BUCKHANNON – West Virginia Wesleyan College will honor Class of 2021 graduates at their Spring Commencement ceremony, slated for 10 a.m. Sunday, May 9.
Alisa Lively, Dean of Students at West Virginia Wesleyan College, gave the Buckhannon-Upshur Chamber of Commerce an update on graduation and other happenings at WVWC during the group’s virtual meeting, Monday, April 19.
“May 9 is our graduation,” Lively said. “It is outdoor, it’s going to be on Cebe Ross Field, we have 219 graduates, and each will be permitted to have two guests at commencement.”
The college made the original announcement in a March 24 press release.
According to the West Virginia Wesleyan College website, visitors must follow the campus’s universal mask policy and undergo a temperature check requirement to enter campus. In addition, each guest must submit a negative COVID-19 test to the college that’s not more than seven days old or proof of vaccination.
“Our athletics are winding down for spring sports – softball, baseball, lacrosse and track are finishing up their seasons – and we’re hoping that some of them get to go to playoffs,” Lively said. “Our Advancement Office has been concentrating on fundraising in the areas of residence hall improvements, the lighting at Ross Field, scholarships and our capital improvements.”
She said Wesleyan will start its summer season June 1, so off-campus groups and individual events may utilize campus facilities.
“They can provide their COVID protocols and how they will follow that and then our COVID Safety taskforce reviews all those events that want to come on campus,” Lively said. “Our Admissions office has been extremely busy; they’ve been offering daily visits to campus by appointment since May of 2020, obviously with the safety protocols.”
“We’ve had no large groups on campus, to date, as far as that goes – no large events with the Admissions office,” she added. “We’ve been doing virtual open houses, virtual Orange and Black days, and our numbers are extremely positive with the number of accepted students, the number of FAFSAs that have been filed, and the visits to campus.”
Lively said 55 percent of Wesleyan’s incoming class will be students from out of state, while 45 percent are from in-state. In total, the incoming class hails from 25 different states and eight countries, and there will also be 25 new service scholars.
“Our orientation will be Aug. 21, and we do intend to hopefully partner with the Chamber of Commerce and the Upshur CVB to host the Bobcat Fair and the first day of classes is Aug. 23, with fall athletes like football coming Aug. 7, and other fall sports coming on Aug. 14,” Lively said. “As far as housing goes in the fall, we will still keep one residence hall offline as we did this year. For one, that allows us to do deferred maintenance and number two, that will allow us space for COVID housing if we need to provide continued quarantine housing.”
Finals will wrap up May 6 and graduating seniors will stay until May 9.
“A mass exodus will happen on the ninth,” she said. “Residence halls close at 5 p.m., so we will be doing a limited May term and summer school, and most of that will be virtual, but we will offer some on-campus classes, and we’re looking forward to the fall semester and getting back to a little bit more normalcy.”
