More than 1,500 University of Arkansas at Little Rock students turned their tassels to the left Saturday at the Jack Stephens Center.
Years of hard work led to them beating the norm and graduating from college, university and university system officials told students at the first of three commencement ceremonies for UALR on Saturday.
"All of you had to work hard for a long time," Chancellor Joel E. Anderson told the graduates.
"It's the small minority of Americans that have a college degree," he continued. "It's even smaller in Arkansas."
Arkansas ranks near the bottom of U.S. states in the percentage of residents who have four-year college degrees -- about 20 percent. The average among states is 28.5 percent.
Many university commencements took place last weekend, but UALR's ceremonies this weekend coincided with Hendrix College's and the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences' commencements.
After the ceremony, students met friends, parents, siblings, significant others and extended family members outside to take pictures of nearly every possible combination that involved the graduate.
Wendy Kurtz was surrounding by extended family, her husband and her parents-in-law.
The 24-year-old from Little Rock earned a bachelor's degree in early childhood education.
"Today's been stressful but good," she said. On stage, "I was just kind of focused on not falling."
The hard work will continue for Marisha Mays, 22.
Mays graduated with a bachelor's degree in social work Saturday, wearing a sash from Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
The Monticello native plans to work for a year before pursuing a master's degree in social work.
Mays was joined by friends and family from Monticello on Saturday, including her best friend Jada Lyles, who left Monticello at 7:30 a.m. to see Mays graduate.
"It means a lot because we've been friends for a while," Lyles said.
The afternoon ceremony included the awarding of an honorary liberal arts doctorate to New York Knicks head coach and Little Rock native Derek Fisher, as well as the graduation of this spring's Edward L. Whitbeck outstanding senior. Whitbeck was a former student who died 50 years ago during his senior year.
Twenty-three-year-old Saad Azam's journey to earning the Edward L. Whitbeck Memorial Award started in Karachi, Pakistan, a city of nearly 10 million people, where he was born and raised for 14 years.
His journey continued in Mandeville, La. -- a New Orleans suburb -- in 2006, where he had to sign up for an English as a second language program for three years.
"I didn't know English very well. I had no writing skills. I barely spoke English," he said. "Getting through high school was tough in the beginning. It took me a good while to get things started."
Toward the end of high school, Azam's family moved to Little Rock, where his mother had gotten a job after graduating from medical school.
A family member and former Donaghey honors scholar encouraged Azam to apply to UALR for the Donaghey honors program.
He noticed soon after starting school that writing was key to succeeding in the program, even as a biology and chemistry double major.
"Their writing skills were so amazing at a whole new level that I learned from them," he said. "I realized that writing skills are something that everybody needs to have. Every career that you go in you need to have good writing skills."
After that, Azam made writing his number one priority. He asked professors to help him.
His motivation was to be better at his weakest skill. His inspiration was his mom, who raised children while attending medical school, and his father, who left a job as head of a company in Pakistan to start from the bottom in the U.S.
In his college career, Azam has volunteered at Harmony Health Clinic, was president of the university's chapter of the American Chemical Society and interned with NASA twice (and will head there again this summer for a third internship and a possible full-time gig). And when it came time to graduate, Azam applied for the Edward L. Whitbeck Memorial Award, for which he had to write two essays.
"For the first 14 years of my life in Pakistan, I excelled at school, but in Urdu. After my family moved to the US in 2006, I struggled to excel," Azam began his essay on scholarship, character and leadership.
"If you had told me that the Saad taking ESL classes would graduate college with a 3.86 GPA and have a job lined up at NASA, I would have never believed it," he wrote in his closing paragraph.
University of Arkansas System President Donald R. Bobbitt acknowledged the challenges many people face in getting to college and graduating from it.
He said 28 percent of Arkansans have a credential -- a certificate, associate's degree or higher -- from a post-secondary educational institution.
"There are some who faced obstacles to getting here," he told the graduates.
"We're very proud of your accomplishments," he added.
Metro on 05/17/2015