This past Saturday, family and friends were on hand to share in the excitement of 10 doctoral, 8 master and 28 bachelor degree recipients; the numbers included potential summer graduating students since the departmental ceremony occurs once an academic year. And as part of the celebration 15 students were inducted into the American Nuclear Society (ANS) Alpha Nu Sigma National Honor Society.

It is tradition to have a student speaker, Mr. Qays El-Ali, and alumni speaker(s), Dr. Brian Moore and Mrs. Lisa Moore – voted upon by the graduating undergraduate students and faculty members respectively. Mr. El-Ali spoke of shared student memories in and out of the classroom. He reminded students of the challenging curriculum and their accomplishments. He explained his desire to change the world through the use of electricity and how nuclear engineering chose him. Qays is the second of three children whose hometown is Charlotte, NC.

 

 
Brian and Lisa asked students to think of ten years in the future and provided some reflective questions about decisions made along theirprofessional way. They gave responses from their personal and professional careers speaking to leadership, problem solving and to career trajectories. They focused on their professional journeys as life unfolds; having insights for everyone — from senior design projects to completing a doctoral degree and beyond. Personal moments shared by Lisa Moore included making the decision to leave industry and home school their two children. She is in the process of reinventing herself as an empty nester and reflected on her children as her professional and personal success. Dr. Moore is Core and Fuel Engineering General Manager at General Electric – Hitachi Nuclear Energy and Mrs. Moore is a professional speaker and successful entrepreneur.

A reception followed where faculty, staff, family and friends were able to have intimate conversations and capture pictorial moments. The Department also live streamed the graduation ceremony as a Facebook event.

Our graduating students are joining utilities (e.g. Duke Energy), engineering firms (e.g. GE-Hitachi’s Edison Program, the shipyard (e.g. Newport News), national laboratories (e.g. Los Alamos National Lab) and nuclear engineering graduate programs (e.g. NC State, MIT).

As our university motto states “Think and Do the Extraordinary”, much will be seen of our 2017-18 class.