VCU graduates more than 4,000

With cheers, tears, bouncing balls and happy calls, about 2,500 students celebrated their graduation from Virginia Commonwealth University yesterday.

"It was worth the wait -- 30 years -- to get this," said Valerie Mack of Chesterfield County, who received her bachelor's degree in social work yesterday, a goal she started working on in 1979 and delayed while she raised five children.

"It was worth it, every moment of that time," she said.

Mack was one of 4,013 students -- though not all attended -- from 116 Virginia cities and counties, 37 states and the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and 41 countries receiving professional, graduate and undergraduate degrees during the ceremony in the Richmond Coliseum.

"Congratulations to all of you," VCU President Eugene P. Trani told the graduates, "for your wonderful achievement."

Yesterday's commencement exercises will be the last over which Trani presides. He will step down as president next month, though the 69-year-old historian will remain a distinguished professor at VCU.

Trani thanked the students and fac ulty for allowing him to serve in what he said was one of the best jobs in the country.

"I believe he did it because he wanted greatness for this university, and he wanted us to be the best," Mack said.

In his nearly two decades as the university's chief executive, the hard-driving Trani turned the Richmond school into the state's largest university, heightened its academic standing and extended its reach across the globe.

Today, VCU enrolls 32,300 students and employs 18,200 people. With a budget of $2.2 billion, the university and its health system have invested nearly $1.2 billion in new construction and have plans for more than $800 million in additional capital spending.

But Trani told the graduates: "The real test of our institution will be the quality of your success."

Yesterday's graduation speaker was Dr. Francis Collins, former director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

"We all owe a huge debt of gratitude for his 19 years of dedicated service," Collins said of Trani's work.

The physician-geneticist and Virginia native challenged the graduates to consider how best to spend their lives, how best to deal with the grand questions of life and death, and how best to love.

As epic as Collins' work with the genetic code has been for the future of human health, he reminded his audience that "what we do during the brief glimpse on the planet that we're given is for one person at a time."

And then Collins challenged them to have some fun and showed them how to do it by picking up his guitar -- a double helix of DNA on its fingerboard -- and breaking into his own version of "My Way," parodying life in the academic world.

Delighted, the audience gave Collins a standing ovation.

"Now that," Trani said, "is one commencement speech you're going to remember."

Contact Peter Bacqué at (804) 649-6813 or .