Salt Lake Community College will hold its graduation
ceremony on May 8 at 4:30 p.m. in the Maverik Center, 3200 South Decker Lake
Drive, West Valley City.
The College will present Jesselie Barlow Anderson and Ronald
W. Jibson with Honorary Doctorate degrees. Barlow Anderson served two full terms from 2005-2013 on the SLCC Board
of Trustees, chairing the Board for one term. Her many accomplishments at SLCC
include a key role in establishing the College’s Washington D.C. internship
program. Jibson, through his employer Questar and personally, has contributed
toward an existing SLCC scholarship program and was pivotal in helping the
College establish an energy grant that has benefited students.
The College
welcomes back Sekou Andrews as Commencement speaker after giving the school’s
Convocation keynote last fall. He is a two-time winner of the National
Poetry Slam and has won numerous awards for his words and the way in which he
delivers them. Andrews’ “cutting-edge” style of delivery that he calls Poetic
Voice blends “speaking, strategic storytelling, poetry, theater and comedy.”
Dan Farr, the late Utah County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cory Blake
Wride and the late Draper City Police Sgt. Derek Ray Johnson have been named
SLCC’s Distinguished Alumni. Farr was
able to draw more than 75,000 people one weekend last September to what he
describes as the largest first-year Comic Con event in the history of North
America. Wride, who was killed January 30, 2014 in the line of service after 19
years in law enforcement, was honored in March at the Capitol by the Utah
Legislature, which moved to name about a 15-mile section of state Route 73 the
Cory B. Wride Memorial Highway through Saratoga Springs to the Tooele County
line. Johnson, who was killed in the line of duty on September 1, 2013,
received the Life Saving and Distinguished Service awards, and he was the 2012
Community Policing Officer of the Year. According to his obituary, he loved
hunting, running, hiking and serving others.
Melissa Helquist
has been named the 2014 SLCC Distinguished Faculty Lecturer. Helquist joined SLCC in 2002 and is
currently an associate professor in the English department, where she teaches
composition, technical writing, and disability studies courses. The 2014 SLCC Teaching Excellence Award
recipients are Bill Tovar, Melissa Tillack and Emily Dibble.
Salt Lake Community College is an
accredited, student-focused, urban college meeting the diverse needs of the
Salt Lake community. Home to more than 60,000 students each year, the College
is Utah’s leading provider of workforce development programs. SLCC is also the
largest supplier of transfer students to Utah’s four-year institutions and a
perennial Top 10 college nationally for total associate degrees awarded. The
College is the sole provider of applied technology courses in the Salt Lake
area, with multiple locations, an eCampus, and nearly 1,000 continuing
education sites located throughout the Salt Lake valley. Personal attention
from an excellent faculty is paramount at the College, which maintains an
average class size of 20.