Monmouth U. to hold graduation at arts center
Last year’s rain-soaked ceremony prompted move to covered facility
BY SHERRY CONOHAN
Staff Writer

WEST LONG BRANCH — To avoid a repeat of last year’s soggy ceremony in the rain, Monmouth University has moved graduation this year from the traditional locale of the Great Lawn to the PNC Bank Arts Center in Holmdel.

Mary Anne Nagy, vice president for student services at the university, said the Commencement Committee began at its postmortem after graduation last year to talk about how to avoid repeating the weather misfortune for the event.

"We began to brainstorm — what were the options we had, what were their pros and cons," she recalled. "Then it came to us — there is a campus-wide representation on the committee — that the PNC Arts Center made the most sense."

Nagy said while the amphitheater at the arts center is open on the sides, it has a roof overhead and, unless the wind is blowing hard, no one should get wet during the ceremony if it rains. She said its 7,000 seats will allow the graduates to have four or five guests, instead of two.

"We didn’t want to put the students in the position of having to choose two people in their life to share that day," she said. "The students have sacrificed, and their parents have sacrificed, for them to be able to get their degrees."

Nagy said the arts center also was centrally located and easily assessable to people coming from both the north and the south via the Parkway.

The arts center also is safe and secure, has plenty of parking, all the amenities and is surrounded by greenery, which will be good for picture-taking, she added.

Graduation is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on May 19.

Nagy said the university annually has from 1,400 to 1,500 persons eligible to participate in graduation, but generally about 1,000 attend the ceremony.

Moving the ceremony to the arts center was chosen over splitting the undergraduate and graduate school ceremony and holding the events inside two campus buildings, according to Nagy.

She said that was rejected because one group or the other wouldn’t hear the main commencement speaker.

The university also considered moving the ceremony to the Great Auditorium in Ocean Grove, but that was rejected because parking would be a problem, she said.

"We can have a really wonderful ceremony and make it a wonderful day for our students," she said. "So we think it will be a great day."

The campus will be open pre and postceremony for picture-taking there too, according to Nagy.