BLINN COLLEGE TO RECOGNIZE 135TH GRADUATING CLASS
More than 425 students will be officially recognized as Blinn College graduates Friday during the College’s 135th commencement ceremony at Brenham High School.
Approximately 230 students are expected to be present for the 6:30 p.m. ceremony.
Blinn hosted a Fall semester graduation ceremony in December that recognized more than 450 graduates, bringing the graduate total for the academic year close to 900 students, in addition to the thousands that transfer to the state’s leading four-year universities each year. Blinn’s academic transfer rate of 42.9 percent is the highest in the state.
Commencement will include two student speakers – Stephanie Rudolph from the Brenham campus and Janet Divin from the Bryan campus.
Rudolph, a Brenham High School graduate, first enrolled at Blinn in 2006 as a dual credit student. She enrolled full-time in Fall 2008, and was elected Student Government Association president the following year. Rudolph’s education was detoured when she married and began a career, but after several years in the workforce, she returned to Blinn in 2015.
Since returning, Rudolph has been inducted into the Sigma Kappa Delta and Phi Theta Kappa national honor societies, and graduates this evening with an associate degree in liberal arts. She plans to attend Texas A&M to pursue a Bachelor of Education.
Divin began her career as a professional photographer at age 15, then purchased the studio where she worked at age 22, making her the youngest Texas female to take out a small business loan of that size. After being a stay-at-home, homeschooling mother, she enrolled at Blinn to continue her education and re-entered the workforce. She is currently employed at Daniel Stark, P.C. as a pre-litigation case manager.
At just $4,974 for 30 credit hours, Blinn’s 2015-16 out-of-district tuition and fees offered students a savings of $3,345 (40.2 percent) compared to state residents at the average Texas public university during the 2015-16 academic year. The average tuition and fees for Texas residents at a public university was $8,319.
Students who chose to attend Blinn instead of one of the state’s 37 private universities saved more than $21,000 over the course of the year. With the average Texas private university costing $26,501 in tuition and fees, out-of-district Blinn students saved $21,527 (81 percent) over the course of the year.
On top of the College’s low tuition and fees, the Blinn Foundation offers more than 200 endowed scholarships available to incoming and returning students from a wide range of backgrounds, majors, academic backgrounds and experiences. Blinn students and prospective students can also register for external scholarships and participate in grant programs.
Registration is currently available for Blinn’s May Minimester and Summer and Fall semesters. For enrollment information and to learn about financial aid opportunities, visit: www.blinn.edu.
Story courtesy of: Blinn Communications