Tag Archive for: #vgcccommencement

N.C. Community College System president to speak at VGCC Commencement

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Dr. James C. “Jimmie” Williamson, the president of the North Carolina Community College System, will be the principal commencement speaker for Vance-Granville Community College’s graduation exercises on Friday, May 12.

Colton Hayes of Epsom, president of the VGCC Student Government Association, will be the student speaker.

Approximately 490 students are scheduled to be honored during ceremonies beginning at 6 p.m. at the gazebo by the lake on the college’s Main Campus in Vance County. For those unable to attend the event in person, VGCC will broadcast a live video feed from the ceremony online at www.vgcc.edu.

Williamson became the eighth president of the 58-institution North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) on July 1, 2016. Before assuming his role at NCCCS, he served two years as President and CEO of the South Carolina Technical College System. His insight into workforce development is informed by both his 20 years in the South Carolina system – rising through roles from registrar to dean to two college presidencies and then to System President – and by his six years in a leadership position with Agapé Senior, a healthcare-related industry in South Carolina.

Dr. Williamson holds a Bachelor of Visual Arts and a Master of Education in Guidance and Counseling from Winthrop University, as well as a Ph.D. in Higher Education Administration from the University of South Carolina.

Hayes is graduating with an Associate in Arts degree. Later in May, he will graduate from Franklin County Early College High School. Hayes will continue his education in the fall at North Carolina State University, where he plans to study computer science. He was elected president of the VGCC Student Government Association for the 2016-2017 year, and, in that capacity, also served as the student member of the VGCC Board of Trustees. He is the first early college high school student to serve in those leadership roles in VGCC history. Hayes has been named twice to the VGCC President’s List.

Students serving as graduation marshals will be Brenda Ellis of Durham; Mya Wilson of Franklinton; Taylor Anderson, Victoria Inscoe and Evan O’Geary, all of Henderson; Pamela Campbell of Littleton; Mark Meinhart of Louisburg; Betsy Mason of Macon; Briana Barnes of Manson; and Austin Smith of Oxford.

–VGCC–

Author of “Blood Done Sign My Name” To Speak at VGCC Adult Basic Skills Commencement

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Vance-Granville Community College will hold commencement exercises dedicated exclusively to new graduates of Adult Basic Skills programs on Thursday, May 4. The ceremony will begin at 6 p.m. in the Civic Center on the college’s Main Campus in Vance County.

Those being honored at the ceremony will include students who have completed either the Adult High School Diploma program or the High School Equivalency program in the past year.

Dr. Timothy B. Tyson, an author and professor who spent part of his childhood in Oxford, will serve as the guest speaker. Tyson is currently Senior Research Scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and Visiting Professor of American Christianity and Southern Culture at Duke Divinity School. He also holds a faculty position in American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His most recent book is The Blood of Emmett Till, published early this year.

Tyson is the author of Blood Done Sign My Name, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and winner of the Southern Book Award for Nonfiction and the Grawemeyer Award in Religion. His Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power was the winner of the James Rawley Prize for the best book on race and the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize for the best first book in U.S. history from the Organization of American Historians. His Democracy Betrayed: The Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 and Its Legacy, published with David S. Cecelski with a foreword by Dr. John Hope Franklin, won the 1999 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. He serves on the executive board of the North Carolina NAACP and the board of advisors for the UNC Center for Civil Rights.

Speaking on behalf of the graduating students during the ceremony will be Spencer Bojan Boyd of Oxford. Boyd completed the Adult High School Diploma program online and is already enrolled in the College Transfer program at VGCC. Boyd is a native of Serbia and was adopted at the age of six by a family in Johnston County, who later moved to Granville County. He was born without a right leg and with a distorted left leg, which was later amputated. Boyd’s future plan is to continue his education at the four-year level and become a certified prosthetist in order to help other amputees.

–VGCC–