Notably transformed

Joni Nichols and 790 other Golden West Community College students last week took their final walk of the campus — across the stage to signify completion of an academic degree.

Nichols, 50, was a re-entry student in the nursing program who said she never liked school very much and didn’t finish high school.

“Now I love school,” Nichols said after the May 24 graduation ceremony, during which she received her associate in arts degree and her nursing pin. “I feel so blessed and honored to be a part of that program.”

The ceremony had all the pomp and circumstance befitting the college’s 40th graduation, as students wearing caps and gowns of green, gold and white filed into the campus’ central quad. The oldest student of the class was 61 — the youngest, 17. Some 130 students with 3.5 grade point averages or higher graduated with honors. Ten graduated with a perfect 4.0 grade point average, among them the youngest student in the class.

“This is not the end. This is the beginning,” former college President Judith Valles said in her commencement address. “This is a time for renewal — not just for graduates, but for all of us.”

Valles asked students to ponder why some people live lives of that are “vital and exciting” while others “go to seed,” and told students to look to themselves.

“It begins with each one of us,” she said. “We learn from bearing the things we cannot change … taking risks. We learn that the world loves talent but pays off on character.”

College President Wes Bryan said the ceremony was his all-time favorite.

“Every one of [the students] has a struggle,” he said, and “to see them succeed is deeply touching.”

Bryan said he thinks smaller class sizes contribute to the students’ successes, and that “more people recognize the value of an education.”

What also makes the college unique, Bryan said, is the size — roughly 13,000 students with about 35% to 40% of them attending full-time, and faculty “collaboration to develop new programs.”

Bryan’s hope, he said, is that “being successful in that one class lets a person who never saw themselves as a college student become one.”