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Mostly Cloudy Molloy sends off the class of 2013
More than 1,000 Molloy College graduates poured out of Nassau Coliseum Monday evening, brimming with excitement and diplomas in hand.
Molloy’s 54th Annual Commencement jumped to an early start, with the invocation ending more than five minutes before the ceremony’s scheduled 6 p.m. processional.
Dr. Valerie Collins, the college’s vice president for academic affairs, introduced the numerous Molloy notables on stage, with President Dr. Drew Bogner, VP for Student Affairs Robert Houlihan and Dr. Jeannine Muldoon, the college’s dean of nursing, receiving the biggest cheers. And when Salutatorian Kathryn Twomey and Valedictorian Matthew Leeb were named, the student body whooped and hollered.
In his welcome, Bogner referred to a speech presented by Doris Kearns Goodwin at this year’s Rockville Centre Education Foundation Gala, stressing the importance of leadership traits Goodwin praised in president Abraham Lincoln: “Resiliency, the ability to relate to others, and the ability to stay positive and inspire others.”
“You are called to live lives of significance,” Bogner said to the crowd. “...You are called to be that resilient, optimistic leader who can inspire others to commit positive change.”
The commencement speaker, Prioress Mary Hughes, Ed.D, of the Dominican Sisters of Amityville, began her speech on a faulty microphone. After protests from the crowd, she moved swiftly over to a new one.
“Leadership requires flexibility,” she said, to applause.
Hughes told the crowd of the founding of Molloy, and of its Catholic and Dominican guiding principles, before telling the crowd the great benefit of Molloy’s “certain kind” of education — an understanding of the value of perspective, the common good, and a search for the truth.
“Study calls us to a relentless search for truth,” she said. “You leave Molloy with a ‘certain kind’ of degree…. Use it to build the kind of world in which we want to live.”
