Resilient class celebrates during ‘consequential’ commencement

WINGATE — Many of them unable to have a full graduation ceremony in high school because of the pandemic, the graduates who received diplomas at Wingate University’s undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 11 will be remembered for their fortitude and determination. In total, 390 grads were eligible to walk during the ceremony under the oak trees in the Academic Quad on a bright, unseasonably cool spring morning.

“You have earned something that no one — I repeat, no one — can ever take from you: your education,” Cecilia Holden, president and CEO of myFutureNC, told them. “You have overcome obstacles through the pandemic to be here today, and because of this, your graduating class is going to have more grit and resilience than any other class who has gone before you. What an emotional and exciting time this must be.”

Those graduates will take their diplomas and immediately start helping North Carolina solve a difficult problem. It’s been determined by business leaders and lawmakers that, by 2030, the state will need to have 2 million 25- to 44-year-olds with a high-quality credential or postsecondary degree. It is not on track — yet — to get there, but myFutureNC is working to guide North Carolina to the higher-education promised land.

Wingate’s president, Dr. Rhett Brown, alluded to the myFutureNC goal in his remarks when he said that Wingate’s commencement was “the most consequential in North Carolina this year.” As an independent university, Wingate provides what Brown called a “transformational” education to a student body made up of a high proportion of first-generation and Pell Grant students (45 percent in both cases), the types of students who will need to earn college degrees if North Carolina is to meet its goal.

Today at Wingate, 38 percent of students receiving degrees (148) were first-generation students.

Of all students receiving diplomas today, the highest number earned degrees in exercise science (50), psychology (45) and biology (44). They included a handful of students who will complete their degrees over the summer. Other popular majors were management (26 degrees earned), finance (24) and sport management (21).

Among those earning sport management degrees was Jack Wisniewski, who graduates as one of 24 students who finish with a perfect 4.0 grade-point average, earning each of them the H.K. Helms Award. Wisniewski, from Goldsboro, says being a member of the swim team – he was all-conference in the individual medley and was the winner of the South Atlantic Conference’s Elite 23 and Scholar-Athlete of the Year awards – forced him to hone his time-management skills in order to get everything done.

The tone was set on day one, when Wisniewski showed up for his first class as a freshman winded and with wet hair after going through an early-morning 90-minute workout with his team. “That kind of showed me how it was going to be for the rest of my time here,” he says. “I caught on quickly.”

Wisniewski is now headed to the University of Georgia to earn a master of sport management degree and to be a part of another Bulldog swim team, this time as team manager.

Another student-athlete graduating with a 4.0 was Lauren Sullivan, who helped Wingate to a SAC Tournament title this year in women’s basketball and to an 18-game win streak during her sophomore season. An exercise science major, Sullivan is heading to law school in the fall (Marquette University is the frontrunner, though she hasn’t made a final decision yet).

Sullivan, from Lake Norman, says that her exercise science classes have, perhaps surprisingly, prepared her well for law school.

“Anatomy and physiology, with Dr. (Acchia) Albury, was the hardest class I’ve ever taken,” she says. “The exams were very application-based, which is pretty much what you have to do as a law student. The classes I’ve taken since then have been very research-heavy, also with oral presentations, which I would say are also really important things for law school.”

Among the grads walking yesterday were 148 students who were the first in their families to graduate from college. One of those first-gen students, Hatayah Adams, a nursing major from Rock Hill, S.C., will enter a nursing residency program with Novant Health in Charlotte this summer. She wasn’t so sure a year and a half ago that she would be ready, she said. She recalled working with a partner on vital-signs competency early during the nursing program and having her pulse oxygen check in at 90 percent.

“A normal one is 95 percent,” she said. “I had been literally sitting there unknowingly holding my breath trying to think through what I was going to do for my competency.”

With help from her professors, Adams said, she overcame her nervousness and is now ready to step into a hospital setting. “I felt like it was impossible to get through nursing school at that point, but they were always uplifting us and encouraging us,” she said. “I was freaking out for nothing.”

Holden singled out three graduates — future law student Camila Collante, marketing major Livian Mai and military veteran Chris Himmelrick — as students who overcame early struggles and obstacles on their way to success at Wingate. Collante moved to the U.S. knowing little English and made poor grades in middle school but put in the work to improve and graduated with a 4.0 GPA. She was president of the Student Government Association for two years and has earned a scholarship to study law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Today, in addition to being an H.K. Helms Award winner, Collante earned the Budd and Ethel K. Smith Award, which is presented annually to the graduating senior judged to have made an outstanding contribution through leadership of fellow students. Holden pointed to Collante’s story as instructive for her fellow classmates as they embark on their careers.

“Take rejection simply as redirection and it may put you on the path you were destined for all along,” she said.

Mai also knew little English when she moved to the U.S. from Vietnam during high school, but at Wingate she was a student worker in a variety of departments, and she graduated with a 3.97 GPA. Active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Mai received the Fred H. Allen Award, which is presented annually to the graduating senior judged to have exhibited outstanding Christian leadership and to have been involved in significant Christian service projects.

Mai already has a job lined up, too, with SellEthics Marketing, owned by Wingate alum Joel Barham.

Other award winners:

• Leah Hope Hatherly: C.C. Burris Award, which goes to the graduating senior woman who represents the ideals of scholarship, leadership and service.
• Edis Nokic: The A.F. Hendricks Award, presented annually to the graduating senior man who represents the ideals of scholarship, leadership and service.
• Génesis Valentina Contreras: Jerry and Alice Surratt Award, presented to the graduating senior who has made the most significant contributions in the area of international education through scholarship and service.
• Trinity Holder: The MLK Award, presented to a student who has proven to exemplify the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King and his fight for equity, inclusion and social justice.

Dr. Lisa Schwartz and Dr. Tiffanie Turner-Henderson were honored with faculty awards. Schwartz received the Charles and Hazel Corts Award, while Turner-Henderson received the Debra M. O’Neal Award. Both awards recognize excellence in teaching.

Wingate also bestowed honorary doctorates upon two men who have helped 31 students earn degrees at Wingate. George Bower is the trustee for the James R. and Bronnie L. Braswell Charitable Trust, and Lyons Gray is chair of the Board of Trustees for the Lettie Pate Whitehead Foundation. The Braswell Trust and the Whitehead Foundation each provide scholarships to Wingate students.