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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nPrincess Sarah A. Bentil <\/strong>of Laurel, Md. delivered the student commentary on behalf of the class of 2022.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bentil paid tribute to her mother, whom she said overcame a series of personal setbacks after her family settled in America, and became her role model for perseverance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEach of us has a purpose and a calling,\u201d said Bentil, who was Miss UMES 2021-22. \u201cNever stop until you find and live them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs you go into the world, go with confidence. Your experiences here \u2026 have more than prepared you to excel at every aspect of your life,\u201d she said. \u201cGo out into the world knowing that you are worthy \u2013 and worth it! Your name is in high places where your feet have yet to land.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bentil, a member of the Richard A. Henson Honors program, has a post-graduate internship lined up this summer to do field-marketing for engineers with Oracle Corp., the Austin, Texas-based computer software giant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sixty-six graduated with honors, including eight student-athletes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of those was aviation science major Leul Fekadu<\/strong> of Silver Spring, who called graduation day \u201ca big milestone.\u201d Fekadu emigrated as a child from Ethiopia with his parents, whom he said had little understanding of the nuances of how to apply for admission to an American college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is also a commencement for them,\u201d Fekadu said, \u201cand their hard work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fekadu, also a Henson honors program student, has accumulated 300+ hours of flight time as a licensed pilot and will transition to working as a UMES flight instructor, which will enable him to build his experience resume to reach his career goal; commercial airline pilot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alyssa Blair Reese<\/strong> was the lone Crisfield native to receive a degree and will be following in the footsteps of her older sister into the pharmacy profession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis has been a long time coming,\u201d said Reese, 29. \u201cIt\u2019s meant too much to me to be accepted at UMES so I can be in a position to fill the gap for the underserved population when it comes to health care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reese moves on to Richmond for a post-graduate residency program with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs before embarking on a career as pharmacist. She said she\u2019s hopeful of returning to work on the Eastern Shore a year from now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anjanique LaFontant<\/strong> of White Plains, Md., spent her final semester at UMES as a student-teacher at nearby Somerset Intermediate School, where she taught regular-content math and language arts as well as worked with special education students, her specialization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wanted to come to an HBCU,\u201d LaFontant said. \u201cUMES surrounded me at the right time and was there through every step, every phase.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of LaFontant\u2019s parents is an educator, so \u201cit was in my blood. I knew it was in my heart.\u201d Her high school had a child care center, where she encountered special needs children and settled on that specialty as her major.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnyone who\u2019s trying to be a special education teacher, it is not for the weak,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you\u2019re serious about it, (the university) will help you every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Amal Suleiman Adamu<\/strong>, who came to UMES from Nigeria at 16 to study, finished her undergraduate studies in biology in three years and graduated with highest honors. She also found time to work as a peer tutor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a ride,\u201d Adamu said. \u201cI really appreciate all my professors here at UMES. I had professors who made me feel I could achievement.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am happy and still have so much more to accomplish,\u201d the pre-med major said. \u201cThis is a stepping stone and there\u2019s more work to done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Elspeth A. Schalk<\/strong> of Princess Anne has been accepted by the Trinity School of Medicine in St. Vincent, the Grenadines, where she\u2019ll take the next step toward following in her father\u2019s footsteps as an anesthesiologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After accumulating college credit at other institutions \u2013 and frustrated by losing some that did not transfer \u2013 Schalk nailed a perfect 4.0 grade point average in her two years as a biology major at UMES. While COVID protocols cut class size, Schalk attended \u201cin-person lectures \u2026 the whole time. I needed that structure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Schalk is prepared for the medical school grind; she held down jobs that often required 40 hours a week, including as an anesthesia technician at a local animal hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI finally got to where I never thought I\u2019d be in life,\u201d said Schalk, 29. \u201cIt was a very long road. I\u2019ve gotten past thinking I didn\u2019t deserve to be here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christian A. Ferguson<\/strong> of Lanham, Md. is \u201ca phenomenal person,\u201d according to English department faculty member Terry Kundell. \u201cHe is creative, fun and a genuinely kind person.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferguson, an English major and Henson honors program member, wants to be a writer and filmmaker. He directed a stage production as a freshman and a year ago wrote and directed, \u201cSoul Searching,\u201d a well-received one-man play that explored \u201csystematic racism in the \u201870s of south side Chicago.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt’s saddening to leave a place that has provided me with great opportunity and creative freedom,\u201d Ferguson said. \u201cYet, I’m excited to strive for success through all I have learned and experience gained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ferguson\u2019s goal is earning a master’s degree and major in film where he can also be graduate teaching assistant \u2013 ideally at Howard University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Arielle M. Wickstrom<\/strong> of Mount Airey, Md., will relocate to Sarasota County, Fla. to spearhead design of a new engineering technology curriculum in the school system there. She is well prepared for the rigors; she persevered through the pandemic that took the life of her father, casting her into the role, at age 22, of caretaker of three younger siblings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her late father was in the construction business, and Wickstrom tagged along as a child to job sites. In high school, she helped build a \u201ctiny house\u201d and saw technology and engineering education as a career fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m in love with the path that I choose,\u201d she said. \u201cTeaching kids about it is more fun. You can see the light bulbs go off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wickstrom credits faculty member Thomas Loveland, coordinator of UMES\u2019 satellite program in technology and engineering education in Baltimore, with instilling in her the confidence she could earn a degree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI had no financial support,\u201d she said. \u201cI worked to get as many scholarships as I could. I worked in retail. I don\u2019t think I would have gotten that recognition without his approval.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wickstrom\u2019s next oldest sibling will be a college freshman this fall and her two other siblings will live with a relative to finish high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Samantha Power, who has served as a senior policymaker during the Obama administration and currently for President Joe Biden, was the commencement speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Power is the second winner of Pulitzer Prize, print journalism\u2019s highest honor, in the past seven years to give UMES\u2019 graduation-day speech. Syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. accepted a last-minute invitation to handle the duties in December 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Known internationally as a champion of human rights, Power challenged graduates to take a stand against those who might seek to take theirs away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “At UMES, you learned that the very nature of rights is that they should never be questioned, they should never be threatened, they should never be taken away,” Power said. “They belong to you, to me, to everyone. And yet we know the real world doesn\u2019t often respect these principles the way that it should.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “When you leave this campus, you\u2019ll find a world desperate for your talent, for your fire, for your resilience, and for the perspective you\u2019ve gained here,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actress Starletta DuPois, who has performed on stage, in film and on television, was awarded an honorary degree, joining her 1968 Maryland State College classmate Art Shell, who received one in 2007.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hotelier Ben Seidel, founder, president and CEO of Maryland-based Real Hospitality Group, and his wife, Alma, the company\u2019s human resources vice president, also received honorary degrees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And Dr. Bradley Stevens, who taught at UMES from 2009 until 2021, was awarded the honorary title of \u2018professor emeritus\u2019 in recognition of his distinguished career as a marine and environmental science educator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a message to students \u201cwho are the first in their family to graduate, I would like you to know that education will make all the difference in your lives. My great-grandparents did not complete high school, but my grandfather Stevens acquired a Doctor of Divinity and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe value of your education,\u201d he said, \u201cwill be passed on to your children and to theirs for many generations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The University of Maryland Eastern Shore held its spring 2022 commencement exercises today, awarding bachelor, master\u2019s and doctorate degrees to 292 newly minted alumni. Princess Sarah A. Bentil of Laurel, Md. delivered the student commentary on behalf of the class of 2022. Bentil paid tribute to her mother, whom she said overcame a series of…Read more Spring commencement 2022<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":13458,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-13456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13456"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=13456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wwwcp.umes.edu\/pr\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2022\/05\/22-commencement-collage-bottom-CORX2.jpg\")
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