Skip to main content
 

best grads The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s spring commencement is at 9:30 a.m. Sunday (May 10) in Kenan Memorial Stadium. In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will be in the Dean E. Smith Center. Following are human interest story ideas connected to this year’s ceremony, with contact information for pursuing each one. 

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s spring commencement is at 9:30 a.m. Sunday (May 10) in Kenan Memorial Stadium. In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will be in the Dean E. Smith Center. Following are human interest story ideas connected to this year’s ceremony, with contact information for pursuing each one.

   griffin
   Roscoe Dillard Griffin

Love first, degree after 71 years

With the help of a Carolina student, Roscoe Dillard Griffin, 92, of Rougemont will walk in the procession in Kenan Stadium Sunday (May 10) right along with all the 20-somethings completing their bachelor’s degrees in the usual four years. It took him 71.

Griffin’s father, Roscoe Thomas Griffin, founded the first in an eventual chain of shoe stores in Rocky Mount and sent his son to UNC in 1934 to learn to be a businessman. As a senior in 1937, the younger Griffin was shot straight through with Cupid’s arrow.

“That fall I met the most beautiful girl in the world, and she lived in Burlington,” Griffin said. “Instead of studying like I should have, I kept going to Burlington.” The next year, they married.

During the courtship, Griffin did not complete an English term paper. Instead, he went to work in his father’s Durham store. “The job seemed more important than the diploma,” he said. According to his daughter, Gail Clower, “I guess rather than write about Shakespeare, he thought he’d just create his own love story … he got the girl, but he didn’t get the degree.”

As Griffin worked a lifetime selling and delivering shoes, his entire family – two children, four grandchildren, and now seven great-grandchildren – thought he was a Carolina graduate. It wasn’t until last summer that he told his daughter about the term paper. She was astonished.

She called Carolina and was put in touch with representatives in the Kenan-Flagler Business School. Griffin’s transcript indicated that he needed three more credits.UNC’s William and Ida Friday Center for Continuing Education helped him register in a geography correspondence course being offered by UNC-Greensboro through the self-paced courses consortium. He started the course last July and finished this semester.

Griffin, a World War II veteran who is legally blind, had help from Jim Kessler, UNC’s director of disability services. The office proctored his final exam, which had to be scanned into a computer and enlarged so that Griffin could see the text. His original major, in commerce, no longer exists, so UNC had to determine the requirements for the antiquated degree and make sure he had fulfilled them.

“I had five assignments and got three A’s and two B’s,” Griffin said. “I took the exam on Feb. 20 and got a B in the course, so I think I’m eligible to graduate.”

Twenty-five family members plan to attend Sunday’s ceremony, Clower said: “We’ll probably have the only signs that say, ‘Go, Great-Grandad.’” Media representatives interested in producing stories about Griffin should contact Karen Moon in News Services at (919) 962-8589 or (919) 218-2467.

Family survives setbacks to see first graduate

Mohanned “Mike” Mallah’s family has been uprooted three times – twice as refugees from war, leaving everything they had behind – and survived the murder of his father. Now, he is the first of four siblings to graduate from college and has been admitted to UNC’s medical school for this fall.

Working his way through three colleges, Mallah, of Rocky Mount, has helped staff two emergency rooms, reminiscent of those anxious moments when medics at Nash General Hospital tried in vain to save his father. He plans to specialize in emergency medicine.

His story starts before he was born, during the 1967 war in the Middle East. His parents, as children, and their families fled the West Bank. Mohammed Mallah went on to graduate school in Berlin and married a young woman from his original village. They moved to Kuwait, where Mike Mallah was born. “We had a beautiful house on the ocean,” Mallah said.

But in 1991, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The family of six fled to Jordan. Through a refugee resettlement program, they ended up in Chapel Hill, arriving with the clothes on their backs and $500.

The father, Mohammed Mallah, an electrical engineer, took jobs such as delivering pizza to help support his family, but they subsisted on very little. Later, he was laid off from IBM; he sent hundreds of resumes to no avail. Arab-American friends advised that he buy a convenience store, and in 1994, he did just that, in Rocky Mount. The family moved, and he worked 11-hour days in the Branch Street Grocery.

Mohammed Mallah was fatally shot in an armed robbery in 1995. Mike Mallah was 10. His mother remained devastated for six months as the family survived with help from community members – white, black, Arab. Friends advised her to return to the Middle East.

But she wanted her children raised and educated in the United States. Eventually, the family re-opened the store. “His blood was still on the tiles,” Mallah said. “She wiped it up. We dusted the inventory … she had never worked with vendors or taxes or anything like that. All she was was determined.”

Since then, Iman Mallah has worked 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. Mallah always wanted to go to UNC, but he started at Nash Community College and then East Carolina University, working full time all the while.  “I’ve worked pretty much since I was 14,” he said. He experienced a long struggle to obtain a green card, which allows for permanent residency in the United States.

Finally, he was able to save enough money to buy a townhouse in Chapel Hill. Enrolling at UNC in 2006, Mallah, 24, finished his biology major in the College of Arts and Sciences through student loans, financial aid and jobs that have required him to drop back to part-time status in school at times.

Now his dream is to establish an exchange program in the medical school that would be named in honor of his parents. His Mom and all three sisters will watch him gain his degree in Kenan Stadium. Mallah can be reached at (919) 259-9869 or mikemallah@gmail.com.

Senior serves schools she attended

Jenny Hinkle troubleshoots problems, praises student achievement, punishes poor student behavior and develops school programming. She hires specialists and facilitates communication to meet students’ needs. The UNC senior stays busy as dean of students at Student U, a Durham-based program designed to develop the academic and personal skills of middle-school students.

“If a student is struggling, I talk to the guidance counselor, I talk to the principal, and I talk to the parent and get them all on the same page. They have a lot of students to worry about, and I only have to worry about a few at a time. I can provide a voice for them,” says Hinkle.

A native of Durham, Hinkle comes from the school system she now serves. She stacked her UNC courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays to devote more time to Student U children on school days. Hinkle will graduate on Sunday (May 10) as a double-major in Spanish and political science. Next, she will head to Chile for a six-month teaching job, though her longer-term interest is to become a local teacher.

“I want to eventually come back to Durham, because I want to see what happens with the education initiatives here.”

For more information on Student U, visit http://studentu.da.org/index.html. Hinkle can be reached at (919) 452-6791 or jahinkle@email.unc.edu.

  best grads
 
 Front row, left to right: Devon Lategan, Monica Kim,
 Erin Burns, Jenny Holt.
Back row, left to right: Aaron Foreman, Chase Martin,
 Benjamin Lin, Josh Lawrence. 

UNC-BEST

The first eight students to complete the new UNC-BEST program will graduate Sunday. All but one plan to participate in the commencement ceremony. The program – Baccalaureate Education in Science and Teaching – allows students to earn North Carolina teaching licenses while majoring in science or math. Previously, students had to continue in college to earn teaching licenses after receiving their degrees.

A collaboration between UNC’s College of Arts and Sciences and School of Education, UNC-BEST is intended to combat a shortage of science and math teachers in public schools across the state. For more on UNC-BEST, visit www.unc.edu/uncbest. The UNC-BEST graduates are profiled below:

Biology, the know-how; BEST, the confidence

Jenny Holt, a graduate of North Stanly High School in New London, N.C., hopes to teach ninth- and 10th-grade biology. She could have graduated with a biology degree last December but stayed another semester to complete UNC-BEST classes in the School of Education. 

After student-teaching at Orange High School in Hillsborough this spring, Holt said, “I feel like I’ve been able to make a positive impact on the students in my classroom. The extensive knowledge of biology that I’ve obtained at UNC leaves me feeling well prepared with the content, and the training I’ve had with UNC-BEST has given me the confidence to teach classes in a student-centered, interactive way.” Holt can be reached at (704) 796-8529 or jaholt@email.unc.edu.

What the world needs now: Doctors, lawyers or teachers?

A 2005 graduate of East Chapel Hill High School, UNC-BEST student Monica Kim changed courses along her way toward a degree in biology. “After I came to Carolina, I saw that America is in more need of science and math teachers instead of doctors and lawyers,” she said. “I wanted to serve people, and I thought that this particular fast-track program was a great way to do that.” She has a course to complete this summer but is eligible to march in the ceremony Sunday in Kenan. Afterward, she hopes, she will teach biology. Kim can be reached at (919) 619-1976 or Redx@unc.edu.

UNC-BEST prompted career decision

UNC-BEST student Devon Lategan will earn a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in chemistry. A graduate of Chapel Hill High School, he will be licensed to teach biology, chemistry, physics and Earth science. He hopes to land a job in the Triangle.

“Teaching was always an interest of mine, but I never seriously considered pursuing it in college. My junior year, I was still undecided about the career I wanted to pursue. When I saw the UNC-BEST program, I really felt like it was speaking to me and that it was a perfect program for my interests.”

Lategan can be reached at (919) 619-0486 and lategan@email.unc.edu.

Three to graduate from one family

The Lin family of Matthews will be busy Sunday (May 10) when three sons graduate in the ceremony in Kenan.

UNC-BEST student Benjamin Lin and his twin brother, Clement, will earn bachelor’s degrees in biology. Their older brother, Andrew, will earn his pharmacy degree.

The three graduates of Providence High School in Charlotte look forward to bright prospects, with Benjamin hoping to teach ninth-grade science. Andrew will be a resident pharmacist in a Charlotte hospital. Clement has an internship with Intervarsity Christian Fellowship at Duke University.

Benjamin wants to give back to a discipline in which his family strongly believes: education. “Teaching looked like a great opportunity to make a difference,” he said. “I believe that an education will change the lives of students for the better.”

Benjamin Lin can be reached at (704) 763-9632 or benjamin.lin68@gmail.com.

Colleges, 2; babies, 1 and counting

UNC-BEST student Aaron Foreman, 27, of Durham, didn’t go to college after graduating from Hillside High in 1999. He worked in real estate and restaurants. He fixed up houses being renovated for sale. He got married. He tended bar in a pub and cooked in a bed and breakfast in England.

After returning to Durham, “I decided to go to college, because I didn’t feel like my foundation was set and stable enough in real estate,” he said.

And by this time, he had a little boy to help support. He started with classes at Durham Technical Community College in 2005 and entered a program called C-STEP: Carolina Student Transfer Excellence Program. Funded by the Jack Kent Cook Foundation, C-STEP identifies talented low- to moderate-income students and guarantees their eventual transfer admission to Carolina if they earn an appropriate associate degree at one of the three partner colleges, including Durham Tech.

Foreman worked construction while attending the community college. Work was no longer an option once he transferred to Carolina, he said. He has funded his way through with loans and earlier real estate investments, but he also won a scholarship from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund in Research Triangle Park. The award – $6,000 for his senior year– also will pay him a $5,000 annual salary supplement for his first five years of teaching; it requires him to teach in North Carolina.

He is completing his bachelor’s degree in biology and awaiting the birth of his second child. He hopes to relate well to students, especially those of the same mindset that he had before college: “I was a terrible student in high school. I didn’t behave poorly, I just didn’t work.” Now, after four straight years in college, he’ll be the teacher.

In college, he said, “I had some good teachers and started thinking about my time in high school. I started to realize the difference a teacher could make. The teacher defines the whole experience of students.”

Foreman will not be at the ceremony in Kenan Stadium. He can be reached at (919) 475-3093 or aaroncforeman@gmail.com. For more information about C-STEP, visit http://admissions.unc.edu/CSTEP/.

Graduate juggles way through math lesson

Chase Martin of Huntersville, a physics major and graduate of Hopewell High School, hopes to teach 11th- and 12th-grade physics, as well as algebra, in the Charlotte area. He said he enrolled in UNC-BEST for two reasons. “First, it allowed me to get into the classroom and teaching faster than any other options, which is great, because I’m very eager to get started. Second, it was financially much more rewarding. The master’s of arts in teaching program would have meant one less year of pay and one more year of school.”

While he student-taught at Northern High School in Durham, Martin used his considerable skill at juggling to teach a concept in math. He has been tutoring friends since high school, when he first discovered his knack for teaching. “What got me the most excited was when I was working with someone who didn’t understand a concept” and having the person come to understanding through his instruction.” Martin can be reached at (704) 562-3805 or chase.juggler@gmail.com.

Addressing societal issues through teaching

Erin Burns of Jamestown, who graduated from South Guilford High School in High Point, will earn a biology degree with a minor in entrepreneurship. She did her student teaching this spring at Carrboro High School. Her goals: to teach middle or high school science and eventually earn master’s and doctoral degrees in education – milestones that she can reach sooner because of her UNC-BEST courses.

“I think lack of education is the root of almost all societal issues, so becoming a science teacher allows me to be a small part of helping address numerous other larger issues,” she said. Burns can be reached at (336) 848-1973 or erinb@email.unc.edu.

Teachers inspire graduate to follow their path

Biology major Josh Lawrence hopes to teach high school science in the Triangle. A graduate of South Brunswick High School in Southport, he gives the school high marks. “I decided to become a UNC-BEST student for a couple of reasons,” he said. “First, I love biology, and the reason I do is because of the teachers that I had in high school. Furthermore, I have known for a couple of years that I wanted to teach high school to make an impact on the lives of teenagers, just like my teachers did for me when I was in high school.” Contact Lawrence at jml13@email.unc.edu.

Delays don’t derail doctoral degrees

A marriage, a near-fatal car accident, a new baby and two doctoral degrees – it’s been a busy four years for William and Sara Ewell. William, a Ph.D. student in political science in the College of Arts and Sciences, met Sara, a Ph.D. in the School of Education, through a mutual friend. The two became engaged approximately a year later. Three months before they married, Sara was in a terrible car accident which left her physically and cognitively impaired. 

Despite being told by some that she wouldn’t be able to finish her degree, Sara will graduate on May 10th along with William. Along the way, they’ve been through rehabilitation, work, studies and the birth of their baby. Now William and Sara will return to their home state of Massachusetts as William begins his new job as a professor at a liberal arts college in the Boston area.

The couple will participate in UNC’s doctoral hooding ceremony Saturday (May 9) at 10 a.m. in the Dean Smith Center and the University-wide graduation in Kenan Stadium on Sunday. The School of Education ceremony will follow at noon in Memorial Hall. They can be reached at (919) 259-3661 or williamewell@gmail.com.

42 years and counting – including some time on a horse

Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of English Christopher Armitage will receive an Award for Excellence in Teaching at commencement Sunday (May 10), an honor presented annually by the Board of Governors of the 17-campus UNC system to just one faculty member from each campus. Armitage has spent the past 42 years at Carolina, teaching Shakespeare, Canadian literature and more in the College of Arts and Sciences to the state’s sons and daughters – not always by lecturing in a classroom.

Besides earning numerous previous awards for teaching excellence, the Manchester, England, native is known for leading an annual summer study-abroad program, for the past 38 years, to London and his alma mater, St. Edmund Hall of Oxford University. “We see at least 10 plays, mostly Shakespeare,” Armitage said. “It’s the best way to study Shakespeare.” Students or alumni on the trip typically call a well at St. Edmund, founded in 1210, “the really Old Well.” They also take turns reading more than 100 poems by the Bard one morning in a church yard, a round robin that Armitage calls the Sonnet Olympics.

His alter-ego is William Richardson Davie, the University’s main 18th-century founder, as whom Armitage dresses when requested on special occasions, complete with knee britches. The practice was the brainchild of former UNC Provost Richard Richardson, Armitage said: “What they didn’t tell me when they persuaded me to become William R. Davie was that I would be required to ride a horse. I hadn’t been on a horse in 30 years.”

The English professor mounted his steed before an outdoor ceremony during the University’s bicentennial in the 1990s. When it was announced that William R. Davie was riding to the podium, flash bulbs popped, the horse shied and Armitage was lucky to escape with his health and tri-cornered hat.

Hannah Gage, chair of the UNC Board of Governors, will present the award on Sunday. For more on Armitage, visit http://english.unc.edu/faculty/armitagec.html. He can be reached at (919) 962-4047 and armitage@email.unc.edu.   

News Services contact: LJ Toler, (919) 962-8589, (919) 219-6374; Lisa Katz, (919) 962-2093, (919) 638-0474

Comments are closed.