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Chapel Hill -- If the more than 2,200 UNC graduates who received degrees during the university's December commencement on Sunday thought they were going to leave the Dean E. Smith Center without receiving a final lesson, they were wrong.
In fact, they got five from commencement speaker Lisa Carey, associate professor of medicine and director of the UNC Breast Center, who was tapped by UNC Chancellor Holden Thorp to deliver this year's final words of wisdom to the university's December graduates.
Carey urged graduates to celebrate their accomplishments and to do something of which to be proud. She also reminded them that they are now in charge of their lives, stronger than they might imagine and pushed them to use their strengths to become problem solvers.
"You are better and stronger than you might imagine," Carey said. "Use those strengths to solve the problems we all face. You are ready, you've been preparing for four years now."
Heading into the Smith Center, Robert Vogt, 22, of western New York, was excited about the prospect of receiving his degree.
But Vogt, like all of Sunday's graduates, is entering a brutal job market, one in which double-digit unemployment numbers have become the norm.
Vogt, who earned a degree in environmental science, said he had not yet landed a job.
"I've been applying pretty aggressively," Vogt said. "Right now, I'm just plugging away."
The university awarded 1,197 bachelor's, 767 master's, 281 doctoral and 33 professional degrees.
Carey joined the UNC faculty in 1998 and has directed the Breast Center since 2003. She's a graduate of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a clinical faculty member in the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center.
Her research focuses on breast cancer and she's also involved in evaluating the use of specific tumor markers as predictors of response to the new chemotherapy agents.
Carey noted that such advances in medicine have reduced drastically the percentage of women who die due to breast cancer.
"When my grandmother died of breast cancer, 60 percent of women who got the disease died of it," Carey said. "Now, only 20 percent do."
She asked if anyone knew why the survival rate has improved, warning graduates that their last pop quiz was a trick question.
"There are hundreds of things and hundreds of people who played a role in that drop and there isn't any one famous cancer doctor or researcher or patient that you can point to and say, 'He's the reason' or 'She's the reason' ..." Carey said. "Sometimes there's one person that does something all alone that is incredibly great ... but more often it's a lot of people all doing a little bit together."
When Thorp announced that Carey would deliver the commencement speech, he said she was the best choice because the N.C. Cancer Hospital came on line this year.
Carey said graduates also could learn from cancer patients, whom she described as the most resilient people she knows. She said she decided to become a cancer doctor and researcher after being assigned to the cancer wards one Christmas early in her career.
"They decorated their rooms, they had Christmas parties, they gave nurses gifts, they were incredible," Carey said. "They had every right to be angry, but they weren't."
Thorp told graduates that they are beginning a new chapter in their lives and that they have an opportunity to transform the world.
"We can't wait to watch," Thorp said.
