| Students filled the CEU library all this week as they toughed it out and studied hard for final exams. The last final will be on Friday and the next day graduation will be taking place in the BDAC at 10:30 a.m. |
A pair of local graduates who operate successful businesses in Price will give keynote addresses and a county commissioner who is also well known in the finance industry will get an honorary degree on May 3 at the College of Eastern Utah’s 63rd commencement.
But the real guests of honor are the people who are just looking forward to beginning their careers; the students who make up the sophomore graduating class of 2003.
When the end of the program comes on Saturday, 582 students will have degrees and certificates in their hands, showing years of hard work gaining an education that they all hope will lead them to better lives.
This years class is 149 larger than the class that graduated from the school just 10 years ago. The class has representatives in it from eight foreign countries and 11 states. Those countries include Ghana, Japan, Lesotho, Mexico, Pakistan, Russia, the Phillipines and Tanzania. The states they hail from include Alaska, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming. While the bulk of the class is Caucasian, it also includes large numbers of Native Americans, a number of students of African and Asian descent, a number of Hispanics and many others as well.
In terms of sex, there are 136 more females graduating than there are males.
Degrees and certificates earned include those from every discipline on campus.
All this week graduating students and those who hope to graduate in the future have been stressing over final exams, and by about noon on Friday that will all be in the past. But their college experience at CEU will be with them the rest of their lives.
The keynote speakers will be Tony and Jessica Basso who own Mad Man Basso Auto Sales as well as other business interests in town. Both are former CEU students.
Mike Milovich, who is presently a Carbon County Commissioner and is the president of the Carbon Credit Union will receive an honorary degree from the school.