President's Column: Commencement 2025 (April 2025)

Chanute, Kan. — April 28, 2025

It’s time once again to reach into the closet and pull out my graduation cap and gown, and make sure they are ready to go. In just a few weeks we will have another large group of students cross the stage and become college graduates and alumni of Neosho County Community College! It looks like over 800 degrees and certificates will be awarded this year!

I love graduation and seeing all our students and their families celebrate their amazing accomplishments! Our employees work so hard on the event, from setting up the stage, to getting all the names right, to preparing the script and practicing the music. I want the evening to go off perfectly for the students, but sometimes things happen. After participating in 32 years’ worth of commencement ceremonies, I have seen them go very well, and a few maybe not as well.

More than once, we have had to announce that we are under a tornado watch or warning during the event, or heard tremendous thunder in the background as Pomp and Circumstance is played. We even had to evacuate graduation due to a pulled fire alarm. I have seen a few people faint or slip on the stairs. Often, even though we practice getting in and out of the room, people get nervous and go the wrong way.

When my daughter, Abrielle, was graduating from NCCC I was so proud! I asked my younger daughter, Alayna, to video her crossing the stage and greeting me. Alayna was taping, and just as Abrielle crossed the stage, the spectator in front of Alayna stood up. So, I have a video of the back of someone’s head instead of Abrielle getting handed her degree cover. Sigh.

Last year, as I was about to take the stage to conduct graduation. All was finally ready, and I was excited! I put a mint in my mouth to freshen my breath as I would soon be saying “Congratulations!” hundreds of times to students. As I took the stage I bit down on the mint and broke my tooth. Yikes, but the show must go on. I just put the piece of tooth in my pocket and continued with the ceremony like nothing happened. I would later trade my graduation cap for a crown at the dentist office.

Graduation is a time for a student to reflect on all the work that went into the degree and all the exciting things to come. It is also a time for the college to look back at all of the things we have accomplished this academic year — and what a year we had!

This year we launched another new career and technical education program – Automotive Technology! That program was made possible through a very generous donation from Mike and CeCe Mitchell, as well as a Kansas Challenge Grant. We were able to convert unused space at the Ross Lane facility into a nearly $1 million lab with equipment. We found an excellent instructor and the program opened completely full in enrollment!

We also opened the Yuza Family Greenhouse on the Chanute Campus this year. This wonderful new facility was the result of another generous donation. It has already been used in the biology and environmental life science classes. The greenhouse hosted its first plant sale fundraiser for our two-year honor society, Phi Theta Kappa.

Next, we completed our new outdoor plaza! This plaza solves many situations at once. Its primary function was to help keep the Student Union and Panther Gymnasium from flooding. The new underground drainage system certainly does that. But it was also designed to be an exceptional outdoor meeting place for students in summer and winter alike. It features beautiful lighted shade sails for the warmer months and a gas fire pit for the winter. The cost of this plaza was funded through the Kansas Challenge Grant (which paid for the drainage), donations, and Student Union fees.

The faculty were hard at work redesigning the curriculum in developmental education and in mathematics to be in alignment with KBOR initiatives. Standalone developmental education classes are giving way to corequisite courses to get students in the college-level classes sooner and perhaps with better results. On the math front, we will soon have three math “pathways” that allow students to take the math course most suited for their major instead of everyone required to take college algebra. It was a heavy lift to change so congratulations to faculty for getting this done!

And the college continued to grow this year! Last year we were up 8.5% in enrollment. This year we grew by an additional 2.1% on top of last year! That is wonderful news!

Just as graduation ends some things, it signals the coming of something new for the student. The college, too, has some exciting things coming up in the next year.

Thanks again to another wonderful gift, right after graduation we will be renovating the current Wellness Center and turning it into The Strahm Family Strength Center, nicknamed “The Spot”. This renovation will change the inside with a completely new interior and the outside with a new façade. The project should be done in time for the fall semester.

The biggest news in upcoming additions to campus this year is the Mih Family Fine Arts Center. Here, the college will be renovating the 1968 auditorium and adding over 4,000 square feet of new construction to the building. This academic year we held our first fundraising event for the project, wrote grants, gathered donations, and have been working with the design team of architects to finalize the new look! I think you will be impressed! The plan is to finish the design this summer, hire a contractor, and prepare to break ground in the fall. It’s going to be a fantastic new addition to the Chanute Campus.

Graduation is by far my favorite time of the year. I am so proud of our students and what they have accomplished. I’m equally proud of our employees and what they have done to move the mission of NCCC forward.

This commencement, however, I will use mouthwash instead of mints.

If you have any questions about this column, or anything else at the college, please contact me at binbody@neosho.edu.

For more information about Commencement Day 2025, please click here.