Over 8,000 graduate at UCF before President Hitt retires
When Mackenzie Hodgins receives her diploma today from University of Central Florida, she’ll be part of a graduating class that’s 19 times the size of the one in 1970 that included her grandfather.
Paul Hodgins Sr. was among the first to earn a degree from the institution, then two years old and known as Florida Technological University. His modest graduating class of 423 is dwarfed by the university’s ever-increasing numbers, particularly during the 26-year tenure of outgoing UCF President John Hitt. More than 8,000 students will graduate this spring during ceremonies that began Thursday and continue through Saturday.
“I knew it was the right fit, and it was always what I wanted to do,” said Mackenzie Hodgins, 22, whose dad, Wynn Hodgins, also earned a degree at UCF in 1998.
It’s the last round of graduations for Hitt, who will retire June 30. Since its inception, the university has awarded 318,000 degrees, 82 percent of them while Hitt was president. In 1992, the year he arrived on campus, there were 4,539 graduates. Since then, the univer-
sity’s enrollment has tripled to more than 66,000 students.
UCF doesn’t track how many second- and third-generation students enroll, but given the school’s age — the campus opened in 1968 — and relatively small numbers of graduates during the early years, it’s unlikely many of this year’s graduates have grandparents who are alumni. And more than a quarter are the first in their families to earn college degrees, a point of pride for UCF because, nationally, these students are less likely to graduate than their peers.
This year’s graduates include a Nicaraguan refugee who was undocumented until she was 17 and was approved for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which allows her to work in the U.S. and protects her from deportation. She will receive her degree with honors and has accepted a nursing position at Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando.
Another graduate grew up in Miami with a mother who was addicted to opioids. He’s earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science and will conduct research at Harvard’s psychology department and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Brains, Minds and Machines.
Mackenzie Hodgins moved around frequently as the daughter of an active military member before graduating from Seminole High School in Sanford.
Enrolling at UCF felt natural, she said, because her of the DirectConnect to UCF program, which allowed her to transfer from Seminole State College after earning her associate’s degree, and because her father and both grandfathers earned their degrees there.
She was accepted into the elementary education program, joined a sorority and attended as many football games on campus as she could, an opportunity that wasn’t available to her father and grandfather. The field, now known as Spectrum Stadium, didn’t open until 2007. UCF previously played football games at what is now Camping World Stadium.
Hodgins’ grandfather on her dad’s side finished his bachelor’s degree with the university’s first graduating class in 1970. He had started his coursework more than two decades earlier at University of Florida, then left in 1950 to become a pilot in the U.S. Air Force for 18 years. He died last June at age 89.
Wynn Hodgins, 46, grew up in Sanford and remembers driving to campus with his father to pick up transcripts and run other errands. After Wynn Hodgins graduated in 1998 with a degree in criminal justice, he followed in his father’s footsteps in another way: becoming a pilot in the Marine Corps. He retired in April and now lives in Pensacola, though he’s in town to watch Mackenzie cross the stage in her cap and gown.
“I’ll be proud,” Wynn Hodgins said, thinking ahead to that moment. “I’ll be emotional. She’s worked hard, so I’m thrilled for her. She’ll do great things.”