NCCC graduates are ‘students of life’

WINSTED — Hundreds turned out at East End Park Thursday, May 26, to watch students graduate from Northwestern Connecticut Community College in a joyful and inspiring ceremony under uncharacteristically clear skies.The school’s 45th commencement opened and closed with musical performances by bagpiper Ken Storrs and featured brief but enthusiastic speeches by exceptional students, recognized community leaders and college officials, without the threat of rain that has plagued many of the school’s graduation ceremonies in recent years.Lynn Pasquerella, president of Mount Holyoke College, delivered the commencement address. Pasquerella began her academic life in community colleges in Connecticut and Massachusetts. She recalled taking classes in church basements and local high schools in the early years of Quinebaug Valley Community College in Danielson, where she enrolled at 17 in order to remain close to her sick mother.“Regardless of where we were meeting or how long it took to get there, we constituted a community of learners and teachers who were embarking on a shared educational endeavor,” Pasquerella said. From Quinebaug, Pasquerella moved on to Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts and eventually to Brown University, before returning to community colleges as an educator. All the while, she said, she remembered lessons from her early years in community college about overcoming adversity and rising above negative stereotypes.Pasquerella acknowledged that community colleges are often dismissed as lesser or taken for granted, and she encouraged graduates to reject those characterizations. “One way to fight back against this type of marginalization is to tell our own stories,” she said. “By doing so we can push for a rhetoric surrounding the American college experience that matches the reality of our lives. Those of us who are proud graduates of community colleges must appropriate traditional concepts of prestige and accomplishment. The reality is community colleges change lives.”Encouraged by her community college teachers to attend a four-year college, Pasquerella earned her Ph.D. in philosophy from Brown University in 1985 and became a member of the philosophy department at the University of Rhode Island, where she stayed for 19 years. In 2004, she became URI’s associate dean of the graduate school. In 2006, she was named vice provost for research and dean of the graduate school, and in 2008 she joined the University of Hartford as provost and chief academic officer before becoming the 18th president of Mount Holyoke College in 2009.NCCC President Barbara Douglass gave special thanks to Pasquerella for sharing her journey with graduates. “I only met her a couple hours ago but I feel like I’ve known her for a long time,” she said.Phi Theta Kappa President and NCCC Student Senator Tracy Follert called this year’s graduates “a class of heroes,” recognizing her peers for their diversity and commitment to improving their lives. “When I used to think of college I thought of young students going to school full time and living in dorms and getting a little crazy, to be honest,” she said. “But lucky for all of us, Northwestern is so much more than that. I myself have had classes with mothers and fathers, people who are deaf, people who go to school full time and work full time. As students we are surrounded by people who work so hard for what they want.”Follert encouraged graduates to continue to be “students of life” and to thank themselves for putting in the effort to get their degrees. “We came to class, we put in the time and we did our homework,” she said.After the conferring of more than 175 degrees and certificates, new graduates proceeded from the Rotary Stage south through East End Park and across Park Place to the Founders Hall lawn, where families and friends greeted them under a setting sun. A reception was held in the college’s Arts and Science Building.