WVU marks Commencement with new president, graduates and celebratory ‘Let’s Go!’
A new era began inside the Hope Coliseum Saturday (Dec. 20) as West Virginia University President Michael T. Benson spoke from the gold and blue Commencement stage for the first time, and hundreds of August and December graduates took their first steps as Mountaineer alumni. Noor Ibrahim Abdulhay, a doctoral graduate in epidemiology from the WVU School of Public Health, was the first student to cross the Commencement stage under President Benson’s leadership — a milestone moment that served as the inaugural degree conferral of his presidency.