NCCU awarded more than 718 undergraduate diplomas and 438 graduate and professional degrees during ceremonies held in May 2016.
Students Awarded Degrees During Spring Commencement The 127th Baccalaureate Commencement exercises on May 14 featured an address by U.S. Senator Cory Booker. It was the largest graduating class in the university’s 105-year history. Booker’s late father, Cary Booker, was a 1962 graduate of NCCU from Hendersonville, N.C. “I’m the son of an Eagle; I would not be on my current path if it was not for this great university – the legacy that you’ll protect and advance is the reason why I’m standing here today,” Booker told the audience. “Without this university, I would not be a senator from New
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Jersey, I would not be the fourth African-American elected in the U.S. Senate in the history of our country.” Referencing Alice Walker’s In Search Of My Mother’s Garden, he said: “The real revolution is always concerned with the least glamorous stuff. With raising a reading level from second grade to third. With simplifying history and writing it down or reciting it for the old folks. With helping illiterates fill out food-stamp forms – for they must eat, revolution or not. The dull, frustrating work with our people. It means,
most of all, staying close enough to them to be there whenever they need you.” In her address, NCCU Chancellor Debra Saunders-White recognized Jelaina Shipman, a White Oak, N.C., native who maintained a 3.7 grade point average while earning two degrees: a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology. Shipman also was a member of NCCU’s Honda Campus All-Star Challenge academic team for four years. She is continuing her studies at NCCU to earn a master’s in psychology.