PIU Graduation 2012

Last Monday PIU held our commencement ceremony for our 2012 graduates. We had 27 graduates including 3 AA’s, 3 BA’s (in biblical studies) and three Master’s of Arts in Religion. This was the 10th graduation since I became the President of PIU on January 1, 2003. We had about 450 friends and family attending the ceremony at Saint Paul’s North Church in Yigo. With the pouring rain and large crowd it is probably a good thing that we did not have the graduation on campus this year. It was a beautiful ceremony and we are very proud of our graduates. Many of them are already headed back to their islands to do ministry. Thanks to the Advancement team and Graduation committee for their great job setting up and decorating.

The program was ready and the refreshments were baked

The faculty took their places on the stage

Everyone stood for the entrance of the graduates. Our stage was decorated with all the flags making up the PIU family. Every year we seem to add a new one or two.

The Voices of Micronesia sang beautifully and Justice Maraman, our keynote speaker, gave an inspiring message

I always enjoy handing out the diplomas to the new graduates

This year it was my privilege to hood the Seminary graduates too. Here is Karl Flores is hooded

Mo and Mondale receive their hoods. I managed to get the hoods right side up on one of the three graduates

I then gave my “charge” to the new graduates based on lessons learned from the Israelites experience coming out of Egypt. You can see that they were very excited about it.

The seating was pretty full. Tomorrow I will post some after-the-ceremony pictures of the smiling grads