by Curlan Campbell, NOW Grenada
- TAMCC graduates 100 students with honours
- 2 students share valedictorian honours
The 2018 graduating class of TA Marryshow Community College (TAMCC), will go in the history books as 2 students, Blossom Degale and Jahrel Stewart share valedictorian honours. They attained a Grade Point Average (GPA) of 3.94 and 3.95 respectively.
Acting Registrar and chair of the graduation committee Marva Bowen-Neptune said the decision to have 2 valedictorians was made after it was observed that both students shared similar GPA but had a similar profile outside of their academic achievements.
“This situation although very rare has happened in the past, and this year again we have 2 valedictorians. After looking at the students’ profile we realised that it was very similar in that they have the same GPA and in terms of their college life, they would have done similar things, so it was very difficult for us to award one student.”
A small number of students this year referred to as “walkers” will be allowed to participate in the graduation exercise but will have to wait until they have fulfilled all of their requirements for graduation before they can receive their certificates.
“It is the best practice for the college to have walkers in our graduation. We haven’t utilised that option over the years because we always wanted to make sure that they met the requirements to graduate, but we saw that it would be unfair to have students complete the 2 years and may have one course outstanding and have them wait for another year.”
Degale and Stewart said the journey to achieving valedictorian honours was quite challenging. Degale intends on pursuing medicine, and said she had to overcome a number of distractions vying for her attention. “It took a lot of focus for me because there are so many distractions. We have our school work to balance and some of us have extracurricular activities and extra classes as well but to organise all of that it took some time.”
Stewart said he was pleasantly surprised to be chosen as one of the valedictorians. “It took me a lot of sleepless nights and never giving up in order to attain this honour and for me, I had to block out a lot of peer pressure to remain focused on my school work.”
100 students will be graduating with honours out of this year’s graduating class of 796 students. The ceremony is carded for Thursday, 19 July 2018 at the Grenada National Stadium.