, one foot out,” McCarthy said. “If you’re going to pursue something, pursue it wholeheartedly. I think that’s what he does really, really well.”

For Silver, what feels specific to Santa Clara University is the way people make room for one another. Other students created space for him when he arrived as a transfer student, he said, and that welcome did not happen by accident.

“I owe it to a lot of other people,” Silver said. “That is something that is unique about Santa Clara, is how much this community welcomes others in and makes space for that.”

As graduation approaches, Silver said what he will miss most is the closeness of life around Santa Clara University, where he lives with eight friends in a house near campus and sees familiar faces within blocks.

“It’s kind of an incredible opportunity that we have here,” Silver said. “To be surrounded, to be in such close proximity to so many people that we know.”

For a class preparing to leave that closeness behind, Silver’s message is not only to remember Santa Clara University fondly. It is to carry forward the habits that made it feel like home: making time, making space and noticing who might be looking for a way in.

“Think about all of the people here that made room for you and helped you build your community,” Silver said. “Be that person for others.”

Silver’s valedictorian story is not only about the student who will stand at the podium. It is about the transfer student who arrived unsure, found a home and learned that belonging is not something students simply discover.

It is something they create for one another.