Across state, college students turn tassels
Nine four-year colleges and universities held commencement exercises Saturday across Arkansas.
In Fayetteville, the University of Arkansas expected to confer about 4,500 degrees Saturday, the 141st commencement in the school’s history.
As he was handed his diploma Saturday morning, Richard Murie, 88, was announced as the oldest graduate in the UA class of 2012.
Murie’s fellow graduate students reacted with a round of applause, which quickly spread to the crowd gathered in Bud Walton Arena for the All-university Commencement.
“I was so surprised that I was the oldest one,” Murie said after the ceremony. “I thought, ‘This is fantastic.’”
Murie received a master’s degree in Spanish, 57 years after earning a doctorate in chemistry from Iowa State University. Sixty-two years ago, he earned his first college degree, a bachelor’s degree in chemistry, from Ohio University.
Murie now holds four degrees, including three at the post-graduate level.
“Learning is my pleasure,” he said.
His advice to anyone thinking of going back to college: “It’s never too late. If you have the opportunity, do it. You have to have a goal in life. You can’t just sit.”
Alice Walton received an honorary doctorate at the All-University Commencement, which recognizes only those earning master’s and doctoral degrees.
Walton, the only daughter of Wal-mart Stores Inc. founder Sam Walton, was honored for her business career and philanthropy, university Chancellor G. David Gearhart said.
In Little Rock, 31 newly minted graduates of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service received master’s degrees at the Statehouse Convention Center.
This was the Clinton School’s sixth graduating class. David Pryor, the school’s first dean and a former U.S. senator and Arkansas governor, delivered the commencement address.
Pryor said he didn’t feel like a typical graduation speaker. Usually, a commencement speaker is tasked with inspiring and enriching the graduates, he said.
“Today, the shoe is on the other foot,” Pryor said.
Together the students have completed more than 22,000 direct-service hours on missions in Arkansas and around the globe, current Dean Skip Rutherford said.
While he said he would not attempt to offer advice to an already service-driven group, Pryor called on the graduates to return civility to discourse and embrace compromise.
“We need to build those bridges that have been torn down by fear, hate, distrust and suspicion,” he said.
The event was the third year that the Clinton School collected donations from the graduates to benefit local organizations. In 2010, the school collected school supplies for the Volunteers in the Public Schools program. The next year, the Our House shelter for the working homeless received donations. This year, the Clinton School collected toothbrushes and toothpaste for the Arkansas Children’s Hospital mobile dental unit.
In Russellville, Arkansas Tech University awarded more than 1,000 degrees, including one to an 89-year-old World War II fighter pilot.
Charlie Ball first arrived at the Russellville campus on a music scholarship in fall 1941. By December, war broke out and he began training as a fighter pilot for the U.S. Army Air Forces.
After the war, Ball returned to Arkansas Tech. Later, he transferred to the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, where he studied electrical engineering. But he never graduated. He worked in several businesses — dry cleaning, real estate insurance. He and his wife, Dora, raised two boys.
One night, the North Little Rock resident saw a television commercial promoting an accelerated degree program at Arkansas Tech.
The program gives students who have accumulated at least 60 credit hours — the equivalent of four semesters — the opportunity to complete a Bachelor of Professional Studies degree in 18 months.
Ball contacted the university. Officials reviewed his academic records and determined that he had enough credits to graduate.
He participated in Saturday’s commencement at John E. Tucker Coliseum in Russellville.
In Jonesboro, a much younger group of graduates entered the Convocation Center at Arkansas State University on Saturday. They represented the school’s largest spring graduating class.
New ASU Chancellor Tim Hudson, who started May 1, handed out 1,107 bachelor’s degrees, 764 master’s degrees, 30 doctoral degrees, 24 specialist degrees, four graduate certificates and 173 associate degrees. Arkansas Attorney General Dustin Mcdaniel was the commencement speaker.
While Hudson led his first commencement, Lawrence Davis Jr. — chancellor at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff — led his last.
Davis is leaving the chancellor’s job May 25. He has been chancellor of the 3,200student historically black university since 1991, making him the longest-serving of any of the state’s public university leaders.
UAPB awarded about 300 degrees Saturday at the Pine Bluff Convention Center, a spokesman said. Former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was the commencement speaker.
In Arkadelphia, 318 graduates participated in commencement exercises at Ouachita Baptist University.
In Conway, Hendrix College held its 128th commencement. Doug Blackmon, a 1986 graduate of the college and winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2009 for his book Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, was the commencement speaker. College President J. Timothy Cloyd said 329 students graduated Saturday.
The other four-year schools with graduation ceremonies Saturday were Arkansas Baptist College in Little Rock and the University of the Ozarks at Clarksville.