College President Hand-Delivers Diplomas

ULSTER COUNTY, NY — Alan Roberts did a lot of driving. The Ulster Community College community wasn't able to gather in person on the Stone Ridge campus to honor its 2020 graduates, so the college president drove all over the region and hand-delivered diplomas to students who RSVP’d to participate in the virtual ceremony.

Observing appropriate social distancing precautions and wearing a face mask, Dr. Al (as he is familiarly called) began his diploma deliveries at 8 a.m. May 16 and spent several days driving through the mid-Hudson Valley.

"It was a two-and-a-half day adventure," Roberts told Patch, who reached him after he'd gotten up at 6 a.m. to cross the Hudson River for Columbia County deliveries. "It is the best experience I've had in 35 years."

Roberts said every year he looks forward to handing SUNY Ulster students their diplomas. To not have the opportunity because of the new coronavirus pandemic made him sad. "I just said, we've got to do it somehow."

Delivering them in person, to people's homes, was an occasion. "I would get to a house, and the whole family would come out. There would be 12-15 people from the neighborhood. People stopping in cars and rolling down windows and thanking me."

One of the graduates he visited was a mother raising her kids who had spent 10 years going to college.

"Just to see them on campus, you don't realize the struggles," he said. "I got to know them all on a different level."

Roberts drove more than 460 miles to deliver diplomas in Ulster, Sullivan, Orange, Columbia and Dutchess counties.

"I got some strange looks," he admitted. "If people would only put the numbers on their house."