News

May 17, 2009

Grads should keep learning

Wilkes University awarded 715 degrees Saturday at commencement ceremonies that took place at the Wachovia Arena.

IAN CAMPBELL Times Leader Correspondent

WILKES-BARRE TWP. – Continual learning and lifelong mentoring were the messages for graduates at Wilkes University’s commencement ceremony at the Wachovia Arena Saturday.

The theme was carried through in all the comments from speakers at the event, including John Brooks Slaughter, Ph.D., P.E., the keynote speaker.

Slaughter’s relationship with Wilkes President Tim Gilmour goes back 30 years, and has involved the sort of mentoring experience that the university values.

Slaughter was director of the National Science Foundation from 1980 to 1982, president of the University of Maryland, College Park 1982 to 1988, and president of Occidental College, Los Angeles from 1988 through 1999. Slaughter is now the president and chief executive officer for the National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering.

In a speech that called on quotes from sources as diverse as wartime British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Bill Cosby’s cartoon character Fat Albert and A A. Milne’s children’s story creation Winnie The Pooh, Slaughter reminded the audience of students and family members that the purpose of an education was the beginning of learning, rather than the end of it.

Students have to open their hearts and minds to things that are yet to be learned, Dr. Slaughter told them.

He noted that most would likely want to be members of a society 30 years from now who would want to live in a peaceful global community, with drug use, illiteracy and ignorance past problems, and air, water and energy problems addressed.

But to do that, students would have to begin now, and persevere in their efforts to bring about change, he told them.

The university awarded 715 degrees to 317 bachelor’s candidates, 339 master’s candidates and 59 doctor of pharmacy candidates.

For the first time in its history, the university awarded three senior class students awards for academic excellence, for holding a 4.0 grade point average. Usually only one male and one female student received the award, but Provost Reynold Verret noted that two female students had tied for the award.

The three students were Johanna Schechter, of Bath, Pa.; Christine Zavaskas, of Wyoming, and Kyle Sharp, of Berkshire, N.Y.

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