NORTHFIELD, Vt. – Garrett Lee Chapell, of Byron, received a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice from Norwich University at the May 11 commencement ceremony held in NU’s Shapiro Field House.
Norwich University celebrated commencement during its 200th year of educating citizen soldiers in service to the nation with a ceremony in which 444 students graduated from 32 undergraduate programs and one master’s program.
The New York Times best-selling author and historian Alex Kershaw, who penned “Citizens & Soldiers: The First 200 Years of Norwich University,” gave the commencement address to the Class of 2019 in Norwich’s bicentennial year.
Graduates include future military officers, law enforcement officers, and many who will go on to graduate school, jobs in the federal government, athletic training, construction management, and numerous sectors of public service. The Class of 2019 was comprised of 159 civilian students and 285 students in the Corps of Cadets.
Kershaw, who is a graduate of Oxford University, highlighted standout alumni, such as Norwich engineers who built the United States in the 19th century. A World War II historian and British native, Kershaw highlighted specifically a 1944 graduate, Private Richard Austin, who “jumped into the darkness above Normandy, one of the legendary Screaming Eagles,” to liberate Europe. He lauded Norwich’s many "firsts" particularly the first eight women who in 1974 became the first female members of the Corps of Cadets.
Kershaw concluded his remarks to the Norwich University Class of 2019 with this: “You are lucky…This place…provided a great platform for [Norwich alumni] success, a launching pad. Norwich gave a distinct, a rigorous and importantly a disciplined and moral education, and that basis will serve all of you very well as you go forward.”
The ceremony also included remarks from an enactment of Founder Captain Alden Partridge reflecting on how Norwich has grown and succeeded 200 years after its founding.
Norwich University is a diversified academic institution that educates traditional-age students and adults in a Corps of Cadets and as civilians. Norwich offers a broad selection of traditional and distance-learning programs culminating in Baccalaureate and Graduate Degrees. Norwich University was founded in 1819 by Captain Alden Partridge of the Army and is the oldest private military college in the United States of America. Norwich is one of our nation's six senior military colleges and the birthplace of the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC).
Norwich University celebrates its bicentennial throughout 2019, culminating with major events at Homecoming in September. In fulfillment of Norwich’s mission to train and educate today’s students to be tomorrow’s global leaders, Norwich launched the Forging the Future campaign in 2014. The five-year campaign, which is timed to culminate in 2019, is committed to creating the best possible learning environment through state-of-the-art academics and world-class facilities and is designed to enhance the university’s strong position as it steps into its third century of service to the nation. For information please go to: http://bicentennial.norwich.edu/
