Advisers pass torch on to doctoral graduates

Chancellor Carol Folt said she was glad to host her second doctoral hooding with UNC students since her alma mater did not conduct hooding ceremonies.

“When I got my own Ph.D., I turned my thesis in, left the building and got in the car to start my post-doc work in Michigan,” Folt said. “It was anticlimactic; there was no real closure."

More than 250 UNC-Chapel Hill graduate students received doctoral degrees in the Dean E. Smith Center as part of the doctoral hooding ceremony May 9. 

Doctoral work accounts for the University’s economic impact of more than $7 billion and 100,000 jobs for the state alone, Folt said. UNC has 80 plus doctoral programs in the sciences, mathematics and humanities.

Despite doctoral work's importance, many universities lack a hooding ceremony.

Carolina’s hooding ceremony began in Spring 2003. 

“We drove 17 hours to get here,” said Maygan Howard, sister-in-law of Nicholas Howard, who received a Ph.D. in political science. “But hey, our drive was nothing compared to his Ph.D. program.” 

Some students had to juggle part-time studies with full-time work. Kebbler Williams, who worked full-time, finished her program in educational leadership in 7 years.

“But it’s nice now that I’m on the other side to see the benefit of perseverance and the benefit of setting a goal at a young age and reaching that goal,” Williams said. “And when I wanted to give up, when I said, ‘I’ve had enough,’ (my family and friends) were always there to say, ‘You can do just a little more.'” 

Faculty and students alike said advisers were crucial to doctoral success. Steven Matson, dean of the graduate school, presented the annual Faculty Award for Excellence in Doctoral Mentoring to anthropology professor Vin Steponaitis, who has mentored over 20 doctoral students. 

“We have to go out and do it on our own, but my adviser was patient in explaining some of the concepts,” said Kelley Wekheye, who graduated from the biostatistics program. 

Sai Venkatapurapu, who left Hyderabad, India, for his Ph.D. in bioinformatics and computational biology, said that his adviser helped him adjust to life away from family.

“During the six years there will be ups and downs, so I had to keep moving forward … If something is not working or if you get depressed, the adviser plays the main role,” Venkatapurapu said. 

In her keynote speech, UNC alumna and statistician Susan Murphy focused on the human importance of communicating well in the real world.

For now, the future for Wekheye remains at her current job at Pharmaceutical Product Development, an organization that does clinical trial research. For Venkatapurapu, it means moving to Pittsburgh to become a mathematical modeler. Howard will go to Washington, D.C., on a congressional fellowship, and then teach political science at Auburn University at Montgomery in Alabama.

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