Commencement 2013

The Dillard tradition is for graduates to walk down the Avenue of Oaks. They look forward to this day for their entire career. Well, this year it rained- hard and for days. So we had to decide to find a new location, one indoors that would seat everyone. So we moved to the UNO arena where we had about 3,700 attend. So despite the initial disappointment, the crowd made the graduates forget about the change, as did our powerful speaker, Jeff Johnson. He reminded them that walking down the avenue was not most important, but where they go after Dillard.

I enjoyed my first commencement, and realized that I knew a good number of the graduates. This is simply one of the best days of the year when you talk to families of students and you can see their joy.

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Nothing to Lose

We had a great commencement weekend. It started with the production of Dreamgirls. Simply outstanding!

Last Friday night was the baccalaureate service. Due to rain it was held inside. As you can see, we had a full house to hear our preacher, Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, senior pastor, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. His title was "Nothing to Lose" from II Kings 7: 3-9.

He challenged us not to be comfortable as captives suffering from self-imposed disenfranchisement, but go into the communities to be a blessing for others. Dr. Moss had us on our feet, challenging us not to be afraid and bless our communities. It was the right message at the right time.

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Dreamgirls

 

Last night we hosted a tremendous pre-commencement production of Dreamgirls. It was awesome! That performance clearly verified that we deserved the Big Easy Award for Best University Production, and most recently nominated for Best Fine Arts program for the 2013 HBCU Awards.

The packed house witnessed perfection. I mean, I really can't adequately describe how great it was. Hats off to Professor Cortheal Clark who leads our theater program.

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Senior Awards

We're down to the last week of the academic year. On Monday we had the senior awards. A range of awards were made, including departmental as well as top honors.

I also reinstituted the best all-around award, now named for Dr. William Sutton '53. The first 2 recipients were named Monday. Rachel Williams from Baton Rouge is also the salutatorian with a 4.0. She will be enrolling in Vanderbilt this fall for graduate school.

The second is Jerome Bailey from Houston, who will be attending Columbia University to study journalism. Both of these students were involved in a wide array of activities as well as maintained strong academic performance. Each received a medallion as well as $1,000.

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Cool graphics done for my birthday last week (April 22nd)

I just loved both of these.

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Learning from the Superstars

This week I invited a group of exceptional seniors to give us feedback on their Dillard experience. We do lots of surveying on campus,but I find it good to do qualitative surveying as well. Simply asking open ended questions can be extremely useful, and we received geat feedback.

This group isvery impressive, and they gave us not only suggestions for improvement but also what we've done well.

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BRAIN FOOD: Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

Tonight we kicked off BRAIN FOOD: The Dillard University President's Lecture Series.Over 400 people came out for the start of regular lectures on campus, and I was exited to host them. Special thanks to Harrah's for providing lodging during the series.

As always, Michael Eric Dyson shuts it down. Tonight he talked about our history of oppressing groups in this nation, and how African Americans unfortunately have done the same. So he challenged us to fight for justice for people regardless of race, class, gender or sexual orientation. It was good stuff!

BRAIN FOOD will resume in September. Hope you'll come out.

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