{"id":111274,"date":"2016-04-29T12:44:34","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T16:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=111274"},"modified":"2016-05-10T10:08:03","modified_gmt":"2016-05-10T14:08:03","slug":"class-2016-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2016\/04\/class-2016-time\/","title":{"rendered":"Class of 2016: Our Time"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Since entering UConn, major world events have marked each year. During their freshman year, President Barack Obama won re-election and the Boston Marathon bombing shocked the nation. The following year, human stem cells were cloned. During their junior year, the United Nations warned that the world was on course for the warmest year since records began and the largest outbreak of Ebola in history claimed thousands of victims, mostly in Africa. This year, NASA found liquid water on Mars, terrorists attacked Paris and Belgium, and the spread of the Zika virus was documented in newspapers around the globe.<\/p>\n<p>On campus during the last four years, students had the opportunity to hear from a slate of distinguished speakers on campus, including current presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and former U.S. President Bill Clinton; ESPN creator Bill Rasmussen; former two-time president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Oscar Arias; feminist Gloria Steinem; author Doris Kearns Goodwin; and presidential historian Michael Beschloss.<\/p>\n<p>During their UConn years, the University opened Discovery Drive, a new road connecting Route 44 to the Storrs campus and UConn\u2019s new Technology Park; and opened UConn Health Medical and Dental Services in downtown Storrs. Dining Services also opened a new gluten-free bakery, debuted a food truck and ice cream truck, and students selected special flavors of ice cream for their &#8216;Senior Scoop:&#8217; this year&#8217;s flavor is a mixture of coffee ice cream, Heath Bar bits, and fudge swirl.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"grey-sidebar floating-sidebar col-xs-12 col-sm-4\">\n  <\/p>\n<h3>By The Numbers<\/h3>\n<p>This year, UConn will award approximately 8,760 degrees:<br \/>\n6,015 Bachelor\u2019s<br \/>\n1,813 Master\u2019s<br \/>\n363 Doctor of Philosophy<br \/>\n156 Juris Doctor<br \/>\n99 Doctor of Pharmacy<br \/>\n83 Doctor of Medicine<br \/>\n56 Master of Laws<br \/>\n35 Doctor of Dental Medicine<br \/>\n27 Doctor of Physical Therapy<br \/>\n15 Doctor of Audiology<br \/>\n3 Doctor of Musical Arts<br \/>\n3 Doctor of Education<br \/>\n4 Doctor of Nursing Practice<br \/>\n<em>Also<\/em><br \/>\n54 Diplomas in Professional Education<br \/>\n34 Associate\u2019s Degrees in the two-year Ratcliffe Hicks School of Agriculture<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Undergraduates<\/strong><br \/>\n53 percent female<br \/>\n46 percent male<br \/>\n69: Age of oldest student<br \/>\n19: Age of youngest student<br \/>\n26 Sets of twins<br \/>\n56 U.S. military veterans<br \/>\n85 percent are from Connecticut<br \/>\n191 hail from 34 other nations<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Graduate Degree Candidates<\/strong><br \/>\n54 percent female<br \/>\n46 percent male<br \/>\n644 hail from 55 other nations<br \/>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Also within the past four years, the home of UConn football in East Hartford unveiled a new name \u2013 Pratt &amp; Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field. And the Huskies secured seven national championships in three different sports, including the women&#8217;s basketball team\u2019s historic fourth straight NCAA championship last month, making it the nation\u2019s only college basketball program to have won 11 national titles.<\/p>\n<p>And this year, HuskyTHON student-dancers raised a record $716,394 for Connecticut Children\u2019s Medical Center during an 18-hour dance marathon.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the Class of 2016 continued UConn\u2019s tradition of outreach to enhance the quality of life for others through many different initiatives, including one-day community service projects; ongoing local programs providing medical care to migrant farm workers; literacy training for students in low-income households; legal services to clients seeking asylum from political persecution; as well as domestic and international alternative breaks and Education Abroad programs.<\/p>\n<p>Preliminary numbers indicate that more than 16,200 students engaged in over 1.3 million hours of service last year, says Gina DeVivo Brassaw, associate director for Community Outreach in the Department of Student Activities. UConn has been named to the (U.S.) President\u2019s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll for three successive years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis class has engaged with hundreds of non-profits to support initiatives throughout the state and worldwide,\u201d Brassaw said.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, a record 18 percent of this year\u2019s graduating class, or 769 students, participated in one of 275 Education Abroad programs offered in more than 70 countries.<\/p>\n<p>Another noteworthy cohort in the Class of 2016 is the first-generation graduates. A total of 169 first-generation students will graduate this spring, said Bidya Ranjeet, director of UConn\u2019s Student Support Services program. Included among this group are 13 McNair Scholars, the first graduates of a four-year old UConn program designed to prepare highly motivated, underrepresented students for careers in developmental psychology, immunology\/parasitology, nutritional science, or public health.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAll 13 scholars have been accepted into medical schools and Ph.D. programs, or are beginning industry careers to prepare them for their respective fields,\u201d Ranjeet said. \u201cWe are very proud of their accomplishments and look forward to their future successes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Class of 2016 also includes 380 Honors Scholars, the largest number ever at UConn; two National Science Foundation graduate fellowship recipients; a Goldwater Scholarship winner; a Fulbright English Teaching grant recipient; and winner of a National Collegiate Honors Council Portz Fellowship. Additionally, there are 27 students graduating as University Scholars, UConn\u2019s highest accolade for academic excellence.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the graduate students who are leaving UConn this spring have also held prestigious national fellowships including the following: National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, Environmental Protection Agency Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships, Department of Defense National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowships, Fulbright Fellowships, and Boren Fellowships, among others.<\/p>\n<p>Growing numbers of graduate and postdoctoral scholars are seeking advanced degrees from UConn, said Kent E. Holsinger, vice provost for graduate education and dean of the Graduate School. \u201cUConn is a great research university because it has world-class faculty training exceptionally talented graduate students and postdoctoral scholars in world-class graduate programs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Within the past four years, students have experienced many events on campus and in the world, even as they pursued their own endeavors. Here is a glimpse of that time.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":112189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,92,174,2225,90,2233],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1884],"class_list":["post-111274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uconn-avery-point","category-uconn-hartford","category-uconn-stamford","category-uconn-storrs","category-uconn-waterbury","category-university-news"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-10 07:55:24","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111274"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112529,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111274\/revisions\/112529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/112189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111274"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=111274"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=111274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}