Largest group of December Eagles graduates in school history ready to take flight

The tassels will be turning Saturday morning Dec. 9 at NCCU.

N.C. Central University’s fall commencement will take place at 9 a.m. at McDougald-McLendon Arena.

The school expects to award about 620 diplomas in the ceremony. It will be the largest number of diplomas conferred by NCCU in a fall commencement.

In a letter to graduates, NCCU chancellor Johnson Akinleye offered his congratulations and well wishes.

“Congratulations on completing all the requirements for your academic degree from North Carolina Central University,” Johnson said. “Through study and discipline, you have earned a place among the educational elite of the world who hold a higher-education diploma. More significantly, you now have a solid foundation on which to launch your career or continue to advance in your chosen field, thus creating for yourself a lifelong pathway to success.”

The ceremony will be streamed online by NCCU.

The featured guest speaker will be Tisha Powell, who is an anchor and reporter for WTVD.

Among the degrees being awarded will be Ph.D.s to Dal Khatri and Quantil Melendez, who have completed requirements for a doctorate in integrated biosciences, a program created five years ago to train minority researchers. Khatri and Melendez will be the fourth and fifth doctoral candidates to complete the program. The initial integrated biosciences doctorates were given out in May 2017 and were the first doctorates to be issued by NCCU since an education degree was phased out more than 50 years ago.

Graduation candidates were beginning their celebration Friday evening, Dec. 8 with a chancellor’s reception at the Alfonso Elder Student Union.

This story was originally published December 8, 2017 at 4:16 PM with the headline "Largest group of December Eagles graduates in school history ready to take flight."