FDU Graduates Set to Take Next Step Into the Future

By Kenna Caprio

Come Tuesday, May 15, the IZOD Center will be awash in caps and gowns and pomp and circumstance.

Approximately 2,600 students will receive doctoral, master’s, bachelor’s and associate degrees at the 69th Commencement ceremony of , held in East Rutherford.

The Class of 2012 represents 50 countries including the United States, 26 states plus the District of Columbia and all 21 counties in New Jersey.

Among those students clad in black caps and gowns will be Keith Griffiths, Noelle Jansen, Michael Mento and Kenzi Locks. From heading to graduate school to jumping into the job market, these four students embody the promise of an education at FDU.

A big summer awaits Keith Griffiths, 21, of Teaneck, on the golf course. Make that miniature golf course.

A member of Figment, a nonprofit that supports emerging artists, Griffiths is at work on an art installation called “Hit the Clown.” The work will be displayed at the 2012 FIGMENT Minigolf Course on Governor’s Island in New York. “It’s a mini-golf version of a whack-a-clown boardwalk game,” he says. The fine arts major estimates the installation measures 13 feet long by 4 feet wide by 4 feet tall.

This is Griffiths’ second year in the exhibit and earlier this year his work was also part of a Figment benefit honoring the 25th anniversary of Andy Warhol’s death. Artists could submit paintings, drawings, sculptures and furniture to be auctioned off as a fundraiser. Griffiths entered a sculpture called “Waiting for Bacon” and his art was selected as an auction item. “It’s a gold table with gold manikin arms and checkerboard pattern on top,” he says. The sculpture also made an appearance at Griffiths’ senior art show on the Metropolitan Campus in February.

As he prepares for the mini golf exhibit, Griffiths is also figuring out his next educational move, as he looks towards applying to the fine arts and marketing masters programs at FDU. He also recently revamped his website, http://krgstudio.com/.

Before going back to school, management major Noelle Jansen, 32, of Jersey City, researched colleges for two years. After attending an open house, she decided on FDU because of the promise of a global education and a flexible schedule.

Though she enrolled at the College at Florham, Jansen made use of the opportunity to take classes on both campuses and took advantage of summer and winter sessions.

“I liked the ability to have whatever was convenient for my schedule,” she says of her classes at Fairleigh Dickinson University. “It was something that most places don’t offer.”

Jansen opted to go back to school full time to help advance her career. She says her management degree from FDU and concentration in global business management will help her do just that.

“In my industry, being globally aware, it’s essential,” says the AboveNet Communications employee. AboveNet “deals with fiber optic networks and provides bandwidth to financial services, hospitals and government agencies,” she says.

Beyond the classroom, Jansen worked as a Rotaract club charter member at the College at Florham, joined the new professional development program club headed by professors Kent Fairfield and Kenneth Betz, and helped coordinate the annual Hackensack River cleanup for Earth Day.

Even now, as her time as an FDU student comes to an end, Jansen is going at full speed. “I have a countdown (to commencement) on my personal Facebook page,” she says with glee.

During a tour of the College at Florham, Michael Mento, 21, of West Berlin, told his mother “this is where I need to be,” he says. “To be honest, I didn’t visit any other school.”

Turns out that though he was set on the school, he wasn’t set on a degree. The management major started out as a biology major — “I had a crazy dream that I was going to be a doctor,” he says. But he quickly realized that his people skills and business ideas better suited him for a management career. “I’m always thinking money,” Mento says.

After securing an internship with Enterprise Rent-A-Car, through the help of the Career Development Center, Mento put business theory into practice, learning about sales.

The former Alpha Kappa Lambda and Student Government Association president recently accepted a position at AT&T in the company’s Retail Leadership Development Program. He leaves for Atlanta in mid-July to train for six months before becoming a store manager.

Graduating senior Kenzi Locks, 21, of Smithtown, N.Y., has been busy getting tanked at FDU.

After receiving an email about the senior class gift, the psychology major decided to get involved in the process, becoming one of two Student Government Association Senior Senators responsible for the gift. Together with her counterpart, Locks brainstormed the idea of buying a fish tank to bring to the College at Florham. That thought turned into one of the most talked about class gifts in recent history: a custom aquarium built by the stars of the Animal Planet reality show “Tanked.”   

So far, the students have raised just over $8,000 to put towards the tank through T-shirt sales, graduation celebrations in the Bottle Hill Pub, a beer tasting in Lenfell Hall and an Applebee’s breakfast with FDU student servers.

Now, as classes end and finals wind down, the Columbia University-bound Locks looks forward to seeing the installed tank at homecoming weekend in the fall.

“FDU promotes figuring things out for yourself,” says Locks. “I’m a sociology and criminology minor and a lot of that is understanding how you feel about what’s going on in the world and how people are affected.”

That theme of global understanding will likely manifest during the commencement ceremony, as the Class of 2012 begins its foray into the post-college world.

During the ceremony, the University will confer honorary doctor of humane letters degrees on Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times; The Hon. Cory Booker, mayor of Newark; and Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf, FDU alum and real estate developer, attorney and owner of the Minnesota Vikings. Mayor Booker will also serve as the Commencement Speaker.

Campus provosts will present the Student Pinnacle Awards to this year’s winners: Morrine Omolo of Kikuyu, Kenya (Metropolitan Campus), Jessica Dingman of Roxbury, N.J. (College at Florham) and Juliana Fiorentino of Belo Horizonte, Brazil (FDU-Vancouver). 

The Commencement ceremony begins at 10 a.m. and will be broadcast live on the Web, allowing family and friends around the world to share the ceremony with the graduates. The live steam starts at 8 a.m. with the scrolling of the names of the graduates and Grad Greetings, followed by the full commencement ceremony. A link on the FDU home page will take users directly to the live steam.