78-Year-Old Woman Graduates From College With Degree After Six Years
On 5/11/21 at 4:51 PM EDT
Earning a college degree is an impressive feat for any student in higher education. But for one 78-year-old graduate, finally earning her bachelor s degree after several decades of putting off her schooling has been all the more special.
Vivian Cunningham, 78, was among the 553 students graduating in the Class of 2021 at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama on Saturday. According to a statement from the university, she spent a total of six years earning her bachelor s degree in Liberal Studies. There were some times I wanted to give up, she said in a statement to Samford University News. Despite the challenges over the better part of a decade when she thought to herself, I m not going back I m just tired, she just [kept] on going.
I want the knowledge : 78-year-old woman graduates from Alabama university
By Layla Ferris
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - It was a big day for one 78-year-old woman.
On May 8, Vivian Cunningham graduated from Samford University in Birmingham after pursuing her Liberal Studies bachelor’s degree for six years, according to the Alabama university.
Decades ago, Cunningham took courses through a tuition reimbursement program when she was employed at the Alabama Power Company, but never had the time to earn a bachelor’s degree until she retired.
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A Samford University press release said Cunningham, a single mother of two children, worked at an Atlanta dress shop, and then returned to Birmingham to work as a night-shift custodian at the Alabama Power Company for the next 13 years. Cunningham then worked her way up to a daytime job in Alabama Power’s mail room.
The new film ‘Eat Wheaties!’ has a host of Penn connections. Film still from “Eat Wheaties!” featuring Tony Hale. (Image: Courtesy of Screen Media)
In the new feature film “Eat Wheaties!,” Tony Hale best-known for his roles in “Arrested Development,” “Veep,” and “Toy Story 4” stars as a Penn alum trying to organize a class reunion and reconnect with a special classmate. Hale and Producer/Director Scott Abramovitch chatted with
Penn Today about the film and its Penn connections. (Left) Producer/Director Scott Abramovitch; (Right) Film still from “Eat Wheaties!” featuring Tony Hale. (Image: Courtesy of Screen Media)
Tony, your character, Sid Straw, plays a Penn alum organizing a class reunion. In preparing for the role, did you learn anything about Penn that you might not otherwise have known?
The Surprising Mental Health Benefits of Volunteering
A program in Connecticut offers psychotherapy in exchange for voluntary service in the community. But the act of volunteering itself can have mental health benefits of its own.
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Empowerment, agency, and control. Impact, self-esteem, and social connections. A sense of meaning, a sense of purpose, a sense of contributing and with all that, a feeling of reward.
All are elements in the psychological impact of volunteering.
And all are critical pieces of Volunteers in Psychotherapy, a West Hartford, Connecticut, program that offers pure talk-therapy sessions in exchange for voluntary service in the community. The longstanding, forward-pushing nonprofit was designed as a corrective to the usual medicalized approach to mental healthcare, which too often strips the autonomy of patients and too often prioritizes pharmaceuticals over in-depth therapy. Many people can’t afford mental healthcare out of pocket; when it is covered by
by
J. Daryl Charles
While cities and states have been struggling to adapt to life amid the coronavirus, it is possible that another pandemic afflicts American society in even greater proportions. For this reason, it is difficult to overstate the timeliness of a recent collection of essays edited by Gerald R. McDermott:
Race and Covenant: Recovering the Religious Roots for American Reconciliation (Acton Institute Press, 2020). The essays comprising this volume issue from a February 2019 conference at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, that boldly, yet in a faithfully Christian manner, dared honestly to assess race relations in America.
But . . .
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