Room 237

Room 237 The AMP Sessions: Class of '26 — Track 47 A documentary hymn for the graduating cohort of UVA's Accelerated Master's Program in Systems Engineering, Class of 2026. Recorded the night of Sunday, May 17, 2026 — graduation day. The cohort walked into Room 237 at the Northern Virginia campus on May 19, 2025, the day after the Class of 2025 walked out. They walked out today. The Class of 2026-27 walks in tomorrow morning, May 18. This song is the room and the year held together. The day this song documents: 12:00 PM, Sunday, May 17, 2026. McIntire Amphitheater, UVA, Charlottesville. Ninety degrees under a tent. Hand fans across the crowd. The ten of us in a reserved row of nine, with Marty Qian behind us and Jameson Wojewodka behind us alone. Professor Greg Gerling — department chair, the man who took the program from Bill Scherer — opens at noon. Katie Bedler speaks first for the undergrads, closing with the Lorax and a rule of three on kindness. Bill Scherer is named twice that afternoon — once by Katie, once by Sky Taylor. The first cohort without him heard him into the room. Then Gary Thomas stood up. The cohort voted him AMP Charger — the player's-player vote, the one who showed up for everyone. He opened with a prayer for cool wind. He told the room he came to last year's graduation to watch a friend cross the stage, so he could picture himself there. He told the room about nine hours on Problem 1-C of Henning's earliest assignment — a problem we never solved alone. He told the room what Professor Burkett said on our last day of class: rebalance the system. He named the three subsystems — health, family, faith. He gave us the line: we made it, I made it, you made it, we got here. Skye Taylor followed with the PhD speech and the privilege list — the visa, the move, the pay cut, the children. She named Chantel Gross, the student services coordinator who put our graduation requirements into the system herself, and walked the stage with us today as a Master of Engineering graduate. Four separate speakers named Chantel by the time the hats came off. The invisible subsystem finally made visible. The diploma walk. The handshakes. The hat throw. Olsson Hall after — a chalkboard with CLASS of '26 written across the equations. Kelsey Kawaguchi by the chalkboard with her daughter in her arms, born ten days ago. The framed AMP Charger image, signed by the cohort, presented to Professor Burkett. Then we scattered. The cohort (Class of '26): Billy Robinson · Gary Thomas · Iyad "Slim" · Kelsey Kawaguchi · Patrick Spisak · Pat Korzeniowski · Anthony "Tony" Perotti · Tyrone Hill · Jessica Lee · Jameson Wojewodka Faculty and staff named in this song: Greg Gerling (department chair) · Henning Mortveit (Probability) · Matt Burkett (AMP director) · Bill Scherer (in memory) · Chantel Gross (student services / Master of Engineering '26) · Marty Qian (TA) Speakers at the ceremony: Katie Bedler (undergraduate) · Gary Thomas (AMP Charger) · Sky Taylor (PhD) About this song: Room 237 is the cohort speaking with one voice about a year of temporary occupancy. We were the first cohort without Bill Scherer. We held the room for 365 days. The room outlasts us. Written as a restrained chamber folk documentary — image-first, observational, processional. Not a performance. A remembering. From May to May. The AMP Sessions: Class of '26 is an ongoing AI-generated music project documenting one cohort's year inside UVA's Accelerated Master's Program in Systems Engineering, May 2025 through May 2026. Every track is anchored in real transcripts, GroupMe chats, classroom recordings, and lived cohort memory. #UVASystemsEngineering #AMP2026 #AcceleratedMastersProgram #UVA #SystemsEngineering #Graduation #ClassOf2026 #CohortMusic #ChamberFolk #SunoAI