When John Della Volpe was a teenager living with his family in Brockton, he and his friend would ride their bikes down the dirt path that led to Stonehill College’s campus. They’d play basketball in the college’s old gym, or ice skate on campus during the winter.

Della Volpe, now the director of polling at Harvard’s Institute of Politics, returned to Stonehill on May 22 – not on a bike to play basketball, but to speak in front of over 500 students as the graduation commencement speaker. “It was a particular honor to be asked to give a commencement anywhere, but specifically Stonehill which I kind of grew up in the shadow of,” he said.