By RICK MILLER
Olean Star
OLEAN — A theme of overcoming challenges with hard work and the support of family, friends and faculty wove through comments of speakers at Friday’s Jamestown Community College Olean Campus Commencement at the Olean YMCA.
Between commencement ceremonies Friday night in Olean and Saturday in Jamestown, the community college added 449 graduates to its 29,409 alumni since the first graduation in Jamestown June 12, 1951, said President Dr. Daniel DeMart.
“As president, I am constantly impressed with the quality of our students,” DeMart told the Olean graduates, family, friends and faculty. “They are ambitious, intelligent, talented and determined to accomplish wonderful things with their hard work.”
They have faced challenges head-on with the help of fellow students, faculty, family and friends.
“An increasing number of adults students who are parents are juggling employment, child care, transportation and a host of other challenges” in their college studies at JCC, DeMart said
There are a growing number of students from outside the region including one from Turkmenistan, 6,000 miles away, DeMart said.
There are also 2,000 students taking JCC courses while still in high school, including one Olean High School senior who is enrolled in College Connections with 53 credit hours, just three courses short of an associate’s degree.
DeMart was particularly proud of the first four candidates for graduation in the dual nursing degree program with St. Bonaventure University.
The students in the program spend their first year studying at St. Bonaventure and the second and third years at JCC where they receive a degree as a Registered Nurse. They return to St. Bonaventure for a four year of study and received their Bachelor of Science degree in nursing.
DeMart recognized Assemblyman Joseph Giglio, R-Gowanda, who was on the officials’ platform, and is not seeking re-election to the 148th Assembly seat. First elected in 2025, Goglio is a longtime supporter of the Olean JCC campus, he said.
Student speaker Anna Gilbert, who received her degree as a Registered Nurse as a non-traditional student, thanked family, friends and faculty for their encouragement.
“I treated education as if it were my job,” she told fellow graduates, some who were as old as her son. She congratulated the graduates.
Keynote speaker Scott Kindberg, regional sports editor for the Jamestown Post Journal and Dunkirk Observer, delivered his second JCC commencement address since he graduated from JCC 43 years ago.
The JCC alum shared lighthearted details and lessons taken from his first public speaking class in college through his fruitful reporting career, covering everything from local sports to four consecutive Buffalo Bills appearances at the Super Bowl. He’s a member of the Chautauqua County Sports Hall of Fame. “Surround yourself with good people, and good things will happen,” Kindberg said.
Mark Ward, chairman of the Olean JCC Board of Trustees, went off-script in some of his remarks to graduates.
“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” he said of what graduates were now facing. “You learn to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and move forward.”
Ward presented diplomas to the graduates and DeMart shook their hands and wished them well. The college’s Nursing School graduates were honored earlier Friday in a “Pinning Ceremony.”
