EDITOR'S NOTE: This story originally appeared in the February issue of GCU Magazine.
It was 100% gutsy when Ebony Plummer jumped into a master’s degree program in the midst of juggling a job and 2-year-old twin daughters.
So when she heard Grand Canyon University’s Office of Alumni Relations announce, “We have a few caps and gowns, will travel,” for a graduation party just a state away, she didn’t hesitate, driving 5 ½ hours to the Atlanta area in November to attend the department’s first on-the-road graduation celebration.
“I didn’t get a chance to make it to (Phoenix for) graduation,” said Plummer, a teacher from Fayetteville, North Carolina, who earned her master’s degree in elementary and special education in December. “So it just meant a lot. I worked so hard.”
Even more special was that she celebrated alongside her cousin, also a GCU graduate, and her mom – “she’s my role model,” Plummer said – who earned her graduate degree from GCU during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
“We all went together, so it was very special,” she shared of the event at the Dunwoody Nature Center in Dunwoody, Georgia, just 30 minutes outside of Atlanta.
She was among the more than 100 alumni who graduated in 2022 and 2023 invited from Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina and Alabama who attended the graduation celebration, along with approximately 500 of their family and friends.
Two years ago, Alumni Relations Assistant Director Kaitlyn Nicol and then-Director of Alumni Relations Noah Wolfe pulled numbers on how many out-of-state graduates attended Commencement.
“We saw there was a big gap of those who couldn’t come,” said Nicol. “And then when we do our Lopes on the Road events (social events for alumni across the nation), we hear a lot of the grads say, I wish I could come to Phoenix, but we have this, this or this. … So we decided, why wouldn’t we do something to celebrate them where they are?
“They have kids, they have jobs, and it’s expensive to go all the way from, say, the East Coast to Phoenix. We see that there’s a big need to do something for them there if they can’t make it here.”
Planning this first on-the-road, logistics-heavy graduation celebration was a monster, Nicol admits. After the initiative received approval, Alumni Relations rallied to pull everything together in just six weeks.
Team members met with GCU Commencement organizers to make sure not to compete with formal on-campus ceremonies at the roughly 7,000-seat Global Credit Union Arena. GCU is known for its spectacular events, usually over multiple days, celebrating its online students. They also sought approval from the degree conferral team on the academic side.
When the University green-lighted the Atlanta graduation celebration, Alumni Relations sprinted into action.
“This one was from the ground up,” Nicol said of the marathon planning sessions and coordinating so many moving parts. “We had to buy the plates and the napkins and make sure all the vendors were arriving at the same time. You’re planning a little birthday party, but for hundreds of people.”
And the team needed a venue, “like yesterday,” and sought out a GCU Atlanta-area enrollment representative who checked out the Dunwoody Nature Center to make sure it would work.
Putting the celebration together was challenging, “but it was worth it,” Nicol said.
Alumni Relations Marketing and Communications Specialist Nicole Johnson remembers a mother and daughter at the event who earned their degrees at the same time.
“They were so cute,” Johnson said.
“That one got to us. … We said, we have to hold it together, because they were in tears,” added Nicol, which meant the team also was in tears.
The celebration, also attended by local GCU enrollment specialists, included an outdoor photo area so honorees could take their own images, as well as a professional photographer who captured images of graduates in their caps and gowns if they had them. Herff Jones also donated eight sets of caps and gowns, while the Alumni Relations team arrived with diploma sleeves and tassels.
“It was cool we were able to provide them for those that didn’t have one,” Johnson said of the donated regalia.
Everyone in the graduate’s family also received GCU Alumni T-shirts.
“They were so excited to wear them,” said Nicol. “ … It was definitely a big family affair.”
The graduation celebration on the next day rolled into a Lopes on the Road event at the Atlanta Falcons vs. Minnesota Vikings game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It would be the graduates’ first official alumni event.
“The game was awesome,” Plummer said. “It was my first NFL game. I loved it!”
Nicol said that what’s at the heart of these alumni events is making Lopes, whether they were ground students or online students who have never stepped on campus, feel like they’re forever part of the GCU family.
And “us physically being there legitimizes the University,” she added.
That physical presence goes a long way.
Nicol and Johnson shared how they heard people comparing their GCU online experiences, or how they were so excited to meet people they knew from their online class discussion boards live and in person.
It felt good to see the building of that GCU community, Nicol said, “because I don’t think there would be another way for that to happen unless we were there doing this kind of event.”
The Alumni Relations office hopes to bring more graduation celebrations to alumni because it was so impactful the first time.
For Nicol, the true joy of the event was giving people who worked so hard for their degrees their big moment.
“It made me tear up at some points because people were so excited to finally have that moment, because when you do an online degree, and especially when you’re not going to the campus, it feels like you did it, you’re done, and you’re on to the next thing,” Nicol said.
Working incredibly hard for her master’s with twin daughters, now 4 years old, by her side and driving almost six hours to celebrate her graduation alongside her mom and cousin, Plummer echoed Nicol’s sentiments: “It’s worth it.”
“It was really bucket-filling for our office,” Nicol added. “It really re-sparked why we do what we do. Everyone deserves to be celebrated and feel a part of the GCU community. For us to be able to do that was special.”
