Walking around State College yesterday during lunch it was clear summer had arrived. Not because of the warmth — the temperature barely reached 55 degrees — but because of the tranquility resulting from the departure of most of the Penn State student body.
The exception was several post-gradation “bar tours,” a tradition which has morphed now that graduation ceremonies are scheduled right at the end of finals week. These days graduates just stay in town – their apartment leases are still good and many of their jobs don’t start until June anyway – and have bar tours when they have no concerns about classes or tests.
As a family we did miss finals week and commencement mania here in Happy Valley because we attended our daughter’s graduation from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. We spent the week in the land of Disney, meaning we missed the brutal storm here in Centre County.
Reading and watching the storm’s results through social media from 1,000 miles away it made us glad to be in sunshine and 90-degree weather. It also made us wonder if perhaps the football field should be renamed Lake Memorial Field.
However we did have to get to Orlando, and all of the recent airline turmoil made us a bit concerned about our travel arrangements. Happily we weren’t flying any of the airlines that were the subjects of recent consumer scorn.
After our travel and a week of tourist fun in the sun – with the exception of my two hip bruises courtesy of a 58 mile per hour ride down Summit Plummet at Blizzard Beach (the bigger they are, the faster they fall!) – we were treated to a wonderful program at UCF’s commencement exercises. It also gave us a great opportunity to see how another major university produces this pride-swelling experience.
The University of Central Florida is, depending on whose ranking you are using, the largest or second-largest campus in the country in terms of student population. The fall 2016 enrollment was 64,318 students and incoming freshmen had an average SAT two-score of 1262. As Penn Staters we’re also always rightly concerned about student-athlete performance – well, UCF’s student-athlete graduation rate is the nation’s best among Division I public universities.
In addition the spirit of student giving is slowly growing at UCF. Their 21st annual student-run Knight-Thon dance marathon raised $1.25 million for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals this year. Held in the 10,000-seat CFE Arena on campus it is on track with the fundraising pace set by Penn State’s own beloved THON which broke the million-dollar mark and raised $1.1 million in its 20th year. Interestingly though, the UCF students only dance for 20 hours.
UCF confers more than 15,000 degrees a year, the most of any school in Florida, and gave out almost 8,000 during the course of six commencement ceremonies over three days last week. Each of the ceremonies was held in the supremely well air-conditioned CFE Arena, I might add.
The ceremony itself followed what must be either a traditional or legal format with regards to the formalities of the proceedings – there was little deviation from any other graduation we’ve attended. The one item I will note that must be hidden from any university president’s job description is the need to shake the hand of every graduate. At Penn State, President Eric Barron gets a slight reprieve because there are concurrent ceremonies scheduled and he can’t be in two places at one time, but at UCF President John Hitt gets no such reprieve. He presides over every graduation and shakes the hand of every graduate – almost 8,000 handshakes over a three-day period. Hopefully he takes Sunday off and the athletic trainers work on his wrist.
But it was the remarks, first by the commencement speaker, and then by the Alumni Association representative, that caught my attention.
The commencement speaker was the mayor of Orlando, Buddy Dyer, who has held the office for 14 years. During his address he made sure to exhort the graduates to stay in Orlando after getting their degrees. Stay in Orlando, get jobs, buy homes, and grow families. I found this interesting because of what would happen if even half of Penn State’s grads stayed in State College. The area’s population would double in 10 years!
Then the Alumni Association speaker gave a speech that welcomed the new graduates to the world of UCF alumni. He highlighted the on-campus Alumni Center and their graduates’ allegiance with more than 265,000 UCF alumni worldwide. Here in Happy Valley many of us can recite these numbers by heart – that Penn State, has more than 645,000 living alumni and more than 177,300 dues-paying members, making it the largest dues-paying alumni association in the world.
Granted, UCF was founded in only 1963. I’m older than it is. Penn State has a more than 100-year head start to create alums and networks. But given UCF’s size and focus on academics maybe it’s only a matter of time before these differences disappear. Considering Orlando has been the country’s fastest-growing metro area many times during the last four decades perhaps it will happen soon. In the meantime I imagine the powers-that-be at Penn State are focused on staying ahead of the collegiate education bell curve.
Now, if anyone needs to hire a cum laude graduate with a B.S. in health services administration, let me know.
