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Importance of integrity emphasized as UG graduates more than 1,000
Qualified in a number of areas which could effectively help to boost the various sectors of the country, more than 1000 individuals yesterday graduated from the University of Guyana.
The proud Valedictorian, Eileen Selima Marray.
It was characterised by a prestigious ceremony attended by people made up mainly of the relatives and friends of the graduates who witnessed the graduates, decked out in matching gowns, being presented with certificates of completion.
The event marked the 47th Convocation of the University’s Turkeyen campus and is expected to be prominently etched in the annals of history as it also served to continue celebrations of the tertiary institution’s 50th year of existence.
The start of the memorable event saw eight graduates from the first convocation in 1967 as well as from 1968, 1969 and 1971, being included in the 2013 procession of graduands.
Of note too was the fact that the University, for the first time, conferred the Post Graduate Diploma in Environmental Sciences and the Masters of Medicine in Paediatrics and Emergency Medicine which was offered through the Faculty of Health Sciences.
In total 1,376 students graduated from the Faculties of Agriculture and Forestry, Health Sciences, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Schools of Education and Humanities and Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education.
Eileen Selima Marray of the Faculty of Social Sciences who pursued a Degree in Business Management was dubbed the Valedictorian. The Berbician, who currently resides in Cummings Lodge, said, “I feel great about my achievement…It is now finally sinking in and I feel good that my hard work is paying off.”
She is currently employed at the Demerara Bank but has plans to pursue a Masters in the near future.
Marray, in her Valedictory speech, congratulated her fellow graduates.
“I believe each one of us took our first steps when we decided to enroll in the University…We have spent our time here developing our knowledge, making our dreams a reality.”
Ahead of the conferring of the various degrees, diplomas and certificates, the graduates heard an address presented by a very nostalgic Dr Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith.
Dr Griffith, a product of the local university, currently holds the position of President of Fort Valley State University in Georgia, United States.
He couldn’t resist enlightening the audience of how reminiscent his return was even as he recalled being a student and a student leader in the late 1970s.
“Of course the people who taught me are all gone – into retirement, abroad or to the Great Beyond…” he noted even as he commended the efforts of the graduates. However, he reminded that “no achievement by any of us derives from only what we put into the pursuit…We all stand on the shoulders of giants…”
He listed parents and other family members and other individuals as supporting giants some of whom he noted hadn’t themselves been able to reach such academic heights.
A section of the UG Graduates.
“Whoever has been your giant, this convocation should be about recognizing them too. They are the people some of whom might have gone to the great beyond before this day who helped to make this day possible for you,” Dr Lloyd noted.
And even as he admonished the graduating students to list their giants, he emphasized that their dreams to succeed were coming through even as the University celebrated its golden jubilee which is in fact a realization of institutional dreaming by individuals most of whom are deceased.
“I refer to the dreaming and doing by then Premier Dr Cheddi Jagan whose brainchild it was to create a basis for citizens of the then-colony of British Guiana to leverage tertiary education for individual social-economic mobility, and to provide a fillip to national economic and social development,” recounted Dr Lloyd.
“The dreaming and doing by Minister of Education, Cedric Nunes; founding Chancellor Edward Mortimer Duke; founding Vice Chancellor and Principal Lancelot Hogben and countless other nationalists and educators, bureaucrats and businessmen and international agencies and foreign governments. “
But according to him even as moves are made for higher educational heights with a view of earning more and even becoming rich he urged that it must not be devoid of integrity.
In appealing to the graduates he said, do not sacrifice integrity on the altar of wealth, Dr Lloyd quoted a line from musical icon Bob Marley that “the greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.”
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