Press release from Lenoir-Rhyne University:
Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville will celebrate commencement on Saturday, May 12. Fifty graduates of the Class of 2018 will process through downtown Asheville (beginning at the Vance Monument) to share this celebratory event with business leaders and community members. The ceremony is scheduled for 10am at The Orange Peel Social Aid and Pleasure Club, 101 Biltmore Ave.
Dr. Fred Whitt, President of LRU, will share opening and closing remarks, and the Dean and Director of the Center, Dr. Michael Dempsey, will preside over the ceremony.
The Center will present an honorary doctorate degree to Oralene Anderson Graves Simmons, president of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Asheville and Buncombe County. In addition, Simmons will deliver the commencement’s keynote address. Honorary doctorates are awarded to persons of outstanding character and personality who have distinguished themselves for achievement, won professional or other distinction, or rendered conspicuous service in a particular field. LRU Board of Trustees member and Asheville attorney Joe McGuire will present the doctorate to Simmons.
“As part of our commitment to our local communities, Lenoir-Rhyne recognizes distinguished individuals who have dedicated their lives to enhancing those communities,” Dempsey said. “Ms. Simmons exemplifies the kind of spirit and dedication that is championed by Lenoir-Rhyne. She is a symbol of the perseverance and bright future that make Asheville great.”
Raised in Mars Hill, Simmons has been a pioneer for civil rights since her school days. Her social justice work began in the early 1960s, when, during high school, she was a member of the Asheville Student Committee on Racial Equality (ASCORE), a group comprised of black and white students that, through peaceful demonstration, protested lingering Jim Crow practices in Western North Carolina. After this, Simmons integrated the traditionally all-white Mars Hill College in 1961. This break with the status quo gained Simmons worldwide recognition, when she was featured in both Jet and Time magazines. Simmons is the great grand-daughter of Joseph Anderson, a slave who was held as collateral to guarantee a loan used to build Mars Hill College in 1856. One hundred and five years later, Simmons became the first African-American student enrolled at the college.
Lenoir-Rhyne’s Center for Graduate Studies of Asheville offers graduate programs in business administration, social entrepreneurship, leadership, counseling, nursing, public health, teaching, writing, sustainability studies, and dietetic internship. For more information, visit lr.edu/asheville.
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