During New Student Convocation each year, Smith Jackson, vice president and dean of Student Life, selects four new students to hilight. By describing their accomplishments, challenges and future goals, Jackson unifies the incoming class. Jackson said there are more than four outstanding students in the class of 2016, but these represent what it means to be an Elon University student.
In this four part online series, read about each of this year’s honored students. On Sept. 5, be sure to check the print edition for an in-depth story about Jackson’s selection process, the history of the tradition and more about those chosen to represent Elon.
Megan Gravley
Hometown: Apex, N.C.
Q: What were you thinking when you heard Dr. Jackson say your name? Did you know you'd been picked?
A: I had no idea, I was sitting there and my roommate was sitting next to me. Once I heard my name I started looking around like ‘is anyone else hearing this, is this a dream?’ It was crazy how he mentioned my name as four out of the thousand or so new students.
Q: Why do you think you were chosen?
A: Well, we did the Peak City Gala of Hope, a charity fundraiser that me and two of my classmates did, it took up my entire senior year, and we raised 30,000 dollars for cancer research for the V Foundation, which I guess. It’s a big deal to us, we had a goal of raising 10,000 and it just blew up.
Q: Why this project? What inspired you to support cancer research?
A: Each of us had a tie to cancer, either a grandparent or a friend, but we started the project in a class and we said we’d see where this goes, and two weeks in my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was crazy and it just showed me that this was the right thing, we were supposed to be doing this. We pursued it with full passion, it worked out in the end.
To learn more about Megan, pick up next week’s edition of The Pendulum newspaper.