Hughes extols graduation rate at CCRI's 53rd commencement

By Ethan Hartley
Posted 5/22/18

By ETHAN HARTLEY The Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) celebrated its 53rd commencement ceremony Thursday, May 17 - but for the first in its history the graduation was held at the Dunkin' Donuts Center in Providence, providing plenty of space for

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

E-mail
Password
Log in

Hughes extols graduation rate at CCRI's 53rd commencement

Posted

The Community College of Rhode Island (CCRI) celebrated its 53rd commencement ceremony Thursday, May 17 – but for the first in its history the graduation was held at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center in Providence, providing plenty of space for families to watch as more than 800 students received degrees and certificates.

“You represent a landmark, and why is that?” asked CCRI president Meghan Hughes in her commencement address. “You graduate as the class with the highest graduation rate of any class in the last 18 years. So that's a big deal for you and that's a big deal for CCRI.” The three-year graduation rate was 18 percent.

Barbara Cottam, chair of the Rhode Island Board of Education, shared the local favorite story about Tom Brady falling to the 6th round in the NFL Draft and overcoming adversity throughout his young playing career to become one of the greatest athletes of all time to fire up the grads about rising up to life’s challenges – a theme throughout the commencement ceremony.

“Everyone questioned whether hard work would be enough to get this former JV football player who sat the bench into the history books. You know what, it was. His persistence and fierce determination would make it so,” Cottam said. “The rest is history…Everyone faces failure, that much is inevitable. It's how you will respond that will define your success.”

Hughes suggested three keys to happiness as the graduates go forward into careers or continue their education – to not just think, but also do; to do what comes naturally and easily to you; and imagine life through to the end and make goals and landmarks along the way that contribute towards that goal of a meaningful life.

Further, Hughes cited the work of University of Pennsylvania scholar Martin Seligman and Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who formed and expanded (respectively) a theory that happiness is a skill that can be improved and worked toward like any other skill.

“Positive psychology is predicated on the acceptance that life can be hard, and for some people it can be profoundly hard,” Hughes said. “Positive psychology doesn't teach that life is easy. Instead, it teaches that we can have some power and some agency building skill that bring happiness to our lives in spite of challenge and in spite of adversity.”

William Foulkes, chair of the Rhode Island Board of Education Council on Postsecondary Education, provided some historical perspective on how far CCRI has come from its humble beginnings.

“In the early 1960s, with only $30,000 from the state legislature, a group led by an entrepreneurial professor from RIC started CCRI in an old brick building on Promenade Avenue,” he said. “The founders worked through uncertain and tumultuous times to grow a reality well beyond their original vision. So, you can understand why it is that I love everything about the Community College of Rhode Island. It's young, it's open, it's ambitious, it's entrepreneurial and innovative. And it has students like you who share those characteristics.”

One of those students, Mariela Lucaj, gave a rousing address that fired up the crowd. Lucaj is graduating from CCRI’s nursing program. She is a member on the RI Council of Postsecondary Education and is CCRI’s student representative on Governor Gina Raimondo’s commission of higher education and employability.

“It is your stories that have not only inspired me but have proved to me that true resilience is nowhere more prominent than in the students of the Community College of Rhode Island,” Lucaj said to begin the address.

A first-generation college student and a daughter of parents who immigrated to the United States, Lucaj said she plans to attend the University of Rhode Island to continue her nursing studies, with the hope to one day get into public health policy to help positively influence healthcare in underprivileged areas.

“This is a risk for me,” she said. “Because, ultimately, the unspoken rule in immigrant families is to keep your head down and work a steady job in order to make a decent living. CCRI has given me the courage to lift my head up and observe the possibilities around me. I may be five feet tall, but I am in clear sight of my dreams.”

Once again touching on perseverance, Lucaj emphasized how special the students at CCRI were in regards to helping one another out, as they recognize the fact that everybody struggles in one way or another at some point in their lives – be it educationally or some other challenge in their lives.

“We're all climbing this mountain together, and what makes CCRI so great is that when we see someone struggling, we reach back and offer a hand,” she said. “Because we know that our collective win is greater than any individual success story.”

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here