Tiffany Edmondson
Blue & White Flash / Associate Editor
Graduating from college is the ultimate goal of every student at Jackson State University and for the first time at JSU, there will be a December commencement. Commencement exercises for both graduate and undergraduate students will be held at the Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center at 8 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 8.
Students who completed their degree requirements before the Fall 2012 semester, who would have normally graduated in August, are encouraged to participate in the upcoming ceremony. The decision was made earlier this year to conduct a fall-winter graduation exercise in December, instead of the traditional August commencement.
Some seniors will be absent from the Dec. 8 event. Becoming a champion comes with a price and some JSU athletes are willing to sacrifice walking across the stage with their peers to bring home a trophy from the Southwestern Athletic Conference Championship footaball title game, to be played on Saturday in Birmingham.
Graduating football players, cheerleaders and band members who choose to will be walking across another stage on Friday, Dec. 7 at 4:30 p.m. in the Student Center Ballrooms A and B.
Approximately 707 students will receive degrees next Saturday; 274 of those students will receive doctorate and master degrees while the remaining 433 are a combination of undergraduate degrees from all academic departments.
The speaker for the Saturday commencement is Myron Gray, president of U.S. operations for the United Parcel Service (UPS). Gray is responsible for all U.S. operations, which include the pick-up and delivery of more than 15 million packages each day and 345,000 employees.
Prior to his current role, Gray served as the president of the Americas Region, which consists of Canada, Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean Islands. He also served as an advisor to the International Service Excellence Committee. He began his career with UPS in 1978 as a part-time package handler in the Tennessee District while attending college. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has completed advanced management programs at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and the Yale School of Business.
Myron currently serves as a National Trustee on the Board of Governors for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and sits on the boards of The Atlanta Police Foundationand the National Urban League. He also serves on the Trade and Transportation Advisory Board for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
The change to a winter graduation commencement and the combination of awarding graduate and undergraduate degrees together has not been without comments.
Initially, there was to be a Friday evening graduate ceremony and the undergraduate ceremony was scheduled to start at 9 a.m. on Saturday, but after JSU earned a spot at the SWAC championship, the commencement start time was changed to 8 a.m.
Shatarah Morgan, a business management graduate from Jackson, Miss., said that the December graduation ceremony seems unorganized.
“This is an inconvenience to the students and for the people who already made travel arrangements and sent out invitations. Why are they constantly making changes when graduation is only a week away?,” said Morgan.
For a complete commencement schedule, visit 10.14.12.245/commencement.
